I’ve never officially been diagnosed with an eating disorder, but I am a human American woman with immigrant parents and, when I was growing up, I obtained most of my information about my body from women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Seventeen, so chances are pretty good. For years, I have detailed my eating habits like a scientist attempting to discover the secret to achieving my version of the physical ideal.
My weight is something that occupies so much of my mental space every day that I can’t help but additionally wonder how much of my life has been wasted in my pursuit of some unattainable body. Writers do not need to be thin. So, why do I spend so much of my time worrying about a digital number on a scale? Why do I think I will be more successful if I can get rid of that small pouch of belly fat that makes it difficult to button certain pants? How have I convinced myself that the day I can get back into my size zero jeans is the day someone will finally choose me to love? Why is size zero even a thing? Wouldn’t being a zero mean you are antimatter? That you don’t even exist?
When faced with the raw data available to me about what I eat and why, it becomes clear that there is really no other way to describe my relationship with food and my body other than disordered. Irrational. Unsound. Woeful.
Journal Entry, Age 22, New York. Starting weight (pre-diet): 145, Ending weight (post-diet): 120.
Since puberty, I have gained and lost enough weight to make two clones of myself. At my thinnest, I lost almost over sixty pounds through an excessively restrictive diet and a punishing exercise regimen (with a little help from cocaine). Since then, I have gained and lost the same twenty pounds every 3-5 years through a slightly healthier combination of altering my eating habits (ranging from mostly vegan to pescatarian with gluten-free tendencies) and various “of-the-moment” exercise programs including weightlifting, boxing, Pilates, and spin classes. Show me an overpriced gym in Manhattan and I will list off a schedule of workouts I’ve tried there and my favorite instructors in alphabetical order.
It seems so natural. Tallying how many calories I burn every day with not one but two different wearable movement trackers. Measuring macros, counting portions, accumulating steps. Reducing myself by quantifiable amounts. To a non-dieter it may seem like work, but it’s something so many of us do now. It’s like how you don’t have to remind yourself to exhale every time you inhale. You just do.
Losing weight is the one thing that glaringly stands out as an unfortunate fiber of connective tissue throughout my life. I am obsessed with whether or not I think I am thin. The answer is almost always no. I am never thin enough. What strikes me is the lengths I have gone to in trying to attain some ideal body shape and how much I choose to tie my self-worth to what I think I look like.
There is a game I play when I walk through the world. I will look at every woman I encounter and decide if I am fatter or thinner than her. I taunt myself with the comparisons. She’s thinner. She’s thinner. She is much thinner. It’s a particularly harrowing experience in the gym locker room when bodies are unmasked by clothing. I cannot delude myself with wishful thinking that I may be smaller than I am when the evidence is incontestable. They are all thinner.
The first time I ever felt thin (briefly), I had spent three months in the Philippines where I involuntarily existed off of a diet of mangoes, rice, and cucumber salad because no one in my family understood vegetarianism and I was too afraid to ask for anything else.
Journal Entry, Age 19, Philippines. Starting weight: 130, Ending weight: 101.
I really enjoy hearing my stomach growl. I like to feel empty. I like the churning in my stomach as my body searches for nutrients, nourishment, and knowing that I willfully deny it any sort of comfort. It’s one of those really good kinds of pain. I fantasize about starvation. I long to look at my body and see my skeleton. I wish I could be anorexic, but I don’t have that kind of discipline. Isn’t that terrible? There are people in the world for whom starvation isn’t a novelty. It’s all they know. And I deny myself food for vanity.
I have spent most of my life trying to be less than I am. Substantially less of a person. What is it I am trying to achieve? Wishing to be so small. Am I hoping someone might choose me? Put me in their pocket. Keep me for their own. Maybe even love me. Thinness is something I have desired for so long that I cannot fathom how unhealthy it is to want. How debilitating it is to equate being thin with being loved. If you are smaller, you will be prettier. If you are prettier, people will listen to you. You will be richer and stronger and more valuable in every way.
