no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I'm really, really sick of "HAHA it was only LOLS!" being used an excuse for general douchey behaviour, whether it's racism, sexism or ~POLICING YOUR FOOD CHOICES~ crap. I just have zero tolerance for that kind of thing any more. IO is right; intentionally causing someone harm like that is a violent act, no matter what their reasoning.

Sorry, I did that thing where I ask a Really Big Question on a thread, then disappear for several hours. Went off to therapy and guess what, boundaries / control / food issues was a big, big, big sack of emotional vomit there, so, well.

I'm going to have a think and eat some pasta (LOL, ENBB, I am going to think of your "aggressive" pasta eating at dancers while I do it) and come back and respond and talk and try to explain what I was on about.

a waiter in SF actually said 'you go girl' when I ordered pork belly
I... didn't really know how to react

tbh no-one ever comments on my food and I'd find it really bizarre if I saw it happening a lot. Because it's a really weird thing to do! Says more about the commenter imo. I guess in the workplace it can be a lazy way of starting conversation? but only up to a point...

I find my stubborness really works overtime in food-shaming situations. Like if someone brings donuts into work, there's a subset of coworkers who will take a knife and cut off like an eighth of a donut and leave the rest. But they have to do it with a loud 'ooh yes I only want a little I'm being good today' and then all the other sheeple will suddenly feel bad for wanting a whole donut and then everyone's carving off stupid tiny slices so my inner 5 year old goes into a rage and deliberately reaches past them for a whole donut

They shame each other into doing it, I see them do it a lot, and it drives me crazy. Eat what you want! Don't narrate for everyone around you if you're going to have a small portion. Just have a small portion and own it. but don't make the person who wants/needs to eat a full portion feel bad. Everyone can eat however much or little they want and I will not side-eye anyone for it. But publicly announcing for purposes of shaming drives me INSANE.

idk if that's off or on-topic but it was on my mind

HIGH FIVE

I dunno what it is...Mum used to make comments like 'Oh Sharon' if I'd go back for seconds and maybe it's just my YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME gene, but that kind of stuff just enrages me so much.

It's so performative. It's preemptive self-shaming in case anybody was going to cluck their tongues at you for your donut consumption.

I dunno, I kinda find that "you go, girl" kind of responses just as patronising/bad as the "are you *sure* you want cheese with that?" responses and the "~diet~ coke?" "No, I said coke. I want a *fat* coke" interactions. Do not comment on my fucking food. Unless that comment is "excellent choice, the X is particularly tasty today."

I mean, I'm very good at eating whatever it was I wanted in the first place / taking the whole donut if I want a whole donut. And then fuming silently for hours or weeks - or even years, as in stuff I'm bringing up now - about it afterwards.

Strangers are actually easier to ignore than acquaintances/colleagues, and they are easier to ignore than family and relationships. Ugh, it's just... this stuff is embedded down real deep, and that deep level stuff really isn't easy to deal with. I dunno what's worse. The looks of barely sublimated rrrage from strangers at seeing a visibly fat woman enjoying the fuck out of an ice cream. Or the concern trolling from my Mum. No, definitely, the stuff from my Mum is worse, because that goes back so far.

And what we talked about in therapy (god, sorry for bringing up therapy. Discussing other people's therapy is like discussing other people's dreams, a mixture of boring and awkwardly private) was trying to understand the motivation of *why* people behave like that. Understanding people's motivations for why they do things which I find threatening or hurtful or deeply upsetting, as a way of trying to understand and defuse it. And I think ENBB was onto that thing. It is the response of people who have been on a diet their entire lives, who have denied themselves pleasure their entire lives, who are outraged that here is a chubby person (violating rule 1 by even existing) enjoying the fuck out of food (violating rule 2) and the amount of anger they have of, like, why am I allowed to get away with this behaviour when they're denying themselves?

With my Mother, it's way more complicated, because my Mother has been fat as long as I remember, has been on every diet known to mankind (does the whole lose 5 pounds thing, gain 7 pounds right back over, and over, and over again), has been ordered by her doctor to lose weight, and only gets fatter and fatter, has knee problems, has gout, lives on this weird low-fat but high sugar and high protein which compounds all of her health problems and makes them worse. And she has been food-shaming me since I was 9 (I started comfort eating when I moved to the States.) in the hopes that I would not turn out like her, and basically gave me a head full of food issues and body issues and weird shit that is really, really easy to clue into, if I let it.

