Dieting is a Conservative Tool to Control You
A nourished body is a less reactive body.
I don’t have the capacity to make this intellectual or organized. This has been one of the hardest weeks for me to show up to work as I’m sure it’s been for many of you. I’ve been lucky to have no emotional attachment to a job that most would consider “emotionally draining”. But after 2.5 days of holding space for my clients in their eating disorder recovery during a tipping point in our nations history, I’m drained.
I should start by saying that I’m so grateful to witness my clients give themselves so much compassion during this time. As their bodies are being thrown around by waves of grief, rage, and fear, many of them are forgiving themselves for falling back into restriction and emotional eating. Despite the unfortunate reality of the cause, I feel lucky to witness folks who have chronically blamed themselves for the problems of the world to finally assign someone else blame.1 I support it. Give your body a few days to feel the wave. Get it out. Get the high. And when Monday comes, start feeding yourself consistently again. Buckle your body up because this is going to be a turbulent ride.
But having to explain to those who are unable to give themselves compassion has been unbearable. Of all weeks. As their body enters fight or flight from their country voting for a fascist puppet who plans on taking their rights away, they’re still convinced that they should be disciplined enough to shrink their bodies. Babe - that “discipline” is their primary tool to control you.
Again - I have no capacity to make this intellectual. I’m writing to avoid feeling the intensity of my feelings in hopes that it will help someone else. If you’re a feminist who have feminist friends who are tempted to diet, can you send them this?
Right now - in this moment while both men AND women all over the country decided that it’s okay to control your body, that your life is worth less than their power trip- are you thinking about dieting? Are you considering slimming your body to be sexier? More palatable? To avoid the sensation of your own flesh? So that you don’t have to feel the weight of our current reality? Are you handing them the last bit of your control? A crumb on a large white plate.
Before you go back to counting calories or macros or surviving off green juice please pause and consider how these methods were designed to control you. An undernourished brain can’t think about anything other than the body and food. Even as you try your best to resist - a starving brain keeps food in the forefront of your mind in an effort to make you seek it out. It will struggle to think, sleep, or find pleasure in anything other than food until its consistently and adequately fueled. You end up obsessively baking. Your social media feed gets filled with food content. It’s all you can talk about with friends. You fall into a diet-related MLM. As you continue to resist, the obsession feeds itself. There’s no room for anything else.
Haven’t you heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? A hungry body can’t prioritize safety. A hungry body will isolate itself and feel threatened when sharing meals with others. It doesn’t have the energy to engage in meaningful relationships or have self-esteem. It for sure as hell can’t produce the neurotransmitters to feel good or loved or even think clearly.
What a simple way to control a population. Starve them. Deprive their brains so they can run wild with obsessions about their body and food so they are powerless against all other methods of coercive control. Convince them that they need not carbohydrates just a ton of fiber and a wee bit of protein. When their blood sugar crashes, blame them for their hormonal mood swings. Brittle bones? A consequence of high estrogen. Not at all from being told to stay away from eating or gaining fat for their entire upbringing!! A required daily afternoon nap? Womanly. Chronic health issues and digestive flares? Hysteria. She’ll have slender features and protruding bones. So delightfully feminine. She won’t have the strength to run from her husband or reject his touch. Her libido will be subdued. She won’t have the ability to recognize how she’s constantly gaslit because her head spends the whole day in the clouds. She can’t stop it from spinning.
White supremacist patriarchy created the thin ideal to control your body, your energy, your mind. Our culture has convinced us that body fat will make you lazy when it will actually help you focus. That it will slow you down when it’s actually used as fuel during exercise to help make you strong. That if you gain weight, your husband will stop touching you2. If he proves our culture right, that is simply by design. None of it is true. And if you diet, you end up surrounding yourself by people who think just like you were taught to. Gaslit to believe that everyone exists just like you. Don’t let them convince you. There are people who exist the way you dream to. Who will love you unconditionally and want you to be fully capable and strong. I promise. If more of us feed ourselves adequately, there will be more of us to combat the regression of our society.
A woman who eats is a woman who can feel and think. Her emotions are clearer, more regulated. Stable is her mood.3 The fat on her body fuels her sexual appetite. She feels pleasure in everything. She’s strong. Fast. Sharp. Witty. Self-actualized. Independent. A man can’t dominate her. She doesn’t need him to.
When she loves herself, she can love others. She flourishes in her connections and is integrated in diverse communities. She can better support the needs of others and can welcome the reciprocation.
It’s normal for humans to attempt to find agency by controlling their bodies when they otherwise have none. But you also don’t have to. If you’re reading this you likely have the choice to eat. Doing so will give you the energy to find ways in which you can create agency and keep fighting. Imagine who you could be if you were adequately fueled. They have taken so much from you already, if food is the last thing you have control over, why not let it fuel you instead of letting it control you?
And when you start to feel the stabilizing effects of adequate nourishment, who else can you fuel? Who else, through a meal, can you free from the confines of white patriarchal supremacy? Who else is hungry? Your Uber Eats delivery driver? The homeless on the street? Your neighbors who you are afraid to share the bus with on the “South Side” of the city?
What about your friend from high school who became entrapped by an MLM? Or your keto-obsessed immigrant family? Who else is starving themselves to get a taste of the “American Dream”? Imagine the gift you can give them by helping them realize it is just a mirage creating by the high of restricting.
Feed yourself. Feed your friends. Feed your community.
If you don’t understand what this means. Lucky you. If you’re curious, what a great question to help understand your friend in recovery.
I have a list of liberated men who would be grateful to touch more of you.
Yes! Your PMS symptoms and hormonal shifts are normal but severity of them is much greater when you’re not eating enough food.
This was great, thanks!