CW: disordered eating, body image,
Circa 1985. I watched my mum struggle with her body image and self worth on and off my whole childhood. We were witness to her many attempts to “lose the weight” as she went to Weight Watchers, ate cardboard food from Jenny Craig (sorry Jenny! I’m sure your food has improved 😬) and tried other diets that were fashionable at the time. She would talk negatively about herself, her appearance, what she wished she could change about her body. I remember this clearly. I also look back and remember a fun mum who was absolutely beautiful (she still is!) who had fabulous shoes, and who’s hair and makeup was always impeccable. Most of all she has always been supportive of her girls, my mum is our cheerleader and soft place to fall whenever we need her. Yes my mum had/has body image issues and she dealt with them the best way she knew how with the tools she had at her disposal. Her body image and her negative stories about herself are not the reason for mine but I guess it made me aware that being “slim” was the goal. I know my mum feels bad about this, we’ve had many conversations about it over the years. So yes, I knew about diets from a young age but we were about to enter the 90’s where heroin chic was an actual thing. Yes, thinness was fetishised. And it was everywhere.
I turned 10years old in 1990. Welcome to the era of the supermodel. There were models before but nothing like the supermodels we were seeing now. They were on the runways, music videos, magazines and they were in advertising. Being thin was in. We then started to see super waif-like women on our TV screens. Think Calista Flockhart of Ally McBeal. Portia DeRossi joined the cast and began to shrink in every episode. The cast of Friends, one of the biggest shows of the 90s gave us gorgeous women who also began shrinking before our eyes. Let’s not forget the fat jokes about “fat Monica” that provided entertainment throughout the series. I recently listened to an episode from the podcast, I weigh hosted by the wonderful Jameela Jamil; where Debra Messing was a guest speaking about her experiences within Hollywood. It was both heartbreaking and enlightening. Will and Grace was so groundbreaking but she still felt the need to shrink in size order to fit in and to make everyone’s life easier. Not all these stars have spoken about their experiences but some have, admitting to eating disorders. They were starving themselves for success. To be an American size zero became a goal. A very dangerous one.
We finished the 90’s with movies like American Pie, Tara Reid another starlet who got smaller and smaller finally succumbing to plastic surgery until she became the favourite punchline of the tabloids. It wasn’t until the very late 90s that “plus” size models cracked the mainstream and they were not the curvy plus size models we know today, they were very tall and maybe an American size 8 (12 in Australian sizes). The OC hit our screens in the early 2000’s and the newest “it” girl was Micsha Barton, you got it – she was tiny. Paris Hilton was photographed everywhere she went and her bestie at the time, Nicole Richie began the shrinking game too. Victoria’s Secret Angels were royalty and we all wanted to know what diet they were on. Drew Barrymore was the “chunky one” in Charlies Angels and Tyra Banks was shamed for being 161 pounds (just over 73kgs) when she stands at 1.78m tall (5’8). These were the women we were seeing in movies, on TV and in advertising. You can say that Hollywood has nothing to do with real life until you’re blue in the face, but the truth is these images of what is beautiful, what is desired, what is “normal” trickles down to the rest of us mere mortals and we start to compare ourselves. These become our “ideals”.
Heroin Chic
Supermodels of the 90s
So there’s some history.
I convinced myself at a very young age that being thin would make everything else in my life better. I’d skip breakfast and lunch and come home from school exhausted and ravenous, feeling like a complete loser and like I’d failed as I ate everything in sight in the kitchen to sate my hunger. From restrictive eating to binge eating, I was always flipping between eating extremes. It was a cycle—one that caused me stress and guilt—and it was something I just couldn’t stop. Food was all about control. When I was following patterns of restriction, I felt like I was in control and control felt good. When I fell into a cycle of binging, I felt like I had lost that control. I was never a “big girl” and yet I distinctly remember thinking I was fat. I remember after a “good” week lying in my bed feeling my hip bones and congratulating myself on how well I’d done for not eating much that week. Terrible.
These cycles continued for years, but as I got older it was binge eating that became my main source of contention. Most people looking at me wouldn’t have known I was dealing with any eating issues; I was active, physically healthy, and always an average weight. But when I was alone I would often mindlessly snack, continuing to eat until I was physically uncomfortable, and long after the initial feeling of hunger or boredom had faded. I would find myself standing in front of the refrigerator waiting to be tempted by my next snack. By this point I had come to feel very guilty about my relationship with food, but I had no idea how to change how I felt about it. Here’s a confession – if it wasn’t food it was alcohol. Always looking for something to make me feel better.