But, basically, long story short: people who try to food shame you are usually wrestling with their own weird food and fat issues. It is their problem, not mine.

But that's not really the stuff I'm struggling with the moment. It's more like... food as control. Food as a way of "I get to define, what goes into my body". Food can be a battleground. Food as the one area of my life that I get to establish my limits and my boundaries over. I wonder if I'm still a vegetarian 25 years later because my Mum said it wouldn't last 6 months. I often wonder if being a vegetarian is a way of diverting all of my weird ~issues around food~ into a safe container so I don't develop full on weirdness about food as "controlling some aspect of my life" into an eating disorder.

And people's *reactions* to my vegetarianism really tells me a whole lot of what I need to know about them. That it's a really easy way of ascertaining whether this person is going to honour my boundaries and respect my needs (even if they don't agree with them or understand them). A person whose reaction is "OK, do you want to go to a pure vegetarian place or do you mind eating somewhere mixed?" is a good, safe person. A person who gives me grief or tries to shame me over it - or worse, yet, gets that weird, defensive "OMG vegetarians are so awful, they all think they're SO SUPERIOR and VIRTUOUS and god you lot are smug and awful and terrible I'm going to EAT MEAT AT YOU every chance I get, so that you can't ~be all vegetarian at me~" before I've even said a word, it's like... OK, not a good person to be around, goodbye.

I dunno. Everything is about boundaries for me. Everything is about sorting people into "safe" and "unsafe". (Kinda like my Mum has weird issues about sorting food into "healthy" and "not healthy" and it's fucking bizarre what ends up in each category.) I know a lot of this is about dealing with trauma, and living with Survivor status or, y'know, what comes across as ~victim mentality~. And I'm sure a lot of stuff that probably reads as "OMG, what are you, a special snowflake?" to other people is really trying to establish is this person safe or unsafe. (And my god, there is no quicker way to wind up in the "unsafe" tub than to use phrases like "special snowflake" with regards to difference.)

This is going to be really long; I'm sorry. I still haven't said half of what's in my head. This is the shit I'm wrestling with at the moment.

God I edited that to take half of it out, and it's still fucking WALL O TEXT. I'm so sorry.

It is the response of people who have been on a diet their entire lives, who have denied themselves pleasure their entire lives, who are outraged that here is a chubby person (violating rule 1 by even existing) enjoying the fuck out of food (violating rule 2) and the amount of anger they have of, like, why am I allowed to get away with this behaviour when they're denying themselves?

I am not proud of this, but when I was at my second-thinnest, I had an irrational hatred of fat people for this exact reason, as in I articulated this reason in talking about how I hate this irrational hatred, and it like never occurred to me that was something I needed to examine or reconsider or even just shut up about. Not that I was saying these things to actual fat people (IRL or on the internet), just that I have had at least one conversation out loud with someone about that. All joking aside I attribute at least part of my lack of critical thinking and empathy in that situation to severe, long-term calorie deprivation. I'm much kinder now that I'm fat and well-fed.

And also to my past self and any other thin people who hate fat people for that reason, I say "Join us. It's wonderful here. You can eat the whole donut."

Some people eat donuts and are still thin btw.

I know it's otherwise a really flawed book and a really flawed writer, but the first chapter of The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, she quoted a study where they put a bunch of healthy male athletes on the kind of calorie deprivation diet that young women routinely keep themselves on, and the resulting psychological chaos, that was the first time I started to understand the mentality.

Xp Sorry, that wasn't what you were saying, and wasn't meant to be snarky!

It's okay! It's good to remember that not everybody is beset with issues around food.

BB, Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin talks about a similar study done with soldiers, I think. Maybe it's Paul Campos's book, though. Either way, it was very enlightening to me as well.

OK, thanks, carl, I'll have a look for it.

I am actually a lot better than I've been, about "being weird about eating because: body shaming" these days.

But the whole "being weird about ~everything~ because: OMG BOUNDARIES" is still something I'm struggling a lot with at the moment.

It gets worse in times of stress; being in long-term unemployment is a definite cause of stress right now.

Thanks for listening to me, girls, and thanks for discussing this stuff. This is a great source of strength and comfort to me.

my use of "special snowflake" was mostly self-effacing, sorry if it upset anyone. It is about how people from the rest of the country perceive a certain culture where I live.

