It's Okay if You've Gained a Little Holiday Weight

And other ignorant things people say

The Titan’s Goblet, Thomas Cole (The Met Public Domain)

This newsletter mentions eating disorder activity in a way that could be activating to some. Please proceed carefully.

I was mid-twist in my 6am yoga class, via Zoom. It was a new studio I’d chosen, lured in by their low rate for the first month. The class was vigorous, closely resembling Ashtanga style, and taught by a man who’d been born in India but now worked at a gaming company here in Seattle. His face peered into my screen, and he gave feedback to everyone he could see, using our names as reference. It was the first class via Zoom I’d been to where the teacher gave such vigorous feedback.

I’d debated whether to have my camera on, knowing that my fat body would be on display. And when he told us, mid-twist, that it was ok if we’d gained some holiday weight, it was okay if the twist was a little challenging, the comment felt directed at me. I was the only fat person in the class.

The weekend before, during my yoga teacher training, one of our teachers had spoken to this exact experience— being in a fat body and how it can limit certain movements, as well as reactions from others regarding our fat bodies. When the man said it was okay that I’d gained a little holiday weight, whether he was speaking directly to me or not, I felt shame. That he felt he needed to soothe me, or whoever he was soothing, implied that the extra weight was a mistake that could be corrected. For me, the weight gain was the correction, and my thinness had been the mistake.

I had, in fact, gained holiday weight. And before that I’d gained pandemic weight. And before that I’d gained stress weight. It was all tied to my recovery. I can trace my weight gain all the way back, a couple years, to when I stopped throwing up my food after years and years of trying to recover from my decades-long struggle with bulimia. In my recovery, I’ve gained weight. That people gain weight when they recover from eating disorders has kept many of us sick, stuck in the cycle of self-obsession, focusing on what and how much we eat and the size of our bodies rather than how to be better people in the world, how to connect authentically with ourselves and others, and our own personal and spiritual development.

Accepting my fat body is an ongoing process, one that often feels like a demeaning uphill hike in our land of diet culture. Hearing those words in my yoga class, meant to comfort, threw me into a rage, but I didn’t turn off my camera, nor did I stop practicing. I stayed in my twist, my elbow barely touching my leg, and felt my discomfort, my rage. As the teacher continued cueing us, I directed the feelings towards him. How dare he comment on the shapes of our bodies? Why did he think someone needed soothing because of the size of their body? I penned an imaginary letter to the yoga studio, describing how fucked up it was that this instructor had said something so activating and marginalizing, assuming that all of us wanted to be in thin, compact bodies that folded neatly into poses (or that having such bodies made those poses automatically accessible).

In dancer pose, I couldn’t grab my ankle. My right knee doesn’t bend enough, the ligaments and cartilage have been torn apart by several surgeries. He kept telling me how to grab my foot; to stand against a wall, and I finally typed into the chat that I had an injury. Oh, he said, regretful, please, take care of yourself, I’m sorry. He then reminded the class that it’s always necessary to honor our limitations.

By the end of the class, my anger at the teacher had metabolized and transformed. It wasn’t his fault. His statement, which still stings, was intended to be kind. It’s the fucked up world we live in that has taught us to hate our bodies and fear fatness so much that many of us opt into disordered eating and obsession rather than allow our bodies to situate themselves at their natural sizes. It’s the fucked up world we live in that assumes there is a singular superior body type rather than uncountable bodies, each as unique as our fingerprints. Our society in which a multi-billion dollar diet and anti-aging industry thrives. Our society that causes people to coo at one another in comforting tones, as if addressing a toddler: it’s okay, you’ll get your body back. Our society in which grown-ass people leave meals unfinished in public, only to eat the leftovers at home, where they finally feel comfortable honoring their natural hunger.

We can choose to participate, or not. But choosing not to requires some deprogramming, and the deprogramming is never complete, because fatphobia and hatred and judgement towards larger bodies is a sickness miles deep in our culture, and one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice, inextricably linked to white supremacy. Roxane Gay knows this well, and I encourage you to read this essay of hers about loving and then hating The Biggest Loser and not allowing herself to eat potato chips in public (something I still struggle with after many fat kid experiences in cafeterias when I was younger). In the essay she addresses the mainstream promotion of weight loss as a pathway to happiness as well as the harm this acceptance inflicts on people in larger bodies.

The truth is, dieting doesn’t work.

This is outlined well in this podcast by Christy Harrison, who calls diet culture the life thief. I can attest to this in my own life. When I was little, my mom and her friends called my “Lacy Stacy.” I was small-boned, delicate, tiny. The truth is, my mom and I were experiencing food scarcity. When I moved in with my grandparents, who had more food in their house, I began to gain weight and sneak food. I was shamed for how much I’d eat at meals, and upon moving back in with my mom a couple years later, my food intake was monitored and if I ate too much when I came home from school I was sent to my room without dinner. My mom regularly called me fat, selfish, and greedy. It’s likely those were words she’d learned as a child.