Studio 2006 photos taken in 2006
I was 25/26 years old and so worried about what i should wear
My biggest fear was looking fat
Weight watchers. Shake diets. Actually searching the net for “pro anorexia” sites, searching for the secrets of their restriction methods. Lemon detox regimes. Fat burner tablets. Jokes about going on a “speed” diet. Restrictive diet plans from well meaning PT’s. Laxatives and diuretics. I have tried almost everything, and all of these things were just feeding into my disordered relationship with food. Reading this back to myself as a write this makes me so sad. It makes me want to go back in time as give myself a good shake or better yet, a hug. I did not cope very well after my second pregnancy when my body did not “bounce back” like it did the first time which sent me down the rabbit hole again. Dealing with body dysmorphia and disordered thoughts about food and eating is exhausting. I was so tired about thinking about food and what effect it would have on my body after eating it. It’s just not a very happy place to be.
Pregnancy actually had me feeling good. I felt like I had permission to be “bigger”. Yes there are comments but people celebrate the changes
One of the times I was at my biggest. Not many photos of me at this time. I was a newly single mum and didn’t much like myself
Lost some weight and felt good. I put so much emphasis on that number on the scale though. Unhealthy and restricting
What I hadn’t worked out yet is that food is not good or bad. There is no moral value. It has nutritional value yes, but a small serve of fries is not going to make you gain weight overnight. But that’s literally what I thought. That one trip to McDonald’s would undo my 3 gym sessions and my 15,000 steps a day and my salad lunches I’d stuck to all week. I’d eat the fries and then spiral into a binge. The binging actually became a punishment. I was a failure and I would never be skinny. I was a fat cow and so I should just eat like one. Cue the shame.
So how have I shifted my mindset?
My bad relationship with food isn’t an isolated problem. The bad relationship with food is directly affected by my bad relationship with my body. Not accepting and loving myself for who I am and constantly seeking to change the way I look is the catalyst for my disordered eating habits. Yes it’s a form of body dysmorphia. The biggest changes I have made over this year is working on my relationship with myself. I’d gained some weight when I got stood down from work thanks to covid and I’d started to feel really bad about myself again. I’d started following a different kind of “influencer” online though, women who were empowering and getting real about all the crap we are fed about body image. I’d diversified my feed and the messages were slowly starting to sink in. So rather than sign up for another diet, I signed up for a course designed to rewrite our body image. It was powerful! Guided meditations and work-shopping the negative stories we tell ourselves in order to rewrite positive ones are just a couple of the things we worked on. I now have a new routine in the morning and at night which helps me tune into my higher authentic self. I still have work to do but I am no longer restricting which has stopped the binging. I’m not using food to punish myself or exercising stupidly to work off what I’ve eaten. I’m tuning into my higher authentic self and let me tell you, she is no hater. She empowers and celebrates the things I take joy from. These days I’m indulging my love for cooking again. Good food makes me feel good and I’m not talking about “salad”. Giving food the label good or bad was another way I was trying to control my eating which almost always led to guilt. Guilt would lead to punishment. Learning to love and accept myself in the now has been a huge shift – a thinner Sarah is not a “better” Sarah. I am worthy of fun and love and friendship and success right now, just as I am. Being a role model for my kids has also spurred me along, I don’t want them to have an unhealthy relationship with their bodies or with food. We don’t talk about losing weight in this house but we do talk about choices that make us happy, strong and healthy. We move our bodies because it’s fun, we love getting outside but we also love lazy days cuddling up in front of a movie. We enjoy our favourite foods like pizza and sushi and curry and chicken nuggets and don’t put good or bad labels on them.
Looking back it can be easy to minimise my old behaviours as shallow, but it definitely ran deeper than just my appearance. I’d love to say age is a contributing factor to my growth but honestly, I think I’d be in the same cycle if I hadn’t done the body image rewritten course late last year. Yes I value health and wellness but I also value happiness and happiness doesn’t come from being smaller. I don’t want to shrink myself anymore, I want to live freely and to enjoy myself. As a side note I have almost lost all those kilos I put on over covid but it’s been a really slow natural process without restriction. Funny how that works! So I’m going to keep on this path, loving and respecting myself even when I’m having a down day. I never want to spend so much time thinking about food or my body again, I simply don’t have the energy when there are just so many other wonderful and fulfilling things I could be doing with my time.
Help and information for disordered eating and/or body image (Australian links)
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