Branwell, your mom sounds like my mom in terms of size and dieting and health issues, though my mom doesn't have gout, she does have bad knees, which has made me fearful of exercise, which is totally irrational. But, my mom actually has fairly healthy attitudes towards food and didn't really instill me with any food ~issues~ apart from the genetic inevitability that I too would become a fat woman. But she also instilled in me that there were far worse things you can be than fat: you could be cruel, hateful, self-loathing, and have all sorts of other health problems.

In terms of values about food learned from my mom (so much of my childhood and youth is a blur at this point), I remember going to restaurants with my family and occasionally being mildly shamed for not being hungry enough to eat everything, but once it was established that I actually was pretty full, my mom would say things like, "Well, just eat the shrimp, that's the good part, pasta is cheap. It's the shrimp that made it expensive." And also, "don't eat unhealthy junk. if you want ice cream and cheese, get the good stuff, make it as delicious as possible."

It makes me sad reading about ladies on this thread with moms that shamed them and gave them body image issues.

seriously though, I feel like I live half my life in an episode of Portlandia.

And now I am off to band practice at my underground noise co-op space where we have arguments about whether it is worth it to not buy plastic cups when what is really needed is the elimination of the police state and class warfare.

I do kinda feel right now like Mums are getting a bit of a bad rap right now. Like, I've been talking about my Mum, but she was by far not the only person in my family to weight shame me or food shame me. My brother (who was thin) was pretty relentless - he was the one who would make "oink oink" pig noises if I was deemed to be eating too much or too avidly. (With, of course, the full consent, and lack of any kind of chastisement for cruelty from my family.) And my uncle (who was fat, but his wife and his daughter were thin) was fucking relentless in the weight shaming.

Like, I think it maybe hurts more when mothers do it because of the nature and closeness and projection involved in the mother-daughter relationship. But there was still a metric fuckton of it coming from male members of the family.

(I don't remember my father's opinion on weight, which is odd. My father's battles revolved around hair and the cutting of it.)

But OMG, that whole thing of being shamed for not finishing a meal!I got that a lot, too - on top of the "you're a disgusting pig oink oink" messages, so talk about conflicting messages. Food I wouldn't eat at lunch (including seafood, to which I have turned out to be allergic) would be returned to the plate at dinner. To this day, I cannot *not* finish a meal. This is the hardest thing for me, to stop eating when I feel full. If there is food still on my plate, I will literally keep eating until I feel sick because... guilt. It still feels dirty or shameful or wrong (and I try to tell myself it's being a responsible adult, but it doesn't feel like it) if I throw away food, or put it in the food waste bin.

Ugh, I hate being neurotic about this stuff. I'm so bored with feeling like a crazy person so much of the time.

my mom has always been really cool about food -- she taught me to eat what i want when i'm hungry. she also was never (ever!) "dieting" and whenever people would ask her how she kept her figure, she would always say "i just eat when i'm hungry and stop when i'm not hungry, i don't know" and then she would change the subject. we're both really small boned people of short stature, and she always told me i should eat for me, not for other people. now she's proud of my cooking, but never embarrasses me about it.

xp You're not crazy, you've just had a lot of people's own internal eating battles projected on to you.

I am very lucky to have a mother who is fairly decent when it comes to food issues (my dad was a serious barbecue dude, which is another story). She kind of predates the whole PAY ATTENTION TO SEASONAL FOOD trend by years and/or never varying from the idea that stuff comes from gardens at particular times of year and never got into fad diets because 'it's good to have treats' and everything is OK in moderation except for over-processed food. I was allowed to be picky when young because I reacted badly to certain foods while having chemo. After that, I was made to at least try the objectionable thing on my plate once. My mom also watched my aunt refuse the same dish of oatmeal for three days running when they were kids, a battle my aunt won in the end, and never pulled that shit on us.

Although I tried to be a vegetarian for a few months, and she did buy me tofu to go along with it, she did also wind up sabotaging the mission by buying the finest deli corned beef she could find and leaving it there in the fridge next to mustard and pumpernickel until I caved. I was a crap vegetarian and make a much better omnivore, though I enjoy the challenge of cooking for veggies (because it's not a challenge to a good cook).

I think I do need to give my Mum props for some aspects of food, despite diet weirdness and a lot of offhanded terrible comments (including pounding into my head that I was built like her and I was destined to have weight issues like her and always with the disparaging 'ugh you have boobs like your mother' 'ugh you have thighs like your mother' aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway)

The thing I'm really grateful for, w/r/t food is that she welcomed all of us kids into the kitchen, taught us how to pick out ripe fruits and vegetables at the store, when she got a microwave she bought a microwave cookbook for kids for us to make cakes and weird shit in the microwave, or cut up vegetables for a stir fry, whatever. a rite of passage when you were about 5 was when Mum let you hold the butter knife and cut pieces of banana or melon for a fruit salad. She did that for all 3 of us, and now my nephews as well. Teaching us how to stir gravy by having us write the alphabet in the saucepan 3 times (standing on a chair by the stove mind you but still)

That to me is worth rubies, because I know a lot of people whose parents did not welcome them into the kitchen and/or just made food be a very alien, scary kind of thing. My niece is 16 and is afraid to use an oven. Not that you HAVE to cook, but just as a basic survival/money saving skill, it's a good tool to have in your belt and I'm grateful to Mum for giving me that.

Xp suzy. My mom worked for farmers starting when I was 8 or 9 and she would drive out to the fields and bring home food for dinner.

My mom could make a celebration out of driving 15 miles to the roadside stands that sold grocery bags full of freshly picked corn in season. In many ways she's ideal, to wit: food - 'it's awesome, eat a balanced diet so the good stuff tastes like the treat it is.' Sex: 'the most fun two people can have with their clothes off'.

As a mother (huh, that is still weird) it is very useful and lovely to read stories of what mothers did right wrt food and their daughters.

My mom did her best but she was a petite, slim woman blessed with a let's say robust child and a single mom at a time when having a fat kid was a clear sign of bad parenting (I guess that is now too) so while she had my husky ass on a constant diet starting at age nine, her heart was in the right place. Like she was never mean about it but she was prone to seeing fat people and saying things like, "If I ever get that fat, just shoot me" and that will do a number on a fat kid's psyche.

I'm happy to talk with others about how I/they eat if it's very matter of fact and involves no judgment - otherwise, no. I'm interested in talking about what I eat only to the extent that I'm trying to find out what really satisfying eating looks like for me, and I'm interested in the diversity of how it is for others. Trusted peeps are needed for that kind of conversation. I only really dropped the last vestiges of paleo last autumn. Figuring out how to eat happily without rules is now a big goal for me, trying to focus on what feels great to eat (including some 'unhealthy' things) and what doesn't (including some 'healthy' things). Sometimes I feel clear-sighted about that, and other times I seem to rebel and just want to eat too much no matter how terrible it makes me feel. Definitely a bid for control.

In the past I've definitely been the person who burbles to the world about why they're only taking 1/8 of a slice of cake (no donuts, they're not my favourite). No more of that. Sometimes I do only take 1/8 of the slice and sometimes two slices (and a third at the end of the day when the leftovers have gone to the fridge) - my decision.

I don't think I've ever been food shamed as badly as some of the stories here. 'George'!!' WTF.

Sitting out of this discussion about discussion of eating b/c I think our socialization, as feminists and what have you, is to discuss the discussion of eating and my little protest is to say ENOUGH.

With empathy and respect, for real, but that is my only .02 cents: when we focus on a (negative) focus, we're still focusing on the (unhealthy, unhelpful, gender-biased) topic.

I think in the face of people saying "this is so not a thing, that never happens" to turn around and say "actually, this is a thing, it happens to me all the time, am I crazy, or does this happen to other people?' is one of the most powerful tools one can have. I am not going to apologise for talking about something I am beaten in the face with every day, like I am not going to apologise for talking about the narrative of rape culture when other people are all "omg why are you talking about rape yet again, how boring, you victim mentality, you".

I respect your decision to sit the discussion out, but walking into a discussion already in progress and saying "ENOUGH" is not exactly sitting it out, is it? With all due respect, I'm not feeling a lot of empathy from your posts.

Maybe I am just cranky because I have mysteriously just gotten my second period in two weeks. OMG, we sure talk about our periods a lot on this thread, too! How unhelpfully gender-based and unhealthy! Or maybe we have few other places to actually talk about this stuff in the company of other women without being chastised or challenged for it.

I think there has been a really good mixture of discussion of negative aspects, and countering with positive responses. Sorry if the discussion was ~not to your taste~ but it *had* been very helpful for me.

I agree with BraNwell.

BB, Is it a mittelschmerz-type period thing or a proper one? Because the former is pretty normal, especially to people with fibroids. The latter less so, but fibroids also have this strange habit of kicking off an extra period. I've got them too, only mine