The Moment I knew I had to Stop Dieting

If you haven't seen it, the Huffington Post has a series of "The Moment I Knew" which they describe as "user-submitted video series where readers tell the stories of life-changing moments they have experienced. Each section of HuffPost has chosen a different theme -- whether it was the moment you knew you wanted to marry your spouse, the moment you knew your marriage was over, the moment you knew you loved college, or the moment you knew you were broke. You can also tell us about any other life-defining moment you'd like to share. The possibilities are endless!"   Of the endless possibilities out there HuffPo decided to kick off its Healthy Living Section's Moment I knew with ""The Moment I Knew I Had To Lose Weight."  Dr. Deah Schwartz wrote into HuffPo and asked them why they chose this topic, why not The Moment I knew I had to Stop Dieting  They responded by stating that if such sentiments existed and readers sent those videos in, then HuffPo would be glad to post them.  I have seen several of the videos and find them poignant, inspiring and at times quite sad.  I lack a web-camera, but I found this topic inspiring.

I have had this blog space sitting empty for quite some times.  I knew I wanted to use it to take a Feminist and Fat Acceptance look at standards of beauty and health, but the blog never quite gelled.  However this "The moment I knew" seems the perfect place to start.

The moment I knew I had to stop dieting I was in the car with my Mother.  I honestly cannot say what age I was, I just recall it being High School.  It was a beautiful sunny day. I remember that, though how many days aren't sunny in Phoenix, Arizona?  My mother was driving our old, grey van. We were heading out of Ahwatukee - I can recall the exact part of the strip of Chandler Blvd. we were on the moment is that salient in my mind.  I do not recall the exact conversation that lead up my Mother's statement, but I imagine it was some conversation about my discomfort with my body, my weight, my size - my hips, my breasts.

Since blooming into womanhood smack dab in the midst of middle school I'd had an increasingly ambivalent relationship with my own body.   I was uncomfortable with my widening hips, my developing breasts, with having a body that looked like a woman's when I still felt like a child.  I disliked the way these changes to my physical form effected the way my body moved, the way I ran, the way I swung a bat.  The day I had to buy a C-cup bra I sat in the dressing room and quietly cried.

At the same time, I loved my body.  I felt powerful.  I could stand and feel deeply connected to the earth. I could move and enjoy the experience.  I was getting taller and stronger.  And perhaps most frighteningly, I also had a growing suspicion that maybe, just maybe I wasn't precisely ugly. 

My developing body had been the source of conflict within my household as well.  My parents worried about my weight.  Endemic to their own relationship was contention about size and fat - and some of that anxiety spilled over onto me.  My mother and I fought - often productively about my size and about how I wanted it to be addressed.

In part from the pressures of my parents and in part from my own ambivalence I had dabbled in the world of dieting.  I had tried the "First! Two Week Diet" that was supposed to drop you two dress sizes in two weeks.  We had engaged, as a family, in the Carbohydrate Addicts diet (though I generally refused to participate).   My mother had quietly, and as kindly as possible, tried to teach me about portion sizes, counting calories.  I don't even think that she really thought of me as all that fat. I think she saw it as part of what it is to be a woman.  Women had to think about these things.  On one of our notable confrontations on the matter she told me that she only wanted to protect me. That she didn't see anything wrong with how I looked and she knew I was healthy, but she knew how cruel the world could be and she wanted to spare me that.  I remember standing in that parking lot (what is it with teenage confrontations and cars?), crying and declaring that I did not care what the world thought, I only wanted to know that my mother thought I was beautiful!

It would be unfair to typify my mother's reaction to my size as not supportive.  Prior to this moment in the van, when I had complained about my looks she had always responded by "working the problem."  If I felt I was fat we could do something about that.  I could diet. I could take control of my body.  What I always wanted to hear from her was that I was fine just as I was.  I think deep down she always thought that, but she thought it was somehow her duty as a mother to steer me toward weight loss instead.

Back to that moment in the van.  I had made some comment about my body and I had expected to hear the same offer of modifications to the family diet from my mother. Instead she was very quiet for a moment.  She spoke to me, quietly, about how she had been thin.  That she had lost weight, that she had dieted herself down to the size that an unnamed party found acceptable.  Then she said that the way she was now, though it was fatter than others might like was the best she had felt.  I remembered looking down at my mothers thigh and thinking how slim it was, how beautiful I thought she was and I could not fathom why she would think she was not perfect at that moment and that size.

She went on...What she said next I think I will always remember.  She told me that If I wanted to lose weight for myself that was fine, that was my right. It was my body.  But, she told me "I have been fat and I have been thin and the only thing that changed was my body.  All that other stuff that I thought would change when I lost weight, it was exactly the same.  So just know that.  If you want to lose weight, you can do that, but the only thing that will change is your size."

This was a revolutionary moment for me.  Like so many young women I had spent my life inside my head, making lists of the things I could do if only I were thin.  "When I am thin" I would think "I will do amazing things"... I would have a boyfriend, and travel, and cure cancer.  It was amazing how every hope and dream I placed before myself I prefaced with the idea "When I am thin..."

That moment, in that car, my mother gave me a great gift. I stopped prefacing my world on the idea of waiting until I lost weight. I stopped prefacing my world at all.  With that one conversation my mother freed me.  She broke the chains that society places upon us.  Did I suddenly have a perfect relationship with my body? No. But I stopped feeling like I had to put my life and my worth on hold until I made my body into what the world wanted it to be.  It put things back into their appropriate boxes - body size is about the size of my body.  Everything else is about everything else.   I knew I was trying to diet not to be thinner, not to be beautiful, but to give myself permission to be all the things I wanted to be.  I had been putting everything on hold until I was a size 8 - and that seemed stupid.

To at that moment I knew, I had to stop dieting and start living. Start being brave. I had to leap and hope there would be something there to catch me - even if it was just my own fat ass.