I remember once, on Valentine’s Day, an admirer of my mother’s left a small heart-shaped basket of chocolates in front of our door. I ate them all before my mom got home, knowing with each silver wrapper I unwrapped that she’d be pissed. I didn’t lie about it. I showed her the empty basket because I wanted her to know someone had left her a gift. What is wrong with you? she asked me, and I wished I had an answer.

I kept eating, and by middle school I was fat. But then I discovered bulimia. It was like a miracle to me— that I could throw up all the food I ate. I didn’t realize that my overeating was caused by my restriction, a cycle started by my mom, and by our poverty.

When I lost weight in ninth grade it was as if a curtain were lifted, revealing both me to others, and an entire life to me. A kind of terrible magic happened. I appeared to people, as if from thin air. Classmates who’d sat next to me for months or years woke up to my existence. A boy I had a crush on asked if I’d just transferred from somewhere else. My French teacher, always rude to me, smiled more, and began encouraging me. The popular girls called me over to their table, asked me who I was, and I dropped my old friends. I, too, believed.

Now I was seen, desired, envied. It wasn’t just my face that was pretty. People commented on how great I looked, which reinforced my belief that my value was tied to my weight gain or loss. This set into motion decades of weight cycling and self-hatred. I slept with boys and girls, anyone who’d have me. The desire from others was overwhelming, and I was starved for it. I believed this: my life was better when I was thin (no, it really was worse) and worse when I was fat (no, it was still bad). I spent entire afternoons eating food from Costco my mom and new stepdad had bought, throwing it up in the basement bathroom. I took a bath after every dinner to cover up my retching. As my disease progressed (yes, it is a disease, not some superficial thing), and I got older, I would spend days bingeing and purging, until my throat felt raw and I’d exhausted myself. But I could never meet my goal. No matter how much weight I lost, I was never thin enough, never pretty enough, never good enough. Not good at all. Now that I’m in recovery, I understand how much my eating disorder was a physical manifestation of my own internal self-hatred and loathing; how much it isolated me and kept me from living an authentic life and having authentic relationships. It wasn’t just the need to hide the actions of bingeing and purging, but my deep-seated belief that there was something very wrong with me because I couldn’t control myself around food. Because I couldn‘t stay thin.

In my twenties and early thirties, my life was aimed towards thinness. I wanted in on that world. I often think of a This American Life episode called Tell Me I’m Fat, where Elna Baker details her transformation into thinness. It was…"like this whole other world for thin people had existed alongside mine, a world they’d been keeping a secret from me”. She details how she “didn’t have to be a good person,” she “just had to be thin.” This episode still haunts me, because I have experienced the shift more than once, the difference of moving through the world as a fat person, and a thin one. Elna still takes diet pills. I refuse to opt-in to that world anymore. I’ve chosen to live in a fat body rather than to abuse and harm myself in order to stay in straight sizes. I can’t diet without relapsing, and why would I want to diet? Why would I want to try to shape my body into something it doesn’t naturally want to be? What if my body is beautiful, in my XXL pants, with my fat arms and rub-together thighs? What if I am still beautiful, and will always be beautiful, and have always been beautiful, and it’s our society that is ugly? And furthermore, what if my beauty, or lack of beauty, has nothing to do with who I am, and my value as a human being has nothing at all to do with my appearance?

I see it clearly now: the people who love and accept me for who I am, right now, and don’t see a need to factor the shape of my body into their assessment of my inherent value? Those are the people I want in my life. That’s who I want to love, and who I want to be loved by. They don’t need to be thin either, or conventionally attractive. No one’s goodness hinges on their physical appearance. If anything, the most conventionally attractive people live a kind of sheltered life, where they don’t have to try, and don’t know that the ease they experience is something they get because of their appearance. Or, maybe they do, and they don’t want to talk about it. I know it. I experienced it, for just a little while.

It’s okay if I can’t get all the way into that spinal twist. Maybe I never will again. My body is healthier this way. I am healthier fat than I was thin, as are many of the other fat people I know. Of course, for some people it’s reversed, and that’s okay, too. Loving neutrality towards my fat body doesn’t mean hating thin bodies. It means positioning all bodies on the same plane, all deserving of acceptance in their present state, whatever that is.

If you think you may be struggling with disordered eating, call the Eating Disorder Helpline.

A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers, Edgar Degas (Public Domain)

I’ve been trying to take care of myself lately. I hope you have, too. There’s a deep undercurrent of pain and stress regarding recent events, and worrying about the future. The pandemic is escalating, and we can see the end but what does it matter in this moment? We get a new president this week. I’ll be sending out a meditation on Wednesday for my paying subscribers. I’m sending you all love, wrapping us in golden light.

