“Do you have any idea how many calories are in that piece of pie?”
It was early 2003. I, still a bright-eyed college freshman, had just ordered a slice of chocolate peanut butter pie from a café on campus. The girl behind the counter seemed…annoyed? Disgusted? I recognized her from some classes we had taken together in our first semester. She worked at the café a few evenings a week, so she’d seen me order this dessert a few times before.
“No,” I quickly replied, “should I?”
She stared at me a bit longer, and then as if to really make a point, loudly sighed as she handed over the piece of pie. I paid for it and rushed back to the table where my friends were.
This interaction lasted 90 seconds at most. 18 years later, I can still remember it as if it was yesterday.
Heal thyself
As I’ve shared in previous posts, I first started purging in high school as a way to take back control from what I now know to be ADHD. However, my bulimia soon became its own monster, enabled by society’s obsession with diets, my perfectionist tendencies, and the positive attention I received from adults and peers who had no idea how much I was struggling.
When I went to college, I decided to quit my eating disorder cold turkey. Living with two other girls in a dorm room would make things harder to hide. Plus, I figured if I was able to start purging, I could also stop purging just as easily (yes, I was in complete denial about eating disorders being mental health disorders that don’t just stop).
I wanted to start college life fresh and leave behind what I considered the weak, insecure Brittany who couldn’t pay attention and who threw up her food. So, I cut off my hair, instituted a no-dating-during-freshman-year rule for myself, and decided calories didn’t matter. I was going to focus. I wouldn’t purge and I would eat what I wanted. I was going to be “normal.”
I truly thought I could heal myself this way. It worked for about 6 months.
And then came the Pie Conversation.
If you can’t say something nice…
The Pie Conversation helped me realize two important things:
- Ignoring my eating disorder hadn’t healed me at all (surprise surprise!); and
- We weren’t actually talking about the pie at all – we were talking about diet culture.
It also turned out to mark the start of my journey towards untangling myself from diet culture. As I finished college and went out into the world, I learned I wasn’t going to fully escape talk of calories, diets, or weight on my road to recovery from bulimia. Even flat out telling people I had an eating disorder didn’t stop them from discussing their calorie intake with me or saying I didn’t “look sick” or asking how I stayed a certain size despite eating “a lot.” I had to learn what it meant to be a holistically healthy person in a society hell bent on convincing me to lose weight, eating disorder or no.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes in the 18 years since the Pie Conversation is my mindset and the boundaries I set for myself. When triggering comments or conversations come up, I now have strategies for how I approach them. Journaling has helped me process a lot of pain and emotions. This year, starting therapy and getting a formal ADHD diagnosis has marked the next phase on my journey towards recovery and away from diet culture. And friends, it’s been exhausting, but I’m really excited about it.
Moral of the story
When I shared the Pie Conversation story with my coach back in April, she asked me if there was anything I would say to that girl now if I ever saw her again. And even though part of me still wants to punch her in the face, I reflected on the fact that her judging the food choices of a complete stranger spoke volumes about her own unhappiness and insecurities. Insecurities that had nothing to do with me. What I’d honestly say to her now is that I hoped she was finally happy with herself and her life.
You would think the moral to this story is to keep unsolicited advice or opinions to yourself because you have no idea where others are on their journeys. That’s definitely part of it. But the real moral of this story is to always remember that other people’s ignorant and uninformed comments about your weight or body have nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
I know me saying this doesn’t automatically erase that thing your grandmother said at Christmas, or that look your mother-in-law gave you when you went for seconds at dinner, or your friend’s “Quarantine 15” joke. I know that hurt, and I’m sorry you had to experience that. As I close this post, I need you to know that those things are not. Your. Fault. Your life has so much more value beyond what you weigh or what you eat.
