spilling my guts out: food + body edition

ever dissociate while standing and eating in the kitchen? or change an outfit 7 times before a date? ...these, and other things I hide.

Oil painting by Lee Price

** Get in, we’re going time traveling….
My iPhone reminded me that I wrote about my complex history with eating and my body in an Instagram caption in 2020. I felt too exposed having that on my feed for all to see, so I promptly deleted it into the archive. Here, feels like a (slightly) better place to share this, so I pasted that caption verbatim, and wrote an equally earnest reaction to reading what I wrote exactly 4 years later.

It’s not sharing this topic with strangers that scares me, it’s people I know reading how I actually felt. But on the other side of sharing is the possibility of connection.
So, today, instead of “let it out”, it’s spill it out...

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JANUARY 22, 2020 - INDONESIA

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I've been swimming daily. In the ocean yesterday, I considered my current body: 
-it is not as small as it once was. 
related…
-it is not as stressed / tired as it once was. 

-I feel more present. A friend commented I seem more curious and interested. I know logically, this is a win, however…I live in diet culture/ “wellness” culture, and a wild world where thin privilege exists. A reality, where I have seen my closest family members treated differently because of their size.

I am still in a body where I receive thin privilege, so unlike many people I love, I am not treated all that differently as my size fluctuates. 

However, at my most unwell is when I've always received the most compliments on my appearance. This validation makes me feel so seen, that it makes me forget all the mental effort it takes for me to be that size. It tricks me into forgetting the process addiction that consumes my energy, leaving none to be a decent person—much less a creative or productive one. 

I wrote an essay for Kelsey Miller’s column in Refinery29 about my non-linear eating disorder recovery. It was picked up by the Daily Mail, which wrote: “girl with anorexia nostalgia.” I didn’t know that was a condition or that I had it, but it super is... and um well, I do. So now when I get a wave of aninostalgia, for a past photo or outfit that doesn’t fit, I remind myself what I gave up to exist there: relationships, sanity, art, time, etc.

Sometimes you have to learn lessons multiple times in life. Especially the ones that are of the *right* but not *popular* variety—those are tough to maintain when the rest of the culture is doing the opposite and you’re a highly malleable person. 

But today I'm staying on the side of truth, gentleness, and caring about other people more than my icky, rigid routines that keep my body smaller than it wants to be naturally but make me sad. 

Having a body has caused my mind pain. Having a mind has caused my body pain. Water under the bridge.

I might be done learning this lesson, or I might cycle through this muck again, who knows? But for the rest of my month here, I’ll keep swimming...

La collectionneuse (1967)

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UARY 22, 2024 - CALIFORNIA

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So, turns out I’m in the muck with this again. In the 4 uncertain years since, I have grasped for comfort in this familiar place.

The caption was revealing, so I see why I archived it. Sharing is embarrassing, in the same way love is embarrassing, but that’s not a reason to not do it. My favorite essays, albums, films, books, etc. are specific, diaristic even—a preference that felt validated when I heard Rick Rubin agree here.

Rubin also advises to make things for yourself; the audience comes last. I wrote this for me, but wouldn’t have written at all without you. Knowing you’re “there” gets me to write and makes the catharsis that comes from that possible.

If I waited until I found full resolution to write about this, I’d wait forever. Healing is non-linear, so all I can do is have enough distance and self awareness to “share from scars, not wounds.”

I’m still quite malleable with this, so even observing people’s eating habits can influence mine subconsciously, both for better (inspiration) or for worse (ashamed).

For instance, I once read a newsletter where the writer said she has a rule to never eat standing up. I adopted her rule instantly, since I’ve longed to be the type of person who delights in the beauty of an intentional sit-down meal, like a character on vacation in a Rohmer film or Stanley Tucci.

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)

That night after a bad date, I stood eating cold leftovers in the light of my open refrigerator, I remembered her rule…and felt even more shame and guilt than usual. 

So, I hesitate to share on this topic, aware of the baggage many of us have with it. I will say that for me, a more useful aim than any rules or attempts at aesthetic meals, are stories of prosaic, mundane, or messy meals.

What’s been most corrective is witnessing non restrictive eaters. Just as the rule from the newsletter lingered in my brain, so did the friend who told me he’d just had a giant bowl of ice cream or the one I saw eat cereal late every night. Or the one who told me he ordered a huge room service order and ate it quickly, after giving a big speech.

They have no idea telling me this helped me because by my estimation, each of them are what Ellyn Satter would call, “normal eaters,” a term she defines in her 1999 book, How to Eat, as:

“Normal eating is being able to eat when you are hungry and continue until you are satisfied. It is being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it—not just stop eating because you think you should. It is being able to give some thought to your selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food.

It is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good. Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they are warm.

