Excited for my coffee and yummies from Hilltop Coffee + Food. Photo by Tania D. Russell ©2020.

I went on my first diet at age 12.

I decided to become a vegetarian at age 17.

These two decisions created somewhat of a polarization in my attitudes about eating, my self-worth, and of course my food choices — some helpful and some not so helpful.

I grew up in the ballet world, which can be notoriously toxic for a girl’s body image. (“I will have no fat girls in my class!” said my ballet teacher. To whom? I don’t know. But we all heard it.).

I started reading labels when I was 17 because I wanted to make sure that the foods I bought didn’t have animal parts in them. Once you start reading food labels, you invariably start asking questions, such as, “What the heck is that?” and then, “Ewww, I’m not eating that anymore!”

I moved out of the house soon after turning 17 (I thought I knew what I wanted at age 17 — yikes), and ended up eating a LOT of pasta because I didn’t quite know how to make other vegetarian meals. I grew up on the classic White folks from Scotland kinda meals — meat, starch and veg. If you take the meat away, what do you eat? It took me quite a while to figure out how to balance my diet in a way that felt satisfying and provided lots of nutrients. I’m grateful to friends and lovers who cooked inspiring meals for me that became staples in my diet, and made me feel good from my tummy to the cockles of my heart. :)

On the other hand, having an obsession with my weight from age 12 had a terrible effect on my self worth, resulting in years of depression, lots of binging and dieting and shame. Of course I look back on photos of myself at age 14, 20, 26 and beyond, and it just breaks my heart that I hated my body so much, and felt that nothing good would happen to me “because of my weight” (and we’re only talking 20-40 pounds here). Meanwhile, lots of good things happened to me, but because I was seeped in depression, I often spent time with young men who took advantage of my sense of inferiority (#metoo). The shame and self-hatred compounded, and all in all, I was just another notch in the belt of fat-phobia, diet culture, and toxic body image culture that preys on so many girls, women, and yes — boys and men!

Screw their ideals

Regardless of our size, we are torturing ourselves to meet some ridiculous “ideal” that was created by a racist, sexist paradigm that does not love or appreciate us for all of our beautiful sizes, shapes or colors. This paradigm does not love us for our gender fluidity or sexuality, our different abilities, our kindness, our creativity, our contribution to our communities or the world, or anything else that makes us unique and beautiful. It’s such a destructive paradigm of fat-phobia and racism that we likely don’t even recognize it as such when we’re seeped in it — we just hate ourselves for not fitting in to their ideals — even those of us who aren’t that far off from their ideals (being White and fairly small).

The pendulum swings between dieting vs. intuitive eating

The desire to eat healthy foods and yet the drag of toxic diet culture feels like a tug of war sometimes. There are wonderful non-diet nutritionists, registered dietitians, therapists and “influencers” these days advocating for holistic approaches to health that do not include dieting, and the Health at Every Size movement “reject both the use of weight, size, or BMI as proxies for health, and the myth that weight is a choice”. Being thin does not equal healthy! Being fat does not equal being unhealthy! These HAES advocates are shaping a culture that includes all sizes, shapes, colors and genders, and recognizes the importance of social justice in anti-diet culture. But they are up against a mountain of toxic culture.

Nurses and doctors receive so little (if any) nutrition education unless we choose to take electives (which I did, of course!), and the little we get is so focused on a “healthy weight.” There is no discussion about how toxic it is for our mental health (and therefore physical health) to be on yo-yo diets, hating ourselves, depriving ourselves of joy, and forcing ourselves to do exercise we hate rather than finding movement we love.

I mean, our bodies often work best when we’re filling them with nutritious foods, but these days there are lots of discussions about what defines “healthy.” Paleo? Keto? Plant-based? Vegan? That’s a whole other conversation, and basically — no one type of eating works for every body. And our bodies do need nutrients in order to work at their peak, prevent disease, provide us with ample energy to do the things we love. But if you’ve been struggling with yo-yo dieting your whole life, or if you have an eating disorder, what defines “healthy” can be very different. Restrictions in our diet when we have obsessive, shameful, destructive thoughts about what we put in our bodies is not healthy for us. Putting more restrictions on ourselves when we’ve spent a lifetime thinking that some foods are “bad” (bread, sweets, chips, chicken with the skin on, full fat milk, etc) or that it’s “bad” to eat more than a “portion size” and that we are “bad” or should feel shame for eating them is not healthy. The stress and shame we cause ourselves by thinking we’re doing things wrong is harmful to our health.

There is a similar and shared movement among dietitians and nutritionists called Intuitive Eating. I’m currently reading “The Intuitive Eating Plan” by Kirsten Ackerman, MS, RD. The pendulum swing in healing from diet culture is to move from restricting our diets (feeling the shame of eating foods we “shouldn’t” which creates a spiral downward of self-hate, depression and anxiety and often destructive disordered eating), to tuning into our bodies and our emotional needs to develop a practice of eating what and how much we need in that moment. It is a practice, and like any practice, it takes practice! I was dieting on and off for 38 years, and spent my teen and young adult years binging, and even my 30s and 40s feeling shame and like a failure every time I gained weight or didn’t “successfully” lose weight. (Sending love right now to my younger self!) We can’t undo all of those harmful thoughts in a moon-cycle!

I am on the pendulum of exploring thoughts such as, “Well, I’m exhausted from work and don’t have any energy to think about what to make for dinner and my kids aren’t home. I’m just gonna eat this frozen pizza.” I’m noticing thoughts come up about whether I “should” eat it or not, but I breathe through them, and remind myself that it’s ok to feel lazy about food sometimes, and dude — I’ve been killin’ it in every other aspect of my life. And then after I eat almost the whole pizza, I realize, “Hmmm, that actually made me feel really bloated. Maybe next time I’ll add a few greens or spend 12 minutes sautéeing up some veggies to make it easier to digest.”

Adding foods to our meals rather than restricting ourselves is often what we need when we’re trying to heal from disordered eating, and shaming of ourselves around food choices. That pizza was hella good and I’m not going to put pizza on any “Bad Foods to Not Eat” list. Actually, I’ve decided to not have any such list. I’m working on leaning into my cravings and asking myself, “Do I want that right now?” and sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes it’s no. Either answer is fine.

Sure, there are links between excessive sugar and processed foods (often thanks to the obsession with “low fat” diets) to heart disease and diabetes, but stress is also linked to chronic disease! Stress is a huge risk factor for all sorts of chronic disease, so is it better to eat a salad or other “whole foods” for dinner and be hating yourself because what you really wanted was the lasagne, or you deprived yourself of dessert with your kids or friends? The mental stress we cause for ourselves due to the pressure of eating “right” can be destructive as well. Should we go and eat whatever we want, and however much we want? Well, maybe as an experiment, sure. And then we’ll notice, “Oh, actually — that didn’t feel good.” And then we can decide to eat foods that make us feel good. And on some days, like in a friggin pandemic or when the trauma of racism or sexism or homophobia or transphobia or any kind of people-hating are at max intensity and we are loving souls who want everyone to be kind to each other, that may mean eating more, eating less, eating some comfort food, or whatever. Tune in, take a breath or 5 breaths, give yourself some room, wear clothes that fit comfortably, talk to friends, hug someone in your germ pool, and do something you love to do. (For me, that means often putting on some techno and dancing around my living room!)

“Almond Butter Droptop”

From Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen
(Black-owned business, by the way!).
*Get in ma belly!*

See ya’s later, beautiful beings. I’m gonna go have some coffee and food from Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen and a walk with one of my best sister-friends — because friendship and food are yummy.

To your health, dear fellow humans.