Food Rules and College Roomies

I just returned from a five-day ski trip to Breckenridge with three of my college roommates. It’s been over 30 years of friendship that has seen us through life’s ups and downs — graduations, first jobs, marriages, births, divorces, deaths. This trip, we were rallying around one of us who was going through a breakup. There was a lot of wine, catching up and commiserating during hot tub time.

Despite how much I was looking forward to going on this trip — and to be clear, it was a wonderful trip — I knew there would be exposure to lots of eating rules and airing of body issues. What surprised me was the sheer volume of discussion and how so little of it is recognized as the BS brainwashing of diet culture.

These are all smart, educated women, and I was right there with them six months ago.

I should have tapped out on dieting way sooner than that. I regret that it took not just having a second child with anorexia but seeing that second child severely backsliding before I realized that I would have to address my own food issues if I was going to really help her with hers. I had a strong education in the things you do and say to support someone with an eating disorder, and have been religiously following it since my first child got treatment. For example, we don’t talk about dieting or restriction, we don’t treat foods as good or bad bad, “healthy” or “unhealthy,” because there is a place for all foods, and we absolutely don’t talk about body size, shape or appearance. 

While I was following these rules as they relate to my kids, but I wasn’t for myself. I wasn’t emotionally ready to reject diets, and I don’t begrudge my former self that. I wasn’t ready until I was ready, and it was with absolute trepidation that I let it go when I did. I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to. 

The start of my real education — my super deep dive into diet culture and all of the ways it makes itself known and does damage — didn’t happen until I went all in on my recovery. And I still have a long way to go and things to learn, but I’m light years ahead of where I was. 

For many years, even if I was restricting, it was done out of my children’s eyes, or so I thought. Based on what my older daughter has shared with me now, my kids were thankfully shielded from most of my own food neuroses. But while I was talking the talk, I wasn’t walking the walk. I had so many food rules that I didn’t recognize as rules. So much of my behavior was done in the name of health, but now I see it was used purely for weight loss. Even as I was preaching no food was bad — and at least I was preaching no food was bad, which is absolutely critical in a house with someone with an eating disorder — I was avoiding Oreos, regular Coke, pasta, bread, cereal and countless other items, only eating them at certain times of day or as rewards for overexercise or after severe restriction.

My dear friends are no different. 

It makes me mad, but not at them. I don’t blame them. It took a child with a life-threatening Illness for me to see what had to be done. My friends haven’t had that wake-up call yet, and maybe they never will. But I feel sad for them because I see the cage they’re in, the stories they tell themselves, the lies they believe about themselves, the frustration, shame, worry and pain that they carry, and I don’t want that for them — or anyone else. I want to tell them that I was right there once too but now I know there is another way. I just haven’t found the right way to say it yet, or maybe I’m working up my own courage and just not brave enough yet. Day by day, I’m finding my voice and footing, my role to play, and I know standing up and speaking out is important. But I also know that even when the right decision was staring me in the face, I couldn’t act on it until I had absolutely no other option.

I am still working through some of the same emotions my friends have. The difference is that I see those emotions for what they are, the roots of them — stemming from both societal pressure and my own personal experience —and how messed up they are. I’m actively working through them, not hiding from them. Some days it means deliberately saying fuck you to those emotions. Some days it means taking a stand. 

I don’t have all the answers, and I am learning it’s ok to be patient with myself. 

I keep coming back to something my therapist said in a previous session about how what my body chooses to do — its regulation, including weight — isn’t really my business. I’m getting there. This trip has given me a sense of perspective at how far I have come, and I am taking a moment to appreciate the journey so far. I am truly learning to accept my body for what it is now and worried less abut what it will be. I am awed by it even if I don’t still always love it. More importantly, I feel the lightness that comes from not holding onto my own judgments about my eating, my activity and my body.