It is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more. It is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. It takes some attention, but is only one important area of life. In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings.”

I first encountered this definition at 22, when a dietitian handed it to me on a photocopied piece of paper on my first day of eating disorder recovery treatment.

A decade later, it is so ingrained in me that I have a reverence for normal eaters. But as much as I admire them, I fear becoming one. Or what I’m really saying is: I fear it would mean my body size would change.

I’m ashamed to admit that fear lingers, despite knowing it stems from how I saw people in large bodies portrayed in the media I grew up consuming, how people talked about my closest family members in larger bodies, and just existing in our diet culture and fatphobic society.

In the dietitian's office, with the photocopy of Satter's words in my ice cold hand, I first became aware of how those influences impacted the feelings I had towards myself and the subsequent compulsive behaviors I developed with food as a result.

**Allow us to time travel once again…

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APRIL, 2012 - MICHIGAN

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I’m in head-to-toe American Apparel, sitting in the dietitian’s hard office chair. My butt bones feel sharp, like they could pierce through my skin. I try to not fidget, but should’ve tried harder, since she asks (as if she's said it many times),

"Need a cushion?"

Then proceeds to explain that pain sitting on hard surfaces was a symptom of... well... why I was there...

She had my number, that I was mentally ill, and I had an assumption that I was not. 
I assumed I was in a phase—surely by the time I reached my 30s I'd effortlessly morph back into the"normal eater” outlined in her print out. It’d occur naturally, no effort on my part, maybe by way of co-regulating with a partner, or by cohabitating, or by magic?

I never guessed that a decade later, feeding myself and accepting my body would require as much mental effort as it did then, plus an added layer: aging.

A benefit of time, though, is getting acclimated with how I look. I’ve accepted my unconventional shaped nose, acne-prone skin, and frizzy hair; therefore, this new frontier of adapting to wrinkles, sun spots, and gray hairs feels possible too. 

As 4 of my peers froze their eggs in the last month alone, I feel us inching from the level of youth I relied on. Part of me thinks, 'if you were that insecure and vain young, buckle up kid…aging is coming!’

Another, wiser, part wonders if perhaps, aging is the magic I imagined in the dietitian’s office—a force of nature pushing me into true acceptance. Finally freeing me from the shackles of attempting to constantly control my body, a Sisyphean pursuit stealing an exorbitant amount of my time, energy, and resources. And for what? So people like me?

We can't control how anyone feels about us. I know manipulating my appearance won’t prevent rejection. Yet, on some level I hold onto an insidious belief that, ‘if I could just get thin enough or my skin was flawless, then my crush will like me, the podcast advertisements will come, and the confetti will fall!’  

Ridiculous as it sounds, a primal part of my brain slips into this delusion until a practical part shuts it down. Rerouting this thinking takes vigilance, especially if I’m in a shaky place, like after a rejection or mistake.

So if anxiety is high, like a first date, a party, honestly…an average Tuesday…I will repeat to myself, like a mantra, what Maya Angelou said:
“People will forget what you did, or what you said, they remember how you made them feel.” 

In situations like these, I often wish for more time to get ready [aka swap my outfit 7 times before changing back to the one I started in], so I expand this to: 

…people don’t care that you have a pimple that you panic picked… [insert insecurity of the day] they care that you showed up—preferably on time.  

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Well thanks for reading about my turbulent history [and present] with this.

Maybe your anxiety doesn’t pool in this food/body zone, like mine does. If that’s the case, welcome to what it’s like to be inside the brain of someone whose does! You likely know a few of us, though we’re good at hiding it and/or keeping people at a distance.

Regardless, what is universally relatable here is: change and age. It’s coming for you, too, even you, it already has… you used to be the size of a loaf of bread, now you’re 4-6 feet tall. You survived that part of growing up, puberty, learning long division; you can survive this phase of aging too—even if society makes it tough.

Good job, trying your best to stay in integrity with whatever you’re navigating.

Your friend,
KD

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PS.

I wrote a list called: “Bodies heal. Skin grows back together when you cut it, and other lessons I’ve learned the hard way…” It has practical tips I’ve outlined for myself about beauty, bodies, etc. The purpose of writing the above was to set up sharing that list, but this got long, so if you’d like me to divulge even more on this topic, let me know in the comments.

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by our best friend Christine

This week's episode is the second half of my conversation with filmmaker and ceramicist (and my close friend) Madelynn De La Rosa. Let us know if you listened.

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Keep in touch on ig, where you will not find that January 2020 post but you will find the above, the podcast & I are: here or here (both are me).

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Thank you to Thom, my dear friend and fellow Rick Rubin enthusiast, who found the link to the exact quote I was trying to locate. She does human design, helping people to dive deeper into the abyss.

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