Food and the (Fat) Self
- SJ Williamson
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
It's not as much about me being unhealthy as it is about how I was never really taught how to be healthy in what I consumed and how much of it I consumed. My parents tried to get me into physical activities when I was younger; I tried and failed to participate well in soccer, dance, aerobics, and swim. As a high school senior, I was assigned a food journal for my health class where I logged what I ate and those foods' nutritional values for two weeks. That's when I started noticing a problem with my portions, but as an underweight teenager, I thought it wasn't really a problem.
As an adult, that problem with portions started literally weighing on my body. First, it was insane period cramps. Then it was pre-diabetes. Then high cholesterol. Then gaining 60 pounds in one year. Then nausea, hair loss, stomach pain, and acid reflux. Then the diagnosis of IBS. Then Colitis. Then chest-pain. Over the last 15 years of adulthood, I've only gotten sicker. I have tried and failed to sustain physical activity through Zumba, kickboxing, running, weight-lifting, yoga, tennis, badminton, walks in the wilderness, JustDance, physical therapy.
Still, it always somehow comes back to food for me. What I intake is more critical to health for me than what I do with my body. Still, I struggle. I've been on many diets and none seem to last, and that is mostly because of the lack of results from each intentionally inflicted diet: low-carb, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, low-FODMAP, lectin-free, whole 30, gluten-free, wheat-free, low oligosaccharide, intermittent fasting, mindful eating, low acid... God, I've been on a lot of different diets.
The Fear
Now that more and more people I know (granted, most of them have some kind of blood sugar condition rather than just using it for weight loss) are using GLP-1s like Ozempic, I'm actually kind of worried. When I was skinny before I got sicker, I was kind of mad at the world for needing to be on a diet not for weight loss but for health's sake. Now that I'm considered obese (according to my doctor, but I have some objections to the fact that they think I'm 5'1"), I find my food troubles once again weighing on me. I can't go on GLP-1s because of my IBS and Colitis episodes. Now that people have easier access to weight loss, will it be harder for me to make solid relationships?
I say this because many ways I've made friends and engaged with colleagues and future-friends largely through food. I attended Food for Thought during my M.A. program and met my friends and roommates through it. I'd spend late nights grading and bitching about life with friends at Applebee's Happy Hour. A former graduate school friend and I made it our goal to get as much free food as possible by going to all campus events we were welcome at. At conferences, I get together with a friend to eat seafood we can't access in the Midwest. And if it's not food, it's drinks. I've described myself proudly as a fat-ass in the past; for me, fat-assery isn't a weight, BMI, or look, it is a way of life. Despite only being slightly obese medically, I have always had a life centered on indulging in food. Even when I was underweight I embodied fat-assery. As my health declines and I get older, fat-ass lifestyle has started to negatively affect me.
I've been given one of the worst addictions I could know. The problem with food is that I need at least some of it to live. I can't cold-turkey it. It's socially acceptable, even culturally expected, to eat food when gathering with others. In some cultures, it's even rude to reject offered food. Nobody really thought much of my relationship with food as a problem until I gained all that weight back in 2018. Now, it sometimes feels like all people think of when they see me.
So if I am so absorbed into this culture of food, it makes sense that I am afraid of GLP-1s. My current partner describes being on them as being a different person. He no longer thinks about food all the time. Even when he does, he often can't finish portions that would have left him still hungry in the past. I don't know what that is like. I don't think I ever will. Food is always on my mind, especially now that some foods make me physically in pain compared to when my blood tests were just abnormal with no physical symptoms in my 20's.
What do I do next, then? Is there some other type of physical exercise that won't exacerbate my back or chest pain that will help me lose weight slowly and naturally? Is there some medication that won't hurt me but will help me balance food intake and how much food is the center of my life? Do I just lack some kind of self-control around food that other people have? I'm not sure. These are just some of my thoughts and fears as I hopefully move to a new university and city within the next year and find the need to make more friends, colleagues, and romantic relationships.
Maybe I'm wrong about GLP-1's. Maybe they won't make it hard to bond with people over what I love. Maybe there's something else that we can bond over. We'll see.
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