The F-Word is writing about women and social eating today. A lot of it was pretty typical stuff, brownies in the office, getting "permission" from the women around you to eat, etc. Then I got to this:
The International Journal of Eating Disorders recently reported that daughters of mothers who like to diet have a tendency to binge and overeat. In fact, three of the most powerful risk factors for the development of an eating disorder, reports ANRED, are a mother who diets, a sister who diets and/or friends who diet.
“A lot of kids are growing up with mums whose own eating is troubled,” says Orbach. ‘”Mothers can have the best intentions, but they’re often dieting or talking about how fat they are or how they shouldn’t be eating this. It becomes embedded in a girl’s mind that she should be worried about food. She doesn’t even know there’s anything wrong with that idea.”
My mother has always been a bit obsessed with her weight. She was also obsessed with my sister's and my weight. She was so restrictive about what we could eat after school, that she put locks on the cabinets. Of course, she was never willing to acknowledge that 10 and 11 year old children are growing and therefore hungry at 4 0'clock in the afternoon. She started worrying about my sister's weight when my sister was still an infant. Like 9 months old.
My sister is a naturally stocky sort of person. She inherited my father's build when means she's a bit knocked kneed and very barrel chested. I don't mean that she has she has big boobs. Well, she does, but I'm talking about her rib cage. Broad back, broad shoulders, even when she was rail thin. But all my mother saw was fat, and had the poor kid on diet from early times.
I came along after. I inherited my mother's build -- narrow back, long, fine bones, long legs. Not exactly the kind of kid people describe as "coltish", but when I was in high school people use to talk to me about being a model. In my freshman year of high school I was 5'9", 135 lbs, and on a diet. I thought I was kind of fat. And my mother did not attempt, ever, to dissuade me of this idea. She didn't exactly encourage me to go on diets with her and my sister who was always thought to need to diet away the size of her ribcage, but she certainly welcomed me into the fold with open arms. "Couldn't hurt to lose a few."
My mother is not entirely to blame for all this. My grandmother, who I absolutely adored, was just as bad. Around my senior year in high school when I was maybe 150, my grandmother came for a visit, and the first words out of her mouth (really, she was still giving me a hug) were "You're getting a little bit chubby, aren't you?" Now granted, for someone with my build, 150 might be a few pounds over ideal, especially since I wasn't really athletic, so it wasn't muscle. But chubby? I think not.
So I spent the last 20 years screwing up my metabolism by dieting. Now I'm trying to fix it with a low-carb eating plan and a few drugs to smack down the impulsive eating. Apparently, I'm going to have to also bitch-slap the voices of several generations of women in my family, too.
Can we all take a vow, right now, that we won't do this to our daughters? We want them to be healthy and this sure isn't.
