When I told my brother I was
counting calories, a vulnerable admission of defeat, he reacted just as I
should have expected: he rolled his eyes, sighed as if he was exhausted by my weight struggles, and told me “don’t be
mom! Just be balanced.” As if it were that easy. I made the mistake, at first, of trying to
explain that after years of balance and reasonably steady weight, I was no
longer stable and I felt the need to do something drastic to try to reign in my
body; I gave up pretty quickly, after multiple interruptions and
dismissals.
It’s not that my brother is
insensitive – he’s actually more sensitive than most dudes and most of my
family, not that that’s saying much – but he doesn’t have a lot of patience for
any kind of struggle to which he doesn’t relate. Worse are the struggles he thinks he relates to, like weight. A few years ago he felt he was getting
‘tubby’ and so he cut out junk food and cut back on carbs and started doing
pull-ups in the doorway of his apartment living room, and within a month he was
almost back to his ectomorph self. Both
his girlfriend (who is slim but also human)
and I swallowed our irritation and replaced it with teasing about his new
‘Paleo’ lifestyle (he was never Paleo but my mom thought he was, and told
everyone he was, and his indignation never got old. I still laugh every time he eats something
accidentally-Paleo). The point of this
story being: he doesn’t really know what it’s like to feel like you have no
control over the size or weight or fat content of your body, which has been,
obviously, a source of continuous angst in my life.
My brother wasn’t the only
one to react negatively to the news of my renewed dedication to counting
calories, though – his girlfriend, a good friend of mine, expressed
concern that it wouldn’t work; my boyfriend worried that I would become
obsessive and miserable; I shared both of their concerns, but I didn’t know
what else to do. I had been feeling
increasingly desperate for any control over my subtly but steadily
increasing size, and this seemed like a sensible last
resort.
So I
started, four days ago, and almost immediately all my fears came true. Within an hour of re-downloading the app I used last time I counted, I was talking to my boyfriend about how many calories
were in the different kinds of dim sum we were eating – I had promised
only to track, not to restrict, at least for the first couple of days, but even
by tracking I was instinctively stressing over every bite. I also found myself experiencing the same exact
problem as last time, namely that in worrying more about calories than overall
health I made objectively poor choices, going for a fun-sized box of Milk Duds
over a piece of cheese because the former has half the calories (if none of the
nutrition), for example. Still, I told
myself I would stick with it for at least a month, and maybe once I had some
control back I could revert to my former, balanced lifestyle.
Well,
reader, I made it four days. This
morning, as I was walking to the post office to drop off an online shopping
return (exchanging the items for a size up), I found myself obsessing yet again
over how many calories I had left in the day and lamenting that fact that it
was only 12:30. And that’s a large part
of the problem, for me, with calorie counting: I become fixated on food, which
makes me feel hungry and unsatisfied all the time and makes me will the days to go by faster, and ain’t nobody got time for that!
So I sent my boyfriend a text, partly to soothe his
increasing concerns and partly to hold myself accountable for the decision I
had just made: “I
think calorie counting is going to drive me (and you) bonkers, and lord knows I
don't need more of that in my life (and neither do you). So instead I'm going
to work harder to make better choices, graze less often/more healthily/more
mindfully, and move my body more consistently, even if that just means walking
for twenty minutes or doing ab work at home every evening. To that end, I'm
walking instead of driving to the post office now and deleting my calorie
counting app right now.” He was,
understandably, thrilled, and vowed to help me and support me in any way he
could. And I smiled and went to delete
the app…but instead I logged the calories for a snack I planned to eat when I
got home and then put my phone back in my pocket.
Later, as I sat in a coffee shop waiting for my tutoring
appointment, I continued to obsess over my predicament, googling low-carb
‘beginner steps’ and reading blog posts from the very app I had neglected to
delete. One such post suggested that
weighing yourself every day had been proven to be an effective weight loss tool
– this ran contrary to my perception that all weighing myself every day
did for me was make my heart sink and my brain whir with unhealthy fixation on
numbers, but I went on Amazon and started looking at scales anyway. Then my boyfriend checked in from work, and I
admitted what I was doing. His response
was “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” and my reply was “Really? That bad?”
He insisted it was and I tried to explain: “Apparently not weighing
yourself regularly after a large weight loss is consistent with regain. I
know! I hate it. But I'm trying to pick and choose bits of wisdom
from different 'health' and weight loss camps.”
The way I see it, weight loss is like spiritualism: you take
the bits you like from each religion or perspective, and you discard the
rest. No one idea is wholly good or bad,
right? But his view was that weighing
myself every day was “a big step back from dropping calorie counting,” and I
couldn’t deny that it seemed I was trading one number for another. I wrote back, reluctantly: “I
know. It's just so hard because the numbers game is so mentally unhealthy
but it's also pushed by so many 'experts' as the way to gain a modicum of
control. And I'm about to ban all Muslims, that's how desperately out of
control I feel.” His reply was: “Oh, hon. It's like
snow driving. One move at a time. Too much control and you will crash into the
place you were trying to avoid.”
He was right. And
just like the advocates of a Muslim ban in my rapidly deteriorating country, I
needed to take a step back and stop trying to tighten my fist around the
thistle to stop it from hurting me. So I
did. I deleted the app, and closed the scale-buying tab on my
laptop (but kept open the ones with low-carb recipe ideas because I do think
more mindfulness about what I eat will be a good thing), and I booked myself
for two yoga classes later this week.
That’s not enough exercise to help me with my body, and I’m still
struggling to find a yoga studio whose class type, schedule, and location all
fit my needs, but it’s a start. I’ll
find something else to fill in the gaps – maybe I’ll go back to Tae-Bo or take
up power-walking around Oakland.
Whatever I do, though, I’m going to try to keep the focus on
how I feel. Yes, I’d like my clothes to
fit better, and I think eventually they will, but more importantly I need to
clear my mind of all this body-obsession clutter. I have enough to worry about, with my
ever-increasing family bullshit and my ever-deepening romantic relationship and
my refocused career…oh yeah, and this book
I’m trying to finish. All those
things have been distracting me from my body and stressing me out, which is
partly how I got into this situation, but they’ve also got to take priority
over petty numbers games. Mindfulness,
as airy-fairy as it sounds, has helped me in so many areas of my life – I can
only hope it’ll help in this one too. Well,
that and drinking a lot less wine, which I think will be manageable as long as I
stay well away from my family ;)
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