Dieting, Interest in. “As an Adult, Your Childhood Memories are Often Food and Body Related.” Television Shows, Movies, Friends Whose Parents Chronically Dieted, Celebrities, Magazines That Commented on Celebrities’ Weight, Your Mother Never Loving Her Body. Ages eight to fifteen, 2004-2011.
See how men look at women who are slim, who are slender, who are curved in acceptable places. Notice their reactions when these women wear bathing suits or crop tops or miniskirts. Observe your envy; that although still a young girl, you long to be seen this way. Assume that this is what it takes to be loved. Notice how women around you are always judging their food. Notice how they never look at their bodies, how they are always dissatisfied with them, how they are disgusted by them. Assume that this is what it means to be a woman. Assume that these are the rules.
At age eight, you watched an episode of Full House about dieting: D.J. eats ice pops and hangs pictures of thin models on her fridge; you know this is to bring awareness to the dangers of extreme dieting, but you keep these as techniques instead. In line at the grocery store at age ten, you picked up magazines with photos of celebrities that never “bounced back” after giving birth, or who were mocked for wearing a bikini with “that body.” At the age of twelve, your friend said you both needed to diet, meaning eat only two-hundred calories a day. At age thirteen, you had a higher body-fat percentage than your friends and remembered that carbs go straight to the belly. At age fourteen, you learned that the Chili’s menu contained thousands of calories in a single item; you felt disgusting when your family ate there a few days later. At age fifteen, you wondered if a boy would finally love you back if only you were skinnier.
Lent, Giving up Sugar for. “It’s All-or-Nothing: You Can’t Allow Yourself Even a Little.” Your High School French Teacher, for Extra Credit. Quarterly Throughout Your Teens and Early Twenties, 2012-2018.
Abstain from all foods containing refined sweetness and instead, dream of saccharine sugar cookies and molten lava cake, apple pie piled high with whipped cream and raw cookie dough you could eat with a spoon. Find yourself intensely craving strawberries and watermelon. Devour fruit as if it were bowls of rich ice cream and warm chocolate brownies. On Easter, eat bags of Cadbury eggs, half a tray of cookie bars, three bowls of chocolate trifle—eat so much you must wait hours before you can stand up and walk without pain, self-resentment, self-abhorrence, and indescribable shame ripping through your side.
Although you were allowed to slip-up during French-class Lent and still receive the extra credit, your inner self did not allow you this grace. According to your teacher’s reaction, you must have been the only one: You never missed a single day? When Christ went into the wilderness, He fasted for forty days and forty nights. What is reverence if not exactness? What is control if not an illusion?
Diet, Whole-30. “Whole Foods are the Healthiest Way to Lose Weight.” A Cookbook You Found at Barnes & Noble. Sophomore Year of College, 2017.
For thirty days, stick to the list. Stick to wholeness. Stick to nuts, eggs, seeds, olive oil, vegetables, fruits. No dairy, grains, carbs, sugars, alcohol, other processed foods. No cheating. No remorse if you veer off course. There’s no mercy here.
The Whole-30 restricted list prohibited the few foods you allowed yourself to eat and only allowed the many foods you didn’t allow yourself to eat. You tried it for less than a week before you gave up because you could never find a meal acceptable to both your rules and Whole-30’s.
Fasting, Intermittent. “If You Limit When You Can Eat, Then You Will Eat Less.” An Instagram Influencer’s Account. Junior Year of College, Spring 2018. For example: A 16 hour fast, consuming all calories within an 8-hour block. Or, an every-other-day fast, consuming 0-500 calories on fasting days. Or, a 24-hour fast twice a week. But never breakfast. Never break fast. You would eat, for the first time each day, a mason jar of oats at noon. Your willpower in the morning hours was stronger than the gnawing sensation attacking your insides, or the fuzziness that overwhelmed you in the late morning hours. You would run three miles on an empty stomach every morning, and then sit in classroom after classroom trying to focus on lectures rather than the mason jar of oats sitting next to you, waiting until noon. It took weeks for your dietitian to convince you that the eight-hour fast humans participate in during sleep is enough. It took weeks for you to eat at 11:30, then 11:00, then 10:30 (or, sometimes, at all).
