Gotta Have Faith

Someone outside of my immediate family commented on my weight loss for the first time yesterday. Which would have been exciting if they hadn’t gone about it so poorly.

I ran into a classmate in the hall at school. After a brief greeting, she barreled into the following statement: “Are you eating? You look like you’ve lost weight. There are cookies in the lounge; you should go eat some!”

Just to be clear, there is no way I could possibly be considered too thin. I’m not overweight any more, and I’m within 10 pounds of my goal, but gaining weight would put me back in an overweight range pretty fast. I have lost about 12 pounds since the beginning of last summer. It’s a significant amount of weight, but I have also lost it very slowly through healthy lifestyle changes.

Comments like this have happened to me every time I have ever lost weight. If I lose start exercising more and lose five pounds, then clearly I’m being unhealthy and need to remedy this situation by eating junk. If I actually reach a healthy weight (which I did a couple times in high school), then I must have an eating disorder (yes, I’ve actually been accused of starving myself when I weighed 130 lbs). People expect everyone to be thin, but they also expect everyone to be thin while eating whatever you want. If you show evidence of effort, if you eat healthy, low calorie food, if you visibly drop weight, then people try to sabotage you and tell you that you are doing something wrong.

It makes me so upset, because I know girls who really do have eating disorders, and the accusation that someone is not eating is not one that I would ever make lightly. I might confront a close friend who was taking a diet a little bit too far, but making negative comments about a near stranger’s weight is just rude. And if I really was eating too little, I wouldn’t need cookies…I would need nutritious food and possibly a doctor’s help.

I don’t think that this person could possibly have believed that I wasn’t eating. The all too common “go eat cookies” response to someone’s weight loss isn’t about concern for someone’s health. It is about a desire to get someone to gain weight. Chubby people are supposed to stay chubby…its the way they are and they should just accept themselves, right?

Of course, you sometimes end up with the opposite problem…people who meet you and decide based on your appearance that you don’t have a weight problem and therefore shouldn’t have to try. Whenver I’m on track with my weight and health, I invariably meet strangers who tell me, “Oh, you can eat whatever you want” and proceed to give me grief about eating vegetables or not eating dessert.

I think it all goes back to this idea that people can’t or shouldn’t exercise control over their own health and physical appearance. I shouldn’t let it get to me, but I get frustrated. I know that I feel better right now than I have in years. I love the food I am eating. Meals are a real joy because I am actually taking time and care in preparing them and I know they are doing good things for my body. I’m never hungry and I have way more energy than I used to. I know that all of the changes I am making, even if they are hard, are good for me and will only make me happier and healthier. I just wish others could see that.

Here is my food log from yesterday. Do you call these starvation rations?!

Food:
–1/2 Ezekiel English muffin with peanut butter
–mango
–Coffee with cream

–Orange
–Light string cheese

–Vegetable and chickpea curry topped with nonfat yogurt
–Bell pepper sticks
–Small can of v-8 juice

–Handful of trail mix

–Two rye crackers with peanut butter
–strawberries

–1/2 small stuffed pepper (stuffed with lean ground beef, bulgar wheat, onion, veggies and cheese)
–1 glass red wine

–.5 oz dark chocolate
–Light string cheese

Steps: 7246