What surprises me is that I am not unaware of my distorted reasoning. I am fully cognizant that my habits and ways of thinking are unhealthy, but I continue to live this way. Changing would seem like a failure. Like I have lost the competition between who I am and who I could be if I could finally rid myself of superfluous swathes of my physical self.
Journal Entry, Age 30, New York. Starting Weight: 168, Ending Weight: 102.
Last night was a pleasantly quiet evening and I got a chance to chat with some of the clientele at the bar. One particularly irritating man with virtually no concept of conversational protocol consumed the last couple of hours before closing. He also thought it was perfectly normal to show us that he was wearing colorful flannel pajama bottoms underneath his pants.
Yesterday, as a punishment for an unplanned night of debauchery, I forced myself in my hungover stupor to endure a brutal 7 a.m. spin class. By midnight that day, my leg muscles were weary, so I paced behind the bar counter doing quad stretches while conversing with Mr. Pajamas.
“Why are you doing that?”
“My legs hurt from spinning class today.”
“Why do you work out?”
“Uh. You know. To stay in shape. Stay healthy. Whatever.”
There weren’t enough other customers at the bar for me to end the conversation there and talk to other people, so I indulged Mr. Pajamas and explained that I recently lost about 40 pounds. It’s not something I am wont to discuss unless I feel some sort of connection to a person. But I was bored. So, why not?
I never explain to people the real motivation for losing so much weight. I don’t explain that my brother got sick and went into the hospital and that I promised him I would get in shape again and that I would help him stay healthy when he got out of the hospital. I certainly don’t explain that my brother never got better. That he died. And that I plan to keep this weight off and work out and stay in shape for the rest of my life because it was the last promise I made to my brother whom I will never see again.
No. My explanation now is that I recently ended a seven-year relationship and realized I am going to be naked in front of strange men again, so I might as well try to look my best. It is a line that always gets a laugh from people. Mr. Pajamas inappropriately asked me why I put on so much weight to begin with. I deflected his question and walked away but he persisted.
“Isn’t it great?” He gushed. “Isn’t it great to be skinny? I’m so glad to be skinny.” As though we were both members of some exclusive club for people with the correct Body Mass Index.
I gave him a look that I hope he interpreted as, “You are a moron.”
I have never been thin. I have never been a waif. This is the first time I might be mistaken for something other than slightly overweight. My closest friends have been wonderfully supportive and encouraging during this time of weight loss. I am happy that they are so happy for me. And it really doesn’t bother me that some people are so shocked when they see me now.
However, the comments I get from people that I have only known peripherally give me certain pause. Things like, “Holy shit! How much weight have you lost?” And “You look fantastic! I mean you were always beautiful but now. . .” Or “Wow! I didn’t even recognize you!” While these statements are certainly thrilling to hear, I can’t help but feel a bit troubled. Not because I am offended but because I am now acutely more aware than ever how much we all really do focus on body image and weight.
I am definitely grateful to have my membership to The Skinny Club reconsidered, but I am quite sure the dues to be paid for admittance are probably not worth the price. Especially if the benefits of inclusion are mere delusions of self-worth.
Note to Self Today, Weight unknown, Too Scared to Look.
If I can just reduce myself down again, I say to the me I see in the mirror who is at the top of the crest of another yo-yo swing, this will be the time that we will finally stop.
If I can just be thin again, I’ll never gain it back. All of these questions will resolve, and I’ll finally just be. Please just do it this time. Eat like a normal person. Burn more calories than you consume. Reduce yourself again and I promise to be happy, no matter what. Lessened by half with only the good parts left.
Marisol Aveline Delarosa writes nonfiction and fiction, and she is a first-year student in the Creative Writing MFA program at The New School. She is a New Yorker but hopes to also have a home in Barcelona someday. Marisol has been selling alcohol for over two decades and currently runs the only real bar left in the Meatpacking District. You can find more of her work at www.thisisnotcake.com.
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