Things I’ve loved this week:

• I’m diving into Ayurveda and have started reading Ayurveda: The Science of Self Healing by Vasant Lad. On Saturday night I made a lovely Kitchari. This was after a three hour posture clinic with Julia Hollenberg. When I was in my late teens I studied Ayurveda, but I wanted to get thin, so the food was like some sort of punishment. Tonight’s Kitchari was a joy to make— the melting ghee in the pot, the crackling cumin and coriander seeds, the turmeric and pepper; fresh ginger scenting my kitchen, even the onion burning my eyes. The end product was better than I expected it to be, and I ate it with joy.

• Of course, yoga is kind of taking over my life, which is okay with me. I did a Katonah Yoga class on Monday. It was fantastically vigorous and by its end I was covered in sweat. The instructor stayed on when class was over to answer any questions, and explained to me how Katonah Yoga was developed with sacred geometry in mind. Shapes fitting into shapes. In the class we had fit the arches of our feet onto our biceps; our kneecaps into the underside of our chins. Yoga is amazing like this, the endless interpretations, the infinite learning and inventing possibilities. At its essence, its not physical at all, and the physical practice is its smallest component. I remind myself of this and also allow myself to dive in to a fascination with the miracle of my body. It’s about time.

• Speaking of endless fascination, I found out this week that some jellyfish create little jumping pads for themselves using water propulsion. They essentially make the ground magically appear to aide in their ocean travel. Isn’t that magical?

• Washington Congesswoman Pramila Jayapal wrote about what it was like to survive the Capitol shitstorm. I didn’t enjoy this, but given the climate, I am grateful she wrote it.

• I finished Giovanni’s Room this week. The best thing about reading a book for the second time is that I realize how dense I can be, and the book is allowed to penetrate further than it did the first time. James Baldwin was a gem, a genius. I’m reading all of his novels in chronological order.

• I watched Promising Young Woman last night. I’ve loved Carrey Mulligan ever since An Education and Never Let Me Go (a film based on the stellar book by Kazuo Ishiguro). I loved it, although it was uneven. Carrey Mulligan held the entire thing together, and there was an appearance of another one of my faves, Alison Brie. Speaking of bullshit societal standards around appearance, Vulture wrote this terrible review about the film, criticizing Mulligan’s looks, and you can read her brilliant response in this other NYT interview. Mulligan vanished for a while after starting a family and I am so glad she’s back.

• I’ve been listening to a lot of childcare podcasts because I like to constantly inundate myself with compassionate reminders while caring for twin preschool-aged boys. Unruffled is one of the best podcasts out there. After listening to so many of them, I’ve come to understand that having confidence as a caregiver is key, as is understanding that the little people we care for don’t have bad intentions, they just can’t control their impulses yet. The more I think about it, the more I feel privileged to work as a nanny, although I wish it paid as well as some other jobs here in Seattle.

• If you know me at all, you know that I long for a little patch of land and a yurt. But I’d settle for making my own house from natural materials. I’ve been thinking a lot about Nepal lately, and this article recalled the house I stayed in near Panchase. I think of Amma and he nephew, whose father worked in UAE, and how they’re faring with less tourists and more political unrest. I will always cherish my time in that house, and I hope I can go back someday, maybe with a friend.

• I’ve been thinking lots about my nearly decade-long stretch of being single. It’s been a journey. I loved reading this piece about “Covid Cuffing Season” because it made me so grateful to be the kind of person who feels totally okay without a partner. It’s taken me a long time to get here. I also decided to stop online dating because I hate it, and I’ve always hated it, and focus on other things. Here’s to giving ourselves permission to live the lives that we want. As a forty year-old femme-presenting person, it feels strange to accept my solitude when the whole world thinks I should be constantly scanning for a partner, but as the years have fallen away, the strangeness does, too. I am happy by myself. If you’re out there looking for your covid partner, godspeed to you.

• This podcast is essential listening about racism in the Americas. In it, Isabel Wilkerson’s gorgeous book Caste is discussed in a way that broadens the view from America to a more global focus. Read Hazel V. Carby’s incredible review of Caste, which illustrates a particularly American problem. This New Yorker review by Sunil Khilnani also has some incredibly important things to say about how Black people living in poverty are left out of the book.

  

  It’s very strange to think that at this time last year I was cat-sitting in an isolated chalet in France, managing intense anxiety that kept me mostly inside. I’ll always be grateful for the French doctor who gave me Valium, and the spectacular sunsets overlooking the dormant grape vines. I now understand that my intense anxiety and loneliness was something I had to crawl through in order to get here, and be okay. Back then we were all watching Cheer as Covid crept towards us, unawares.

  • My friends, I do hope you’ll share this if you feel inspired. I have to admit, life without social media feels better for me. I do miss it, but I can feel something solidifying inside me that had grown soft and watery. A more trustworthy sense of myself. It’s nice not to look at stranger’s lives and hold them up in comparison to mine. My world doesn’t feel smaller, but larger. I do miss you, though, and would love to hear how you’re doing. Please feel free to comment or reply to this.

    May this week give us some grace.

    Stacy