Pattern, Binging and Restricting. “You Can Eat the Food You Love if You Eat Nothing Else Before or After.” A Combination of Your Eating Disorder and Your Body’s Biological Drive to Stay Alive. Late Teens and Early Twenties, 2016-2018.
A carton of ice cream, a package of cookie dough, multiple cakes—one cream-filled, one funfetti, one chocolate-caramel, one chocolate-peanut butter—a sixteen-inch Neapolitan-style pizza, an entire wheel of honey-lathered baked brie, a bag of SkinnyPop popcorn, a carton of dates, bags of caramel rice cakes, bags of grapes, an entire watermelon (multiple times).
At first, you thought I have learned life’s greatest secret. You thought I have finally discovered balance between pleasure and control. You thought I have finally learned how to enjoy food and lose weight. You thought the binging was a choice you allowed yourself because of the restricting, but you never considered that it was the result.
Macros, Counting. “A Healthy Way to Control Your Body.” Instagram Influencers who Claimed to Have Healed their Relationship with Food. First as a Newlywed and Again Three Years Post-Treatment Center, 2019 and 2022.
Weighing and counting and measuring and counting and tracking and counting and planning and counting and checking labels and counting and looking in mirrors and counting and planning ahead and counting and thinking back and counting and lifting weights and counting and researching menus and counting and adjusting and counting and double-checking and counting and worrying and counting and obsessing and counting and ruminating and counting and self-loathing and counting and never-enoughing and counting.
You clung to this false sense of balance: false sense of health: false sense of exactness and knowing: false sense of control.
Nervosa, Orthorexia. “This Is How to Respect Your Body.” Your Belief that Moral Value Comes from Food. Desperate to Feel Worthy Again, 2019.
An obsession with healthy eating, clean eating, pure eating. To the point that it impairs (inhibits) a normal lifestyle. Often categorized by cutting out a number of food groups, compulsively checking, rechecking, overchecking nutritional labels or ingredients, being overly interested in what or how others are eating, only allowing yourself to eat food that is deemed healthy, pure, whole, organic, clean, etc. and being upset or worried when those foods are not available, refusing to eat anything that is breaded, battered, creamed, crusted, loaded, smothered, fried. They say “Your body is a temple.” They say, “You are what you eat.” They say, “Wife Weight,” “Freshman Fifteen,” “Moderation in all things.” These voices you have heard from and learned from, that still echo in your head.
Nervosa, Anorexia. “If You are Thin, Then You Are Worthy/Loved/Valuable.” Origins Unknown. 2016-Present.
The ultimate “diet.” Cut out meat, cut out dairy, cut out breads and pastas and creamy sauces. Cut out most major food groups and all of your energy. Avoid butter and oils and uncertainty. Restrict sugar and calories and sense of self. Lose weight, lose your period, lose your desire to live.
Anorexia started for you as a coping skill. It is still useful during the first few weeks of a new semester, while living abroad in Russia, while adjusting to marriage, adjusting to a pandemic, to the unknown. You still turn to it, often. And it works, until it doesn’t. Until hunger-aches wake you up at the witching hour. Until the brain fog rolls in, filled with bloodthirsty monsters that prey on memory and cognitive reasoning. Until rigid rules become rigid walls that shut people out. Until you’re unsure if you want to live if you can’t live skinny.
Eating, Intuitive. “This Is Limbo: A Place You Want to Be and Are Afraid to Be.” Your Therapist and Dietitian and Treatment Center. Unpublished, 20__.
Attempt to erase every bit of research you have conducted your whole life. Or, at least, to drown it out.
This is where you trust your body. This is where you trust yourself. This is where you have not yet arrived.
Mauri Pollard Johnson is an MFA student at Brigham Young University and has enjoyed serving as the managing editor at Fourth Genre. Her work has been published in Punctuate, Inscape, and Dialogue. She enjoys running, watching Frasier, and spending time in the beautiful outdoors of Utah, where she lives with her husband and their cat.
Photo credit: Abdullah Ahmad