Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of women, nonbinary and gender-diverse writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find in this column, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.
I don’t know when my relationship with diet culture started. Isn’t it always like that? That thing that keeps showing up over and over again but you don’t recognize it until you’re in an affair with it? I woke up one day and was all the way in it. A whirlwind love affair that I knew was toxic, but couldn’t quit.
Perhaps it started in adolescence. Bodies start changing, hormones start raging. Comments begin about the difference between the body of a little girl and a woman. The introduction of women’s magazines and, even worse, teen magazines. And in my time, music videos. Oh, the music videos and the age of the video vixen. How badly I wanted the body of a video vixen and the approval of the male gaze.
In my teens, I was athletic and active. My body was “desirable,” but there was always the underlying conversation around my genetic makeup.
“You’re big-boned.”
“You’re lifting heavy weights? Be careful.”
“You’re getting fat.”
The programming was always there: the SlimFast commercials, the women on the covers of magazines, the weight talk. I internalized the idea that my body was “bad.” But I didn’t actively pursue changing my body until adulthood.
A funny thing happens when you become aware of the space your body takes up. It occurs overnight, the shift from living in your body with peace and grace, and then shifting to disgust.
Something had to change, and fast. I didn’t blame the relationship with diet culture. I blamed myself. I was the problem.
My relationship with diet culture deepened. It became toxic.
It started with a few Pilates classes and some spin classes. Then I started trying everything. Running, boxing, yoga.
Then it moved to food. WeightWatchers? Sure. Atkins Diet? Yes, please. No meat? Sign me up. I did whatever was necessary to keep up with the relationship. We were in love, and this was how I did my part.
Things changed when my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. My relationship with diet culture was stripped away from me. I could no longer keep up with the high demands of macros and two-a-day workouts. The fine print of the relationship is cost and time. I drastically cut hours at work to be with my mom and could no longer afford the protein powders, the fancy workouts and the strict grocery requirements.
I didn’t want to, but we had to break up.
It’s hard to leave a controlling relationship. I began spiraling.
While I sat alone with my thoughts, diet culture kept moving along without me. I was heartbroken, sad and living with the “extra weight” of the tumultuous yet thrilling relationship I had walked away from. I cried a lot and started hiding.
When my mom passed and everyone went home after celebrating her, I took the first opportunity I could to rekindle my love affair with diet culture. But it felt different. It felt yucky. It hurt. I was angry about the abuse I’d endured all those years and even more infuriated by my desire to try again.
It wasn’t a smooth journey. The minute I decided to leave, I was left with a feeling of emptiness. How do I replace this nearly decade-long relationship? I couldn’t imagine myself in another relationship of this depth and need. Diet culture needed me, and I very much needed it. We were soul-tied. I was dependent on the need to make diet culture love and accept me.
But the more I tried, the more I realized I was outgrowing the relationship. I was learning new things about myself through therapy and self-care. I couldn’t keep up with my self-love journey while harming myself.
I began to look at how diet culture affected me. I was hypersexualized. I had low self-esteem and self-worth, and no awareness of all the other qualities I possessed that made me special. I was tired and miserable. Most of all, I was lonely. The preoccupation with keeping diet culture in my life left me empty: strained relationships, lots of debt and, most of all, no sense of self.
So I left on my terms. I felt liberated.
Diet culture didn’t seem to care. I began a new relationship with body liberation, a term coined by author Chrissy King. I replaced the fad diets with nourishment and joy. I replaced the “burn to earn” mentality and started moving my body because I love her, not to punish her.
What I found on the other side of my relationship with diet culture was me. And I’m dope. Beautiful and embodied. My body is good, no matter what size she is. She carried me through a toxic relationship and came out on the other side stronger and better because of it.
