#you just get rice cakes and a treadmill and a tiny jillian michaels

[lightandwinged]

So I have to rant about a health thing and it's related to dieting and weight loss/things around that, so if that's a triggering subject for you, either ignore this or if you really want to read it, read with knowledge that this is the subject matter at hand.

You see, I entered my medical group's nonsurgical bariatric program this month.

This isn't something I was planning on doing just yet, mostly because I believe firmly that physical health and mental health go hand-in-hand, and while I do want to get my physical health figured out, I'm trying to blow apart the kinks with my mental health right now, which is a process. I'm doing EMDR to work through some fucked up traumatic memories, and it's working wonders, but it's exhausting and hard work.

BUT then I went in to my primary because my ability to have an orgasm has dwindled to near zero in recent months. And not going into too much detail about that, but considering my history of spinal injury, that's a huge red flag, so my primary for once got really alarmed when I told her something and asked me to come in.

My primary is not very good with fat people. I've had primaries who are good with fat people, who've sort of said, "yeah, your BMI isn't where I'm supposed to say it is, but you're otherwise perfectly healthy, so let's talk about what you came in here for today," and they're great. This primary... well, she hears out my complaint but wants to mostly focus on my weight the whole time. Like as little as possible on the complaint (e.g., "that spot looks like a mole, so here's a referral to the dermatologist. Now, they did weigh you when you came in, and I noticed that...") and most of it on my weight. It's annoying.

And this time was no exception. She's concerned about my migraines and loss of sensation, so she gave me referrals to neurology and PT and then we started talking about my weight. She asked if I still drank Dr. Pepper (which I was like, "yeah, but I'm not fucking him, so what does this have to do with my orgasms?") and then offered to refer me to the practice's nonsurgical bariatric program, and I said sure, because I wanted her to leave me alone.

And so far, it's not great. The advice they have for weight loss is the kind of shit you can find on any Reddit thread about Lizzo. It's the kind of bland, soulless one-size-fits-all diet approach that I could get without subjecting myself to copays--shit like "aim for no more than 1200-1500 calories a day and exercise at least 150 minutes a week" which literally, you google "diet" and there it is, that exact advice.

And it's not what I want. I know that I have issues with food. I stress eat, and I eat my safe foods in order to keep some semblance of order in my chaotic life. I've developed a fear of wasting food for some reason (it never used to exist; I used to be like "mm, two bites was enough noodle"), and so I tend to wolf down way more food than I should because I don't want to throw any away, especially if it's something I really like. Being autistic, I have very beige safe foods because the foods that are the same taste and temperature every time tend to be beige and super processed. My relationship with vegetables and fruits is fraught. And though I've never LIKED doing a lot of moving around (and living on a hill that's at a 45 degree angle doesn't help that), the trauma of my spinal injury really made it terrifying for me, like if I do too much in the wrong way, I'll be screaming for my life in the back of an ambulance again.

In other words, I know what my issues are. And what I want is to have a healthy relationship with food. I want to eat for the joy of it, not for a hit of dopamine or to wolf down a plate of pasta carbonara bigger than my face because I'm afraid of it being wasted. I want to enjoy the flavors of the foods I eat and savor them and embrace everything that food is besides fuel: it's joy, it's community, it's art, it's culture. I want to feel the way I've felt when eating a new dish so very often. I want to embrace vegetables and fruits. And I want to move. I want to hike all the gorgeous paths nearby. I want to dance without getting super tired. I want to walk around the city without hurting.

But this program.

They gave us a handbook, and the moralization of food is just. Everywhere. Salmon good. Kale good. Egg good. But god forbid you have a slice of cake at a coworker's birthday party. The handbook writes about it, "too bad about the cake, but you'll do better the rest of the day." When we had group therapy the other day, two participants had just gone on vacation and were beating themselves up for not eating "good" on vacation (not "well" because eating well and eating good are two different things). They kept lamenting how they were bad for eating at restaurants because they couldn't control what was in the food, and I was like... if we were all way thinner, our therapist would be telling us to stop sweating it, so wtf?

But instead, the therapist talked about whether this was a "lapse" in judgment or a "relapse" into eating bad. And I do get that food is an addiction in a lot of times and that learning to not binge eat or eat mindlessly is very important. I'm working on mindful eating myself. But lord almighty, I'm not going to self flagellate over going to a nice restaurant on vacation because I couldn't see how much salt was going in the dish. For me, the victory on vacation would be having that dish I couldn't control because I wouldn't know what was in it and trying something new and maybe even liking it.

I just. nngh. I don't love being fat. I miss buying straight size clothes and not feeling like I take up too much space and not feeling like my ass needs a "wide load" sign on it. But if I lose weight, I want it to be from a healthy and sustainable place, not from a place of hyper control. I have negative interest in weighing myself every day, as they suggest. I have negative interest in even thinking about losing weight when I travel. I want a healthy relationship with food, but this isn't it, not by a long shot.