Scale of values version 2

[Revised version of previous essay. I am leaving the first version up for comparison.]

This morning I got up and stepped on the scale, the way I usually do on Saturdays, the way I’m supposed to every weekend for the medical research study that my son and I are currently participating in. The blue digital numbers flashed 140.2. Unacceptable. 139.9 is the absolute upper barrier of what my mind will tolerate these days without panic. I took off my fuzzy, long-sleeved pajama top, used the toilet, and got back on the scale. Now the answer was 139.3. Still high, but within permissible bounds. (There is, of course, no lower limit established on ‘permissible.’ 134.9 is the lowest figure I’ve ever recorded, so that’s what I think of as the bottom of the range.) I exhaled and promised myself to stay away from snacks for the next few days.

I went downstairs to empty the dishwasher and get my gym bag together for 8 a.m. Zumba. As I put the dishes away, I focused on positive, calming thoughts: Don’t get upset. It’s okay to weigh whatever you weigh. It’s just a number. Then, trying to address the underlying fear as directly as possible, I made myself think the words: You are just as good and valuable a human being at 140 pounds as you are at 135. 

And then I stopped, struck by the layers of insanity in that sentence.

You are just as good and valuable a human being at 140 pounds as you are at 135. 

How in the ever loving fuck did I get here? Once upon a time I was a curvy-and-proud size 14. I went a decade without even owning a scale; my only dietary goal for most of my life was to avoid ever acquiring an eating disorder. If anyone else in my life said they had to remind themselves not to worry about five pounds, I would agree wholeheartedly they were making a fuss over nothing — something not just minor, but practically undetectable. If that concern was tied not just to their physical appearance but to the idea of their being a worthwhile person, I would worry about their mental health. How did I get so caught up in diet culture that this ludicrously obvious “affirmation” could even occur to me?

Actually, I know the answer. I got here by being a diet success story. 

In the first week of November 2016, still wrecked from the disaster of election night, I had an appointment with my doctor to discuss the results of some routine blood work. Years of baking homemade cinnamon rolls, cookies, and muffins had caught up to me: I was prediabetic with a A1C of 6.0. “Change your eating habits,” she told me, “or you’ll probably develop type 2 diabetes within the next ten years.” It was a shock that divided my life permanently into ‘before’ and ‘after’. I went home, cried for a week, and then set about transforming my entire relationship to food. 

My endlessly supportive husband, who is both a scientist and the main cook in our family, took the lead in researching diets and promised to stay with me every step of the way. We settled on the MyPlate.gov model, committed to a major reduction in our sugar and alcohol intake, and started exercising nearly every day. Our sole intention was to make permanently sustainable changes that would reduce my risk of diabetes. It wasn’t all easy; at Christmas I especially mourned the near-total cessation of baking. But it worked. By summer I had a clean bill of health. What’s more, without ever having set a weight loss goal, we had lost a combined total of 65 pounds -- 35 for me, 30 for him. I had reached ideal BMI range for the first time in my adult life, reduced my running pace by two minutes a mile, and dropped from a size 14 to a 6. A little more than two years since that doctor’s visit, I’m a model “after” picture. And that’s where my current problem starts.

Before the cataclysm of that afternoon in the doctor’s office, my only body-related goals were mental, and they centered exclusively on acceptance and positivity. I consciously practiced loving myself as I was. Sometimes this meant choosing flattering poses in the mirror and ignoring what I saw in photographs. On the whole, though, I kept my focus on everything I could love about my body — full hips, olive skin, and gloriously T-shirt-stretching DD breasts. I was determined not to let the beauty-industrial complex rule me, and I was equally determined not to replicate the eternal cycles of dieting and self-shaming I had watched my mother endure throughout my childhood.

Then I started losing weight. After a few months, when I looked in the mirror, I no longer needed to set an intention. I just looked, and loved. Increasingly confident, I started running in just a sports bra when the weather turned hot. I bought a bikini for the first time in almost 20 years. It became so easy to find beauty in what I saw that I forgot to tell myself that I was beautiful no matter what. 

But I’ve recently come to realize that body confidence and body positivity are not synonyms. The first only means loving what I have right now. The other requires loving myself unconditionally, whatever might happen. 

As I gained confidence, I stopped exercising my positivity skills because I didn’t have to use them anymore. Now I find that they’ve atrophied, and I’m not sure how to get them back. 

You are just as good and valuable a human being at 140 pounds as you are at 135. 

About that medical research study I mentioned earlier: I wasn’t being entirely upfront there. It’s a diet study for overweight children. My ten-year-old, who skates along the edge of the BMI chart between “healthy” and “overweight,” asked to take part in it, wholly for the money (his share will buy quite a few new games for his Nintendo Switch). I have to attend as the parent. As my first prolonged, direct engagement with diet culture, it’s been an eye-opener. From the beginning I have openly refused to participate in any of the recommended calorie counting or portion measuring. I don’t make my son do any, either. In the four months we have completed so far (out of six), he’s tried a few new fruits and vegetables, talked a lot about making choices, and lost four pounds. He’s increased his daily exercise substantially, and he’s proud that he looks more toned than he did in August. 

For me, however, it’s been a challenge to resist the underlying message, which is, to drop a Harry Potter reference, “Constant vigilance!” Week after week, the seminar leaders discuss food as a problem to solve. How can we eliminate the role that food traditionally plays in family celebrations? How can we limit emotional eating? How can we prepare for the temptations of the holiday season? Just before Christmas break, they invited us to share what progress our kids had made in changing their habits. The other parents in the room proudly recounted how their children had started using measuring cups for their meals, taken carrot sticks along to birthday parties, or told their grandmas not to send any more cookies in the mail. I felt sick. But the attitude seeps into my head anyway, in the form of shame at my lapses in control, in the form of hoping for a “good” number for my chart every Wednesday.

When I think about my son, I’m torn between opposing anxieties. I don’t want to make him self-conscious; I do want him to adopt healthier eating habits. I don’t want him to worry about his size; I do want him to grow out of his love handles before other kids notice and tease him about them. I’m glad that he’s happy with the changes he sees in his body. I’m fearful that this experience could plant the seeds of the same self-criticism in him, the same need to resist with intention a doubt that should never arise at all. 

You are just as good and valuable a human being at 140 pounds as you are at 135. 

I don’t have a happy ending for this piece. Recognizing the difference between positivity and confidence has been a step forward, but I’m still struggling. I know that the part of this essay that was the hardest to write -- the actual numbers on the scale -- will be the likeliest target of scorn. Because yeah, I know: my privilege is showing. I was never fat enough that people called me fat, at least in my hearing. And now I’m thin enough that people call me thin. And it’s come with a heaping side of anxiety that I constantly work to get rid of.

Diet culture sucks.