Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but while reading this I couldn’t stop picturing you as a little girl observing the diet talk, fat-free food labels, and self-hatred that comes with constant dieting… and it breaks my heart. You shouldn’t have had to sift through all of that confusing information and receive all the subliminal messages that you did as a child. Children need fat in their diet. Should they be eating Lunchables and McDonald’s all the time? No, but everything in moderation. That’s what we need to be teaching children. There are no “good” foods or “bad” foods. Taking the bread basket away at a restaurant? My god, live a little!

…This is also coming from someone who has struggled with anorexia and has been in treatment several times, so really I should practice what I preach.

After some time, weight-restoration, and normalized eating I found that my body naturally evened out at a “set-point,” or a certain weight, even if there were days that I overate or under-ate. It was thrilling not keeping track of everything that went into my body, knowing that it is super smart and trusting that it will take care of itself. Luckily, my set point weight was a number I could get on board with- Some people’s set points are naturally higher based on genetics or body type and they spend their whole life denying that. Their body and mind suffer because of it and what they fail to realize is that their body will do whatever it can to be at the weight it needs to be. (This is also assuming nobody’s set point is 80 pounds and nobody’s is 300).

Even if I tried to restrict and lose weight now, my body holds onto every morsel I put into my mouth. Dieting and eating disorders really fuck with your metabolism, so I try to tell myself that even if I got to a super low weight now, its not sustainable and I will end up back at my set point eventually, or higher because of damage that I’ve done to my system. And I’ll waste a lot of time and money doing it. (Treatment is expensive!)

I will say that it is extremely hard to recover in the society we have today. I work with 10 other women and there’s food talk and fat talk and diet talk on a daily basis. They walk laps around the playground to burn extra calories…I get bored and want to chat so I do it too, but it still feels weird.