Well, no. Not for those of us who have ever suffered from disordered eating and – more importantly, perhaps - disordered thinking about ourselves and our bodies. In brief, when we think our value lies in what we look like and how other people judge us, dieting becomes more than just losing a little extra weight.
It became a way of showing people that I was worth something. I could control my food intake and I could obtain a body shape and size that others would envy; thus I was a worthwhile human being and earned my place in the world. I had to earn it (did you think you had to earn your place in existence?) because the Critic in me told me I was a failure; I was damaged goods and would never be good enough as I was.
Becoming someone thin would prove to myself and others that I could achieve something worth having. And so started the Special K diet and then Weight Watchers. And then some kind of amalgamation of the two. Ultimately, I made my own rules – or at least, I thought I did (my Critic was truly the one in charge, I see now).
One year down the line, and I was thin. I was a severely depressed, incredibly lonely and vulnerable young woman, but I was thin.
Looking back and unpicking these things so I can see things for what they were has taken time. Five or six years to date, to be precise. Whilst I don’t waste any more time wishing things had been different, this is time in which I could have been living, had I not made dieting my life that New Year.
And this is the point I’d like to make in my post today:
Dieting is never the answer to unhappiness.
It only really makes your body smaller, and whilst that might be part of making positive change happen, it doesn’t work if it’s part of an outside-in, rather than an inside-out approach. If you feel like you’re not good enough the way you are right now - and by this, I mean in every aspect of who you are (your personality, career choices, relationships) as well as what you look like – then it’s INSIDE which is off-kilter in the first instance. The inside issues probably were there before the outside – maybe they were always there, like for me. And so it’s the inside that needs looking at before the outside has a hope of lasting longer than the time it takes to break into a packet of biscuits.
And the other point?
Dieting can have long-lasting consequences.
When the diet was over I had as close to a perfect body as I could ever have hoped for. Now, I know that a ‘perfect’ body doesn’t exist. But looking back, I was extremely thin yet had toned, tanned skin and hours in the gym gave me enviable stomach muscles and legs that, for the first time in my life and despite my ED tunnel vision, even I felt able to bear in skirts. When I had enough insight to be vaguely rational, I knew I looked good to the outside world.
When my boyfriend saw a picture of me like this on an old phone, my heart broke as he complimented me on how great I looked. He said what everyone else saw; I had everything, as far as they were concerned. Even now, I have times when I wish I had been able to see it more clearly and have taken advantage of having the body I had always longed for.
And then I remember the true picture – the bit that includes the inside. And inside, I was dying.
Physically, I was exhausted. Running on adrenaline, I daren’t miss a gym session or sit down for more than short periods because I worried that stopping moving, I’d have put on weight.
Mentally, I was a wreck. Desperate for someone – anyone – to see just how much I was hurting inside and ask me if I was okay, and yet desperately clinging on to this achievement that drew so many people to ask how I’d done it; how I – this nobody, I supposed – had THAT body. It was the most confusing time. I yelled at my sister for trying to make me eat a jacket potato and beans she’d made me, and for pointing out how my ribs showed unnaturally through my skin, and yet I remember welling up because I’d waited so long for someone to see it.
By this point, I knew this wasn’t my natural body state (any more than it is natural for me to be very heavy). I knew there was something more to this was, way sooner than things fell apart, and yet I lived in fear of ballooning and being found out as an unworthy failure for months. I worried about every single mouthful of food. I cried when my friend asked me why I couldn’t eat like a normal person, having caught me measuring sunflower spread with a teaspoon. But at the time, I couldn’t risk going out for a meal or drinking alcohol as I might gain a pound, and that felt like the worst thing in the world. The thinner I got, the more I hated people looking at me. Men made my skin crawl and I couldn’t bear anyone to touch me. Someone I’d been casually seeing accidentally went to touch me and his hand went under my ribcage. I cringed and I reckon he did too.
I’ve written more than I intended here, and as I write, I can tell you that it still hurts to think back to this time. I can see how much of a textbook anorexic I was, but textbook or not, these thoughts, and feelings, and experiences happen to people like myself. At the time, I hadn’t a clue I was doing anything other than starting a New Year with a New Year’s diet. But circumstances and experiences combined with this diet to mark me in a way that can never quite be erased.
You can’t predict if someone will develop an eating disorder. It can happen at any time and place. But if you know that this New Year, deep down, what you’re looking for is to be happy, you won’t find it at a fee-charging diet ‘support’ group and you certainly won’t find it at the bottom of a cold can of diet shake.
I’ve learnt this in the hardest way possible, short of being hospitalised and pulled into the mental health system. So when I’m feeling a bit unnerved by changes going on in my life – changes that have nothing at all to do with the number in my jeans – I refuse to make resolutions that this’ll be the year I’ll get that thin body back. I can’t say it isn’t tempting. Sometimes, I wonder whether the self-knowledge and insight I have now would equip me well enough to handle the body I once created.
And I know that I’m missing the point, because I have something now I could never have, living the life it takes to look quite so ‘perfect’: I am happy. I am loved. I’ve got the energy to be interested in and care about other people (disordered eating doesn’t do relationships and as such, I lost just about all my friendships). I’ve built friendships and I know what it feels like to be loved – really, really loved . I can socialise with other people, around food and drink (disordered eating doesn’t do... well... eating), and actually enjoy myself. I can choose to have a life in a way I couldn’t even consider in the depths of my dieting days.
So I won’t join in the conversations in the office, or with friends, when it comes to dieting. I’m not comparing the market for the best offer on gym memberships. And I’m definitely not buying women’s magazines this month because I can guarantee that they’ll proffer solutions to rid my ‘post-Christmas bulge’ or get me ‘in shape for summer’. Please don’t be offended or think I’m taking the moral high-ground if I don’t get into what you weighed then, now or tomorrow.
I’m just choosing to be happy this year and every single year here on, and hope that you can too.
Happy New Year.
