Trigger warning: Eating disorders
When I was 10 my doctor at the time yelled at me and made me cry for not losing weight. That’s when I remember starting to look at health as being skinny and losing weight as a need.
The next doctor I went to also said I needed to lose weight. So, when I was old enough 12 or 13 my doctor recommended I do Weight Watchers with my mom. The idea being I just needed to become more aware of what I was eating and that would help with my weight. We had x amount of points and every food was associated with a point value. My mom was so into it, we would get the cookbooks and the special low point foods, keep track of our weight at home and attend every meeting.
From the outside it would seem like a good idea, not a diet just looking closely at what you ate and making sure to balance it, and the meeting should be there to hold you accountable. But there was a more insidious side, tracking led to bargaining: “I’ll skip on this so I can indulge later.” And the meetings became commiserating about being overweight and pushing the idea of how much better life is being skinny or how much better it would get if we lost weight.
From a young age I found my self image turning into self hate and a need to be skinny. By high school I quit WW not because I realized the negative effects, but because it was too hard to maintain. But the ideas stuck with me that my life would be better if I was skinnier (I wasn’t even that overweight), that it didn’t matter when I ate just how much in a day, and that health was just based on the body. I wanted to be like my stickbug friends and classmates. One of the saddest memories I have from high school is how I slowly and secretly started to develop negative eating habits. I would bring just oranges to school for lunch because in the WW version I did they were 0 points so in my mind I could eat as many as I wanted without gaining weight.
I wouldn’t eat breakfast and I would bring 8 of the small oranges or cuties to school and just eat that for lunch, then when I got home I would have an entire TV dinner and for dinner I would eat as much as I possibly could, often going past fullness. All my friends saw were the oranges and they commented “wow you’re so healthy” and those comments made me go further, only eating oranges some days. I was so depressed, I never lost weight and I always felt weak. I was involved in sports and some days I felt like I was going to faint because I wasn’t eating. But I hid all this from my parents. They only ever saw what I ate for dinner so I would lie and say I already ate or that I hadn’t eaten if I ate a concerning amount at once. I wasn’t losing or gaining weight, so no one ever saw how much I was suffering. It began to feel normal: if I don’t eat all day then it doesn’t matter what I have when I do eat. I’m still not fully over it, having a meal plan in college helped because I wanted to get a meal every meal period. It wasn’t until listening to the Weight Watchers episode of the podcast Maintenance Phase that I remembered just how bad Weight Watchers had been for me and I started to remember all of those aspects that hurt me and shaped my young mind. There is no happy ending. I still find myself starving through the day and binge eating at night, but at least I’m aware that it’s something I need to work on.
Unruly Bodies 
I’m sorry you had this experience with your family and I hope you can grow from those damaging practices that have been pushed on you.
Unfortunately I also relate. Although I was never made to be put on a diet like Weight Watchers from a child, I was always a chubby or fat child and like you I hated it wanted to be like my skinny friends. Even while I played sports and I body changed to be more muscular or “athletic” I was never thin which was annoying because I thought I was doing everything right. I used to do smoothie diets and I never lost any dramatic amount of weight. This eventually led to me doing intermittent fasting and developing disordered eating from often starving myself for days because the fasting app rewards you for fasting as long as possible. I lost 30 pounds but stopped because I couldn’t hide it from my family and eventually gained that weight back. I often go back to fasting because I want to get that feeling of losing a lot of weight back but it never works…
I’m not sure how to break this pattern and I hope one day we’re both free from the bullshit.
i’m sorry for what you had to go through, i know your struggle all too well. I grew up fat and I also learned way too soon the value that is put on us based on our size. I am somewhat lucky to be on the other side of my ED, but the disordered thinking is still there. I think about being able to fit into size 4 jeans and how different people treated me when I was 60lbs lighter. I hate myself sometimes for enjoying “fattening” foods and for letting myself go. It’s crazy how my brain processes my recovery. It doesn’t even feel good to say that i “recovered” because i still don’t like myself and i’m not glad i became fatter than i was before my ED. Knowing that we have these “bad habits” is the worst. Being so painfully aware of how fucked you are and still not being able to fix yourself. More power to u, i know how hard it is.
Thank you for giving a trigger warning. I can relate being a brown girl with the unrealistic body/eating standards with family. I am sorry you had to endure that but you’re so strong for sharing this. Thank you.
I can also relate to this story because I too struggle with not eating/ binge eating as well. It’s a really hard struggle to be able to get these beasts under control but with the right support systems and the right end goal then I believe it is indeed possible to overcome these challenges we face when it comes to being “skinny”. Thank you for being so brave and sharing this part of your life with everyone ❤ .