Why (I think) I’m Veg has to do something with Scales

A couple weeks ago, I finished reading Hal Herzog’s Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, an anthrozoological book studying the Western attitudes towards animals. This was not a Peta-thumping book at all–Hal Herzog eats meat and paints cock fighters in a sympathetic light–but the book shows how contradictory our perspective on animals can be.

The section that interested me the most was titled “Meat Avoidance and Eating Disorders: The Dark Side of Vegetarianism”. The section stated, while being vegetarian does not mean you have an less-than-healthy body image, studies have shown that proclaimed vegetarians are more likely to have an eating disorder. University of Minnesota researchers reported vegetarian teens are almost twice as likely than their meat-eating peers to diet frequently, and a University of Pennsylvania study found they are more obsesssed with their weight, diet and binge and purge more than omnivores.

Herzog’s colleague, Candace Boan-Lenzo studies eating disorders in young women, and quotes that, “vegetarianism does not cause people to become anorexic or bulimic. But some people, particularly teenage girls with these tendencies, use vegetarianism as a way to cover up their eating disorders…”

This section made me revisit my reason for why I decided to be vegetarian: Is my reason for being vegetarian really solely for the mistreatment of animals in factories?

Yes, this is a part of it. I know it’s cliche, but after watching those PETA videos of chickens’ beaks being snapped off and cows being probed, living in tight quarters waiting for their death, I broke down, soaked in real tears and vowed to go veg. Animals have always been important to me. I feel a kindredness towards them. Maybe it’s a combination of my love for Disney movies, my pet guinea pigs and spending time in nature as a child. I don’t get people who “just don’t get animals.”

However, my reason is not purely that of an animal activist. Like the onions in my Greek salad, there is more complexity and layers to my method of munchie madness. And some of it stinks selfish.

Though I have never had a full-fledged eating disorder, my body image and relationship with food, especially with college, has been less than perfect. I have attempted many diets, some unhealthy, and went through a binge-and-purge period my sophomore and junior year of college.

The first time I proclaimed I was vegetarian (though it was more pescatarian because I still ate fish), it was freshman year at Temple University. I was trying to control my weight, due to nights out guzzling beer at frat parties, something I had never done before. Meat equalled fat and actual meals. Not eating chicken or beef gave me the illusion that I was “making up” for all the calories I was consuming from my unhealthy lifestyle, though the pizza and packed salads along with the beer didn’t make me any skinnier. In fact, when I stopped drinking heavily, the weight peeled off quickly.

So basically, being vegetarian doesn’t mean I have shrunken to a size nothing–I still eat cheese and carbs galore–but, I do believe one of the reasons why I have decided to go vegetarian has to do with the desperate attempt to control my weight. Using the “veg” card is an excuse to skip a meal and just stick with salad. I get the false illusion that if I’m not eating hearty meat-and-potatoes dinners, I will become skinner.

To sum it up, the vegetarian excuse can cover an eating disorder with a morally-charged jacket.

Any other vegetarians think their intention might be weight control/body image related? If so, what do you make of your dietary decision?

Sent from my iPad

Guilt

Munching on some extra chips for lunch. Withdrawing from social situations in college or high school, because I was too afraid. Breaking up with my boyfriend of almost five years. Drinking too much and saying some silly statements all due to some fervoring jealousy. Getting my hair dyed and cut for almost $200 dollars. Cowering away from those bullies in elementary school instead of standing up for myself. Not dating casually in my younger years. Spending weekend nights at home during my last two years of high school. Listening to my parents too adamantly, never breaking the rules or rebeling. Bingeing and purging.

 

All of these statements make a sloppy blend of guilt that I have had in my life. So much of my time is consumed with dealing guilt. So much of my life is regretting my actions, or lack thereof, in the past.

 

Forgiving myself for my slip-ups is so hard, because I assume that not letting the guilt register and consume me will make me repeat the same mistake again. For example, I will often feel guilty after overeating on, say, Cheerios and slices of pizza. I will just start counting the calories I have consumed in my head, freak out and dwell for awhile on the fact that I pigged out.Instead of just shrugging and saying “Oh well, it happens,” I worry so much about how the amount of calories will pile up around my waist and under my chin, and that it is time for a brand new start. I then scribble a diet plan down in my notebook, often one that limits all fun, all carbs and lunch. Sometimes, I create a “plan” that allows me to eat once a day, or some other absurd idea. I figure, if I realize what I have done is not just some binge, but a disappointing failure, then I will keep myself in check next time. Of course, the diet plan always ends up in the trash can the next day I am hungry, and the binge always happens again.

 

Forgiving myself can be extremely difficult. There is always that fear of repeating the mistake again, and almost that I deserve the feeling of guilt as a form of self-flaggelation for my “sins”.

 

I think that the fact that I feel guilty about everything has made me even more frightened to take some risks in life. Risks are just that–they can lead to some slip-ups, some not so Hallmark moments.

 

I wish I could just accept myself as an imperfect being who occassionally eats too much chocolate or drinks too much wine and says stupid, inconsiderate things. I wish I could forgive myself for shying away from others and staying in my warm, safe shell during high school and college. I wish for a life where I still can understand the importance of consequences, but not so much that it prevents me from moving on and taking chances.

 

What do you regret? How do you deal with guilt?

Speaking of Imperfections…

I will never be a size 0. Okay, perhaps I could be, if my breakfast was air eggs, my lunch non-existant peanut butter and jelly and my dinner and dinner, invisible pizza with a side of ghost breadsticks. The fact is, I am built like a Weber. We are curvaceous and tall. I will never be a petite princess Peach who steps on her magical princess scale and it reads 110 pounds. Excuse the cliche, but it is just not in my stars to be that slender, that sleek like Keira Knightly.

 

Of course, deep down I know that I will never be this thin, but there is a big, heaping part of me that refuses to believe this fact of science. In my mind, even as I type this empowering post now, I believe that one day I will just stop liking the taste of peanut butter and macaroni and cheese and shrink, shrink…disappear!

 

This weekend, my friend Jen took a picture of me, posing with an umbrella at the beach, wearing a blouse and short khaki skirt. I tried to look at the picture and see beauty, but I could not help but vision myself as being too blocky, too muscular. One of the hardest things for me is to look at a photograph. I want my biggest fear to be something like spiders, snakes, ghosts or heights. I used to be deathly afraid of cockroaches and those stairs where there is a crack of open, free-falling air in between, but now my fear is someone flashing a camera in my face, candid and unprepared.

 

I need to accept the way my body and face looks right now is something I need to do, in order to get past my insecurites and be able to flirt, laugh and really enjoy life. I do not want to turn 50, and regret all of the holding back I did in my 20s because I was worried a boy might find me repulsive. I do not want my life to be one of weight worries. I want to feel like a beautiful goddess now, not a work in progress. I do not want to spend anymore time waiting for my life to start, after I just loose those 20 pounds.

Break Up, Wake Up

Dear Scale,

We met again today. I jumped on you, and all you could do was spout that number on me, the one I dreaded. You knew I would be frightened, Scale. Why did you have to give me this number? As she read it, and typed that silly number in the computer, I dazed off, picturing myself during freshman year of college, all puffy faced. Do I look like that again? Will I ever look like that again? You kept whispering that number to me from across the room. She left.

You held out your hand, begging me to come back to you. You are only wearing a robe right now, perhaps I can give you a better number, eh? I walked over, but resisted. What if my doctor came in, and saw me standing on the Scale? She would then know what a turbulent relationship, an obsession I have with you. My two best friends and my family hears my relationship with those numbers you slap in my face. When the number is lower, I feel thin and beautiful. But, when it is higher, I feel like a goofy oaf. You have so much power, Scale. And you are everywhere, even in those travel lodges on the side of the road, the ones with the McDonalds and Burger Kings.

You have made me cry, Scale. You have brought me binges, starvation, grief.  I hibernate in my bed, a shelled creature. I run away from Camera, flashing me, begging me to smile and look. The number you tell me has prevented me from flirting with men, laughing and loving.

Scale, enough is enough. We need to break up. You do sometimes bring me a comfort, a euphoria, even. But, then you bring me those low times, which I cannot bear.

Scale, we need to break up.

Am I worried about life without you? Heck yes. Will I ever come running back? Probably. But, we need to end this before it becomes even more serious.  I am ready to greet the day where I see beauty past just a simple number, see health, in fact, past a simple number. I run, workout and am a curvy girl. Period. Your number might be high for someone else, but it is just perfect for me. And those numbers are going to change, sometimes day by day. But, my beauty will not fade, no matter what some silly scale reads. Scale, I do not need you to monitor if I am healthy. I know when I am eating right and exercising, and when I am being a complete couch potato. No thank you. I do not need your number to monitor how I am taking care of myself.

So, goodbye Scale. I’m through with you. You are ruining my friendships, relationships. I do not need you anymore. My young 20s should not be spend obsessing over a silly number.

Goodbye, Scale.

Rain, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

Since there were no pictures of this painting that I could copy and paste in this post, I have put the link to a high resolution image here:

Rain,  Vincent Van Gogh, 1889  

Rain beats swiftly on the Ghost Town patio

The clowns and jesters have gone

Home to beer and pickles

She tastes sweet cotton candy in sleet and rain

Perhaps hardened jawbreakers will hit her bare skin

Her naked left foot grazes the floor

A splinter pierces her rough padded heel

She winces

Wondering if she will always be in the rain

A princess trapped on a patio

Screwdrivers pounding her head, swelling her stomach for vomit

The mountains so far away from Cotton Candy Rain

As they have always been

She’s frightened to run to their hard, padded feet

Instead, she will eat the rain

Plump like a turkey, she thinks

The forest by the mountain haunts her

There might be pleasant, crisp steams of water, chilling and sensual

But she is so afraid the leaves on the trees

Will cover Cotton Candy Rain

Weight, weight! My Story.

 

A 23 year-old suburbuan white girl with eating/weight issues. Yes, I know this description is a cliche, but I believe that there are many young women (and, yes, even men) can identify with certain aspects of my story with EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified). I want to share my story so other young women know that they are not alone with body/ food issues.

I remember really enjoying food during my middle school years. My best friends and I used these “fat kid voices” we made up whenever we were hungry or were chowing down on junk food. We ran regularly, our metabolisms were on fire. We were not twigs, but we were not plump pigs whatsoever.  I remember fondly going to her house to watch movies and gorge on delicious meals prepared by her mother, such as cocktail weiners and hamburgers. We were both “good girls,”  especially muah–I did not go to a party where there was binge drinking until college and didn’t know what a bong was until I got to college. Instead, food became a party for us, or at least for me. I remember going to a church youth night and just shoving a brownie in my mouth whole. I thought I burned off the calories from running,  so I wasn’t really think of how many calories I was gaining from my recreational activity of gorging.  

Then, I had to move away from North Carolina, and entered a high school where I made very few friends due to my shyness and other existing cliques. Weekend nights were spent alone. The pressure I put on myself senior year made me turn to food even more–Friday nights when no one called me were spent eating bowls and bowls of cereal. I also did not have a boyfriend, and figured that my looks, not my shyness, were the reason I was not exactly Homecoming Queen and in high demand. So, the diet plans began to start. I would try to skip meals, but then end up eating a huge meal at the end of the day. I would give up sweets, but would just end up eating an overload of health foods, which probably added up to the same caloric intake as one cookie. I remember visiting Maura during the summer going to college and breaking down in her car because I was worried that everyone in college was going to run away from me because I was straight-laced and inexperienced with guys.

College hit and then the drinking started. I was drinking any ounce of alcohol there was in sight, because I figured one of the reasons why I never had friends in high school was because I was not getting drunk on weekends. Drunken nights usually ended with me “pigging out.” I would try to cut my caloric intake during the day, by skipping meals or just eating “healthy” food at the cafeteria. I still ran, but not nearly as much as I did in high school during cross-country season. These late night endevours really added up, and I ended up gaining a little more than 20lbs. Though I did find a boyfriend, all my body image issues still remained, and packing on weight did not help at all.

During the following summer back home, I started running more and drinking less. I ended up losing about 10lbs of what I had gained, and I felt better about myself. I stopped eating some foods, and tried to eat “healthier.” There would be a lot of times that I would still think only about food, even when I was hanging at my boyfriend’s house. My goal weight was still 120lbs, and I would keep making up diet plans on pieces of paper. One plan would cut carbohydrates, another would only allow me to eat before 5:00 pm. Still, these plans usually were failures. All this food restriction and weight obsession just made me more hungry and more frustrated in the way I looked.

During the end of sophomore year, I started purging. It first happened after a college party, where I decided to force myself to throw up after drinking too much. I thought, This is great! I can just get rid of all those icky calories from alcohol by making an appointment with the toilet. Of course, I did not really know that you only get rid of a miniscule amount of calories when puking. It felt freeing for me to get to erase my mistakes in an instant. So I went through about two years of on and off purging. When I got to my apartment after classes, I would binge on my roomate’s shredded wheats, whole wheat flour, and even lakes of ketchup. After being completely humiliated with how much I ate, I would run to the bathroom and try to get everything out of my system. I usually ended up staring at the mirror, in complete tears, vowing to never participate in this ritual again. But, I just kept doing it. Bingeing and purging was my coping mechanism, an unhealthy way for me to deal with the stresses of school, relationships social anxiety and low self-esteem. I was so humiliated that I binged and purged, and also became more frustrated with the way I looked, because I was not loosing weight due to all the overeating.

Though I do not purge anymore and have lost even more weight since college, I still have a very negative self-body image and a complex relationship with food. A few days ago, I have vowed to give up dieting, but I still find myself self-monitoring my caloric intake. I am currently reading a book called Runaway Eating, authored by Nadine Taylor and Dr. Cynthia Bulik, which focuses on freeing women from weight and food addictions. One of their biggest advices is breaking free of commiting to strict diets, because often make the dieter more obsessed and focused on food. This is very scary for me, because I am so used to food and weight loss being a big part of my thought process. I know that this fixation has prevented me from enjoying moments in life.

Looking at photographs of me is extremely hard. I see  a manly person with a double chin, big shoulders and a huge face. What would I like to eventually see? A healthy, pretty woman with engaging eyes and a sparkling smile.

So, tell me your story.