My New Years Resolution: No More Dieting

Society gives fat bodies superpowers, we are the only ones who can be both entirely too much and shockingly incomplete, an overdone ostentation and a work in progress.

We are greater in size and inferior in value, a lesson most of us learn quite young.

My story is not unique, I joined weightwatchers at eight years old. I remember going into those meetings with my grandma where a bevy of middle-aged women would come up to me and coo about how cute I was and how proud they were of me starting this journey so young. While classmates were doing multiplication homework, I spent my afternoon learning how to calculate the amount of WW points in a grape popsicle. My school photos now nothing more than before pictures for the skinny kid I was supposed to become.

I understand why my family pushed me to lose weight, they were concerned. I understand too, how easy it was for my family like so many other families to have their fears exploited by the slick marketing of a national diet brand, of a societal war on fat. But learning at eight years old that the way you have a body is wrong, can really mess a kid up. It was my first foray into self-loathing, the first time that I realized everyone around me wanted me to be something else. The diet did not work, and eventually we stopped going all together but from that moment on I never stopped wanting to be thin. It became my only goal and the only thing I wished for on every birthday candle, four leaf clover, and fallen eyelash.

Anytime a classmate asked what superpower I would have if I could- I’d say shape shifter without missing a beat. Eager to have the ability to be anything but this.

I wanted it so bad that I never stopped trying. I spent years declaring my body a battleground and filling my arsenal with every weapon I could find on TV and online and it never really worked. No matter how hard I fought fat was an enemy that couldn’t be beat.

After a 12-year streak of losses, I finally cut my calories down to the hundreds, I gave up whole categories of food, I walked two miles to the gym only to work out and walk back. It worked the weight came off. I had finally prevailed, a victor in a battle riddled with casualties.

I was congratulated by everyone who saw me, treated with more respect by people I have known for years, and told I was handsome now.

Like it’s a compliment to hear just how unloved and ugly your body was before.

I was high on the admiration of feeling like I had finally cracked the code. I was finally allowed to be someone with interests, nuances and aspirations instead of being deemed nothing more that the fat guy. It felt like social liberation.

Then my metabolism adjusted, and the weight came back on with a vengeance- and nothing that worked before could keep it away.

Desperate to hold on to my revered position as a former fattie and this new found acceptance, I decided to do whatever it took. I took up purging- I know that an overweight bulimic sounds like the punchline of a Family Guy joke but it was my reality. All the while, the unknowing spectators to my body battle still cheered me on and encouraged me to keep going.

I remember passing out one night while hanging out with my friends, I knew I needed to stop but couldn’t bring myself to believe that being fat was better than being sick.

After being caught, I confided in a friend and with a lot of help I reluctantly gave up the purging, and the weight found me once more.

I watched as all those who had congratulated me now whispered, and looked at my growing waist with wide eyes, barely able to hide their pity for the boy who was almost worth something.

Today, I am no less fat now than if I had never gone on a diet and chances are that is true for a lot of chronic dieters and yet we sign up again and again for the latest drug, program, or meal replacement. We make ridiculous goals and hate ourselves when our bodies are not able do the impossible.

As the New Year diet talk starts, I can’t help but wonder what our lives would look like, how much happier we would be if we had spent all the time that we used to count calories and log our meals on things that actually brought us joy. I wonder if we would be in a better place if we spent our Weightwatchers dues on therapy, on our hobbies, on seeing friends, on anything that actually contributed to our wellness in a meaningful way.

I wonder what I would have gained if I never tried to lose.

So, this year I have no weight loss resolutions, no diets plans saved on my phone, no calorie counting apps downloaded- this year I am going to see what happens when I show up for my body the way it does for me. How will I feel if I show the same softness to my tummy that it shows to me? How will my perspective change if I can come to see the jiggle of my flesh as a joyous dancer swaying to the rhythm of a merengue beat only I can hear? How much different would I start to look at myself if I decided that my fat body was not only enough, but fucking beautiful too? Would peace finally be able to settle on my skin the way self-hatred has?

I invite you to join me, to make a resolution unlike any you have made before.

After all, what is there to lose?

My Mother In The Afterlife

so we can stay like this forever