Size Ate

This past Friday, I had the amazing opportunity to see Margaux Laskey's one-woman show, Size Ate. I almost didn't go. I didn't think I had anyone to see it with, then Marissa mentioned free tickets, and I decided that for free, I would go alone. Then I ended up roping Ana in to see it with me (it was not very hard to do).

I laughed, I cried, I wished I had a pen and paper to write down meaningful things she said, and I thought. A lot. Thinking is what I did most of all.

I think that different parts of the show struck a chord with different people. One thing that got almost everyone, whether they had eating disorders or not, was "the walking scene" where Margaux is walking up and down the blocks of NYC to burn off her nearly-nonexistent caloric intake. Personally, I could remember being there. I even got one of those nostalgic twinges in my stomach, wishing to go back, if only for a day, an hour, a minute. But that wasn't the kicker for me.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the quote exactly (I am going to try to ask Margaux for it and will update you)...but it was something to the effect of, "Mothers die...children grow up...something else that I related to less went here and it was emphasized that LIFE GOES ON."
Well, if you know me personally, you know that my mother did not die. But if you know me really deeply, you know that that is one of my greatest fears and perhaps played some sort of part in the development of my eating disorder.
If you know me on the inside, or if you have a really good perception of people, you might also know that growing up is one of my biggest fears and that I have used my ED to avoid that as well, in addition to lots of childlike coping mechanisms that are healthier, like watching kids' movies, playing with toys, etc.
And if you have seen me struggle and see me now, you know that the biggest thing I am trying to teach myself is that life goes on. People die, life goes on. Children grow up, life goes on. We gain weight, life goes on. We eat two pieces of cake, life goes on. We lose an important piece of correspondence at work, life goes on. We run out of gas on the highway, life goes on. We fall in love, we fall out of love, we win, we lose, we achieve, we fall short, but no matter what, life goes on.

Another thing that kept running through my head was, "Size Ate." Because the truth is, I AM a size eight now (usually. sometimes a ten, sometimes a six...hell sometimes I'm a 12 and occasionally I buy an XS...it varies!) and thoughts go through my mind..."is she saying that this is the perfect size? her perfect size? it's not the perfect size for me! I'm too big." I'm too big at a size eight? I was a size sixteen once. I remember going from 16 being too tight to finally fitting to 14 (when I said to my mom, "And soon I'll be a 12, then a 10, then an 8, then---" she stopped me and said, "we don't want you getting too thin! Just healthy!") to 12 to 10 and when I fit in the size 8, when I hit that single digit, of COURSE it wasn't good enough. I still feel huge! Some days I feel pretty but I am bigger than a lot of my friends (many of whom are in recovery from anorexia, though, so I'm not really comparing myself to the right people), bigger than the models, bigger than Rachel, Phoebe, and Monica who I watch on Friends, bigger than my therapist, nutritionist, and psychiatrist - all of whom I admire, bigger bigger bigger. (Notice that I'm not listing on here all the people who I'm smaller than. The average size in America is 14 so I'm smaller than more than half of the American women...but does this appease me AT ALL? No. I only want to be smaller than the people who I'm bigger than, of course. I only want to wear a size smaller than what I already wear. If I become a consistent size six, I'll want to be a four. That's what's so appealing about being a 00...nothing comes before it. Well, not in "grownup clothes" at least.)

I will never be a size 0 or anything close to it. It is possible that if I had my genes and a different childhood where we didn't eat sweets, where we were active and never watched tv, where I didn't drink soda, where I never was overweight as a child, I might have eventually healthily grown into a size 0. I have a small bone structure, for real, I do.

But I grew up with parents who were so proud of me for eating three helpings one day that I started to eat three helpings of dinner every night ,even if I really didn't want to. I drank soda and ate Oreos to the point that I couldn't sleep at night because I liked the bubbles in the soda and I liked the mushiness of the Oreos (FYI: seltzer has bubbles too, and broccoli can be cooked to the texture of mushy Oreos, so if my parents were really concerned, they could have made some changes). It was exciting to be only 11 and able to order from the "grownup menu" but if you were going to order from the grownup menu, you had to plan to eat it all! I wasn't a compulsive eater by any means, but I was not a healthy eater and I wasn't very well informed at all. I knew that diets consisted of Diet Coke, salads, and SlimFast and I knew that kids weren't supposed to go on them. Sometimes I was uncomfortable with my size and I wished to get smaller but it never happened.

In 7th grade, The Best Little Girl in the World happened. I would like to thank my 7th grade English teacher, who could never get my name right and always got me in trouble, for assigning the book that made me realize an eating disorder was possible. Would I have found restricting and purging to be ways to cope at some other point in my life without having ever had this book or having Mr. Feig as a teacher? It's quite likely, especially due to the torment I began to steadily receive in middle school due to being overweight. I skipped a meal for the first time in 7th grade. I used to eat lunch in Health class, because that's what the kids who took band had to do. So, I stopped being Healthy and ditched the lunch. No one ever said anything. Nothing negative, anyway. On the outside, I started getting comments about my weight loss and I loved it.

My sixth grade graduation dress was a size 14 (I was not even 5 feet tall). My eighth grade graduation dress was a 13 (which they say translates into a 14 but I'd say it's more like a smallish 12...since Juniors and Women's sizes are so different). When I buy a dress now, I buy a 6 or an 8.

Sometimes, I say that I am lucky in that I have never had to gain weight as part of recovery from my eating disorder, in the true "weight gain" sense at least. However, part of my recovery has been gaining five pounds and accepting it. Sometimes realizing it's muscle. Sometimes realizing that I'll lose it after my period. And sometimes realizing that bodies change, mine included.

It was funny, really, when I hit my own personal "size ate." I had been a size ten for about a year and some months of a stable recovery. I had gotten really into fitness for a while, and was weight training and dabbling in kickboxing, in addition to doing lots of yoga. When I weighed myself, I was shocked to see that I had gained five pounds, and when I searched for dresses for my cousin's wedding, I was pretty sure that I'd need to buy a size 12, not a size 10. It turned out that I actually needed a size 8, because the numbers may have gone up, but the body had built muscle and changed shape.

Just two days before seeing Margaux perform "Size Ate," I had a little realization myself. I, like most other people in recovery from eating disorders, "feel fat" a lot, and become convinced that I am gaining weight when I am eating something enjoyable, relaxing, not exercising for a long period of time, etc. I had a doctor's appointment with my ED specialist for the first time in a few months, and I knew she was going to weigh me, and I don't always like her response. I said to my therapist, "I am going to need to weigh myself!" She suggested to me, "You're seeing Laura (nutritionist) that day, why don't you have her weigh you first, instead of doing it at home, since you haven't in so long?" I had never weighed myself at my nutritionist's office. We agreed that it would be best to focus on the fact that my weight is not important right now. So, I saw Laura's scale for the first time - the same exact scale as my former nutritionist had. The last time I had seen this nutritionist, S, had been back in 2008, nearly two years ago. I stepped on Laura's scale and was the exact same weight as I had been on S's scale two years earlier. To the tenth of a pound.

And I have eaten brownies, cupcakes, cookies, pizza, lasagna, chicken nuggets, french fries, sweet potato fries, peanut butter fudge ice cream sundaes, pasta, potato latkes, full-fat salad dressing, and so forth. I have survived two thanksgivings, two christmases, a handful of Jewish holidays, birthdays, work parties, reunions, etc. I have exercised regularly, and I have gone months without exercising.

And the truth is, for the majority of the past two years, I have listened to my body and done what it wanted, and my weight didn't budge.

Would I have liked it to have gone down? Yes, yes I would have. Was I WORKING at it going down? No.

I may be able to pull out pages and pages of evidence saying that I am NOT at a healthy weight and need to lose 10, 20, 30, 50 pounds in order to be healthy. However, I just wrote pages of evidence right here saying that I am just fine.

Weight doesn't matter. Food doesn't matter. Size doesn't matter.

Intuition, that's what matters. Feeling good (or trying to). Breaking free.