Once upon a time, in a city far far away, I made a huge mistake...

The minute I clicked ‘Enter’ I knew I’d done something incredibly stupid.  How could I have been taken in by an Instagram ad, for anything, let alone diet pills?  I felt disgusted with myself, even as the disgust mingled with an unmistakable tinge of excitement and curiosity – surely after more than twenty-five years of experience with diet culture bullshit, and at least a decade of continuous counter-culture reprogramming, I must know better?  But, well...knowing better didn’t stop me.  I figured five bucks was a cheap price for a very unlikely potential payoff.

I went to lie down on our hotel bed with my boyfriend, who was zoned out in front of his own phone, half-listening to an episode of The Simpsons and trying to digest all the rich food we’d been eating on our trip to New Orleans.  I didn’t want to admit what I’d done; I knew he would be disappointed in me, and frustrated with my continued negative body image.  We’ve discussed it a hundred times, and while he does understand logically that there’s nothing logical about my body issues, that doesn’t stop him from feeling defensive of me against myself.  He is supportive about my attempt to be healthier – he’s been a great help with my 2017 yoga-every-damn-day plan, and he’s always happy to cook more veggies and fish and other healthy foods – but anything that even begins to look like a diet shuts him right down.  When I made a weak effort to go Paleo in November (first of all, awful timing, Past Anne) he rolled his eyes and made the -_- face a lot, but he did come around eventually – just in time for me to decide it wasn’t for me (I was, yet again, gaining weight and feeling worse about myself).

He’s right about one thing: I am shockingly susceptible to obsession.  Right before the Paleo thing, in a fit of insanity, I had tried calorie counting.  I lasted like three days before I remembered all the reasons I’d given it up before – those reasons still stand, and I will hopefully remember that next time I even flirt with the notion of counting.  I thought a sort of ‘lifestyle change’ like going Paleo might help me think (read: obsess) less about individual food choices but it just changed the subject of my obsession from numbers to ingredients – by the way, Paleo shit is expensive.  No wonder it’s mostly rich white ladies who are into that diet.

Anyway, the point of all of this back story is twofold: 1) I want to be honest here about my struggles – losing a ton of weight didn’t make me happy with my body, and working to radically accept my body didn’t make me immune from the sometimes very intense desire to lose weight.  I know better than most how irrelevant weight is to real life, love, and happiness, yet I’m still vulnerable.  I still have months where my body is bigger or heavier than its norm and that still has the power to make me cry and rage and count calories…and even, in particularly weak moments, to order a ‘free trial’ of a supplement that I know is bullshit.  Which brings me to: 2) I needed you to understand my state of mind when I made this incredibly bad decision, because it gets worse.

I did tell my boyfriend what I’d done, after he agreed not to torture me about it if I told him (his face as he realized exactly what he’d agreed to was priceless), and all he said was “well, we all make stupid choices sometimes – I’m just glad you realize that it was a stupid choice.  And make sure you follow up so they don’t charge you for the next bottle.”  Oh.  Shit.  I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I might be on the hook for some scam subscription!  I lied and said of course I was planning to follow up, and we spoke of it no more for the rest of our trip. 

When we got home, I found my shipment notification in my junk email – two of them, since the sign-up had also automatically signed me up for a second trial – and googled the company name (Supreme Garcinia/Fit Garcinia).  Well, shit, again: there were stories all over the internet of people being charged hundreds of dollars, having to submit fraud claims to their credit cards, spending hours on hold trying to get someone to cancel their subscriptions…I was furious with myself.

I was also lucky; I’d caught on early enough that the only charges to go through had been the shipping fees ($5.99 for each of the two bottles).  I froze my credit card and called the company – they tried to tell me that in order to cancel I needed to ship the bottles back at my own expense and pay a restocking fee of $9.99 for each bottle, and they persisted when I told them that sounded shady and borderline illegal (knowing full well that I had clicked ‘accept’ without reading the fine print, like the idiot I was in that moment), but when I said “okay, so what if I just cancel my credit card before you guys can charge me?” the woman on the phone went to talk to a manager and came back saying that they would “waive the fee this one time.”   I received emails confirming both cancellations, unfroze my credit card, and will hopefully be able to put this behind me and never make this mistake again.

But yesterday, after it was all cleared up, I turned to my boyfriend and thanked him sincerely for mentioning the subscription.  I told him I actually hadn’t thought of it, and I would almost certainly have gone past the 14-day deadline and been charged before I fixed it.  I also told him, having only just realized it myself, that I understood why I hadn’t considered the financial consequences of my mistake: I had been so mired in shame about buying into the idea of diet pills, even for a second, that I couldn’t see past that to even think about any other element.  What mattered the most to me was that I’d betrayed myself – my intellect, my self-worth, and my constant struggle to simply accept my body for what it is – money didn’t even cross my mind.  But, as I said to my boyfriend, I can ill afford $175 mistake right now, so I was glad that it crossed his.

So, friends, the fight to accept myself continues – luckily, so does the yoga, and the body-positive community, and the support from the people who love me.  It’s not all bad, but it is pretty embarrassing, and it makes a good cautionary tale (as well as one that will hopefully help others who’ve made the same mistake feel less alone in their error), so I felt the need to share it here. 

Don’t be like me, but if you do, make sure you threaten those shady motherfuckers with everything you can, including reporting them to the BBB ;)