Thin body, fat soul
I picked up a friend from the airport this weekend -- a beautiful friend who is kind and whom I admire tremendously. One of the first things she said to me was, "You look so good, so tan, so healthy, so thin."
I immediately felt the need to apologize for my weight.
"I'm definitely tan, I live in Florida," I said. "But not so healthy."
I told her that people often assume I'm healthy because I'm thin, but inside, my arteries are probably as clogged as a person who weighs much more.
Some people have survivor's guilt, I have thin girl's guilt. I know I was spared some tremendous pain when I was born with fast metabolism. And yet, my weight has defined me as definitely as it has defined others.
I grew up a thin person in a fat family. An anomaly. An outsider. The object of my sister's hostility.
My sister, mother and father constantly struggled to lose those extra pounds. And not just a few. Over the years they gained and lost hundreds, possibly thousands, of pounds.
But not me. I've always been thin, just as I've always had brown eyes, brown hair and been shorter than I wanted. I cannot take credit for my size or explain it. I can't even enjoy it.
And I'm not alone. I don't know a girl, a teenager, or a woman who is happy with her weight. The only time I've heard someone say her weight is perfect is after a round of dieting. Perfect weight is a destination, a stop on the train, a place where all is peaceful and right with the world.
It's a great place to visit, but no one seems to live there.
Chronic dieters deny themselves food for the dream of "if only."
If only I lost those last five pounds, I'd feel so much better.
If only I could fit into my wedding dress again, we'd rekindle our romance.
If only I were thin. My life would be perfect.
The secret I've dared tell very few is this: Those of us who are thin still lead imperfect lives. We just have different "if only"s to feed us, different excuses for our emptiness, different holy grails to keep us going.
The best book I have read on this subject is called "When Food Is Love," by Geneen Roth. Here's how she explains our early eating choices:
Food was our love; eating was our way of being loved. Food was available when our parents weren't. Food didn't get up and walk away when our fathers did. Food didn't hurt us. Food didn't say no. Food didn't hit. Food didn't get drunk. Food was always there. Food tasted good. Food was warm when we were cold and cold when we were hot. Food became the closest thing we knew of love.But it is only a substitute for love. Food is not, nor was it ever, love.
Food is a substitute, she says, for intimacy. We use it when we are starved for attention, starved for affection. But because it can't satisfy that hunger, we keep eating. Until food insulates us. It protects us from feeling that hunger, any hunger, until we no longer know what we hunger for. Food becomes a barrier between us and a full life.
This is especially true for people with eating disorders.
I wrote my senior thesis on anorexia and stress. While I was working on it, I knew people always wanted to ask me whether I was anorexic or binged and purged, but they never did. I'll tell you. I'm not. There is nothing clinically disordered about my eating (although my husband considers my pickiness pathological). I'm just thin.
I've never denied myself food, never regretted eating too much, never forced myself to eat a salad when I really wanted lasagna.
But as others worried, I worried. I even went to the school physician and asked her how to gain weight. She laughed at first, urged me to accept my body's "natural weight," then wrote me a prescription for milkshakes and fatty foods.
Still, I felt like my mom's nickname for me: a "peanut," tiny and invisible in my shell.
At the age of 30, I became pregnant with my son. I gained about 25 pounds and for the first time I felt comfortable taking up space.
After my son was born, I stayed at about 115: my target weight, according to charts I'd been shown all my life. (I'm 5'4".)
The perfect weight equals the perfect life, right? Not for the mother of a newborn, who also gave birth to her child's twin: exhaustion.
Money is my food. I binge by shopping. I spend, I feel remorse and shame, I vow to change. If only I had more willpower. If only I were stronger, smarter, better able to control myself. If only I were rich.
Whoever said you can never be too rich or too thin couldn't imagine life in the 21st century.
How do you feel about your weight?
This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.
