After a lifetime struggling with compulsive, secretive, and restrictive eating, I’m still figuring out how to have a healthy relationship with food.
Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
It's a late night in winter, and I am standing over my gas stove heating a metal spoon. I hold the handle gently in my fingers, carefully rotating the bowl over the tips of the indigo flames as the pale yellow pat of Smart Balance butter inside begins to liquefy. The sleeves of my oversized sweatshirt graze the middle of my palms and I step on the hem of my baggy sweatpants as, slowly, I pull the spoon away. A tiny drop of hot liquid falls on my toes as I tip its contents over the edge of a plain white bowl filled with sugar. I add flour, some milk, a few drops of vanilla, and a handful of chocolate chips. I stir. I taste.
I take the bowl to the couch, balance it precariously on the edge, and lie down on my side, my fingers the only utensil, pinching stray sugary flecks off the velvet dark gray fabric as The Real Housewives of New Jersey blares on the TV. It's been nearly three years since a therapist told me I'm a disordered eater. Yet, after one personal trainer, over two years of therapy, three juice cleanses, four gym memberships, 20 pounds lost, 30 pounds gained back, and thousands of dollars spent on healthy groceries and high-end cookware, I am 24 years old and spending another night, like so many nights before, eating a bowl of last-minute, mediocre cookie dough alone in my apartment at 11 p.m. And I hate myself for it.
Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
I've been overweight — or bordering on it — nearly my entire life, at least since my family moved to the U.S. when I was 4. When I was a child, a routine fight between my Hungarian mother and me was over how much I ate for dinner. Propping my elbows on our scratched dining table, I'd watch her petite, pale hands hovering above me, ladling spoon upon spoon of rice on my father's plate. "NO FAIR, DAD GOT THE BIGGER ONE," I'd cry out when my own would finally land, unable to grasp why a 5-foot-10-inch, 200-plus-pound Nigerian man would need to eat more than I did. Seconds, for me, were a must. Thirds weren't unusual.
Growing up in a white, affluent neighborhood in Lubbock, Texas, I was the only Anita in a sea of Amandas, Brittanys, and Tiffanys. I was biracial, brown and round, with a puffy ball of hair that sat squarely banded in the middle in my head. The boys called it a "burnt marshmallow" and "tumor." Isolated and othered, I began using food as a coping mechanism around middle school, when my parents began letting me walk home (across the street) alone. I'd spend the two hours until my mom got off work by myself. My best friends had "boyfriends" in the way suburban preteens can — notes, stuffed animals, dates at the roller rink on school skate night. I had a gallon of Edy's chocolate chip waiting in the freezer for me each day.
Eventually, my mom realized I was sneaking food and she started hiding sweets in the kitchen in hopes of curbing my steady weight gain. Instead, I became an expert at climbing on countertops, calculating how much I could eat of something before she would notice, and burying wrappers in the trash. Often, I'd throw away the balanced, nutritious lunches she'd pack me — whole wheat wraps and sandwiches, fruits, veggies, hard-boiled eggs — in favor of pizza and curly fries. "You ate your lunch today, right?" she'd ask cautiously, waiting for the "yes" we both knew was a lie. She was careful not to tie my weight to my worth, but rather reminded me constantly that what I was doing wasn't healthy. Looking back, I can't blame her, but at the time I felt betrayed. Though I couldn't articulate it then, taking those foods away from me was taking away the one thing that made me feel like I wasn't alone. I was already the chubby black girl; I didn't want to be the chubby black girl on a diet.
