Body Lessons I Refuse To Teach My Daughter as a fat mom who rejects diet culture.
I am fat. Some people are not comfortable with that word, but I say it without stigma. I have been fat since my freshman year of college at UVM where I discovered good weed and had the freedom to eat whatever I wanted. Let’s be clear, though… I have thought that I was fat ever since I was 12 or 13 years old, and this is because I have been surrounded by diet culture my entire life.
But let’s get one thing straight. This fat mom rejects diet culture. I have seen firsthand the trauma and damage dieting has done not just to me and my friends, but to our moms and our grandmothers.
I know men can be impacted by diet culture, but the pressure isn’t the same. I simply do not want my daughter to experience the kind of pressure I have felt to live up to societal expectations and norms. And to be clear, this fat mom rejects diet culture now, but it hasn’t been an easy journey.
My mother and her friends were always on some kind of diet, whether it was shakes, or Weight Watchers, or just chain-smoking. There was always talk about bodies being too fat or too thin or too different. No one was ever satisfied.
This was not unique to my mom’s generation. My grandmother was obsessed with weight. When I was little, I was a skinny kid. I didn’t like to eat and I was very picky. My Jewish grandmother worried that my parents were not feeding me enough and would always comment or try to force me to eat. When I was a bit older, my palate got much more adventurous and I started to love food. I had a fast metabolism until I hit 18 or 19.
When I started gaining weight, my parents contacted my primary care physician behind my back. She told me about it since I was legally an adult. She told me no one should be looking at my body and judging it or telling me what to do with it. She told me that people can be healthy at any weight and that the BMI is a load of garbage…. She told me this in 1997! Well, needless to say, my parents were very angry that she disclosed this information to me, but this doctor really helped me find the voice that I have today. Don’t get me wrong, I still hated my body a lot over the years. I said horrible things about myself and took part in a LOT of disordered eating. I went on Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and Atkins, to name a few. I once lost 74 pounds on Weight Watchers. People were so different to me when I lost weight. They commented on my looks a lot. My mom offered to buy me clothing. It was weird and uncomfortable and made me feel objectified.
I don’t want to parent like this ever. EVER. This fat mom rejects diet culture.
Fast forward several years to my pregnancy with my daughter. I was unlucky enough to get gestational diabetes. Do you know how unfun it was for me to tell people this? Can you imagine all the unsolicited advice that was given to me by the last people I would ask for advice? I constantly told people how “thin folks get it too,” and how it’s not about your weight, but in my heart, I was ashamed. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to hear about how I was 40 percent more likely to get Type 2 Diabetes.
I was also considered to be obese (a word that has never made anyone feel good or more informed), so I was told that I could only gain between ten and fifteen pounds throughout my entire pregnancy. Good times!
I was very compliant during my pregnancy. I did all the things I was supposed to do for my baby. I limited my carbs, which was pretty hard because carbs are the best. I was also throwing up a lot, and things like crackers and bread really were the only things that would settle my stomach. The emotional pressure to behave was omnipresent. I felt an enormous amount of shame, even though this was not my fault.
When I gave birth to my beautiful daughter on Halloween of 2015, I weighed about 13 pounds less than my highest pregnancy weight. I was sore, I was tired, and I was HUNGRY all the time because I was nursing. People were noticing my body and telling me how great I looked, which pissed me off. Someone I knew came up to me on Church Street in Burlington and said,
Pam! You look so skinny!
How was I supposed to respond to that? Why do people feel as if it’s okay to comment about my body? Why do folks think saying these things will make someone feel good? I have some advice for those folks, and here it is: JUST DON’T!!! Do not make comments about people’s bodies. Period. Full Stop. Thank you.
Now my daughter is six, and she is very much her own human. She has lots of opinions. She has lots of likes and dislikes. One of those dislikes happens to be eating.
When she turned one, she just started rejecting a lot of food. She is a very selective eater. A lot of this has to do with sensory issues and anxiety. I found myself hovering over her while she’d eat and obsessing about her food intake. I still need to stop myself from doing these things sometimes. She will eat if she is hungry. She will not let herself starve. She is doing just fine. These are the things I need to remind myself of over and over and over again. I use neutral language around food because foods do not have moral value. I cannot police everyone though. People will say that foods are good or bad. I just know that I can’t do that.
My aim is for my daughter to love her body at any size.
The world is so very cruel to women. It wants my daughter to hate how she looks. That is how the multi-billion-dollar diet industry works. It’s exhausting.
At this stage in her life, my daughter doesn’t know that people get bullied and ridiculed for having larger bodies. She knows that I am fat and that she is thin. These are facts, not judgments.
I battle daily to reject diet culture in my own life. I adore my mother, and my grandmother was one of the most important people in my life. These two women helped make me who I am today, but one of my biggest goals is to stop this generational focus on body size within my own family. I have started some of this work with my mother. She no longer comments on my body size but is still very aware of her own. When we order food, she knows that she is no longer welcome to suggest that we split a meal because “the portions are so big”.
This fat mom will continue to teach her daughter that her body is beautiful. This fat mom rejects diet culture.
At the end of the day, I know my mom is trying to be helpful, but her commentary has always just made me angry and sad. The work I am engaging in to love my body is constant and it is difficult, but it is necessary for the future of my family. I have tremendous hope for my daughter’s generation. Hopefully, they will continue to do the work and love themselves wholeheartedly.
As a fat mom, I am doing everything I can to reject diet culture. To be honest, this path is not an easy one. I have to unlearn a lifetime of harmful teachings and cultural values, which requires constant work on my part.
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