My Dieting Narrative

Growing up, I was a tall, lanky kid. The only understanding I had about my size and my body was that I was tall—very tall—especially for my age. But I never perceived myself to be fat.

It was during my 5th grade class’s graduation trip to the beach that I first remember feeling insecure about my body. The whole class went, almost 70 of us. And we were all in our bathing suits. Prior to the event, I must have been anticipating the feeling of insecurity because I bought a bathing suit that was “boy short” style as to cover up my butt and thighs a little more. Yet once I got to the beach, it seemed that that extra cut of fabric wasn’t enough. As I lay on my towel, stomach down, I felt nervous that everyone else was noticing the predominate size of my thighs in comparison to everyone else. In retrospect, I feel sad for my former self, as I was unable to logically conclude that if I was taller than every boy in my class and much taller than every girl (at least half a foot), it would only be natural that the width of my legs be greater or else they wouldn’t be able to hold me up right.

Sometime after the beach trip, I began to grow more conscious of my food intake and its relation to my size. My desire to actually diet didn’t come into full effect until early high school—a key transitional period in growing up. Throughout the year, I didn’t pay much attention to the fat on my body unless my skin was directly exposed—again during the summer time, when we southern California kids would hang out at the beach. I didn’t like the idea of dieting directly, as I saw some of the girls more obsessed with their looks watching what they ate at parties and so forth. I resented the fact that in social settings, guys could go right for the pizza and soda and girls would linger around the veggie trays with diet sodas. But at the same time, I too was self-conscious about what kind of junk food I would eat at a party. While I never dieted directly, I would often create elaborate plans with my friend, we’ll call her Sofia, to firm up our abs and shrink our waists by summer time. While this wasn’t really necessary, we were teenage girls living in Santa Monica, CA and caring about our bodies was almost inevitable.

A big transitional period for me was when I left my group of high self esteem friends to go off to an out of state, private college in Oregon. This was the first time since summer camp, year back, in which my new friends and me were eating all our meals in a social setting of a cafeteria. It was kind of horrific. As I didn’t know anyone prior to arrival, I naturally became friends with my roommate and hall mates. They were a fun group of girls but in terms of healthy eating habits and positive body image, they were lacking greatly. My roommate had struggled with an eating disorder two years prior and it was clear that it had always stayed with her. At meals, she was very specific about what and how much she ate. Everything she consumed was thoroughly thought out. While she did eat, I always felt self conscious when just throwing food on to my plate even if it was fried, all carbohydrates, or had lots of sugar. Another close friend was in a battle with an eating disorder—a reality I was always aware of but had never put the pieces together that it was in fact a disorder until after we went separate ways. She would eat nothing but celery and black coffee for days then sporadically binge on 30 Milano cookies. And a third friend was constantly skipping meals and living off slim fast and butter free popcorn. When she did come to meals, she would openly talk about how she couldn’t eat this or that because she was too fat and needed to watch her weigh. It is worth noting that while all these three girl were a couple inches shorter than me, I must have been 3-4 pants sizes bigger than them. In other words, they were clearly a very skinny group to begin with. This whole atmosphere hit me hard as I had never experienced every meal as a time to sit around and talk about how fat all my friends and me were. As a group, we were constantly discussing what we did not like about our bodies and how many calories we had eaten that day. Again, instead of talking to a counselor about this or changing friend groups, I attempted to resist it by continuing to eat what I wanted—or even what they wanted but never allowed themselves to eat. It was as if I was conducting my own personal protest against all the talk about dieting. In retrospect, I don’t think that was a helpful solution to the situation as I ate more unhealthily than I should have. Luckily I transferred colleges after the first year and now find my self with a group of girl friends that might not be happier with their bodies, but rarely talk about it and all eat healthy portions of food at each meal.

In conclusion, I have found that I have never really dieted—while I have thought about it a lot—and if anything, I have over eaten as an unhealthy protest to all the dieting I feel is going on around me. In the present and future, I hope to eat healthy quantities of healthy foods without putting much thought into it as to merely fuel my body in a positive manor without obsessing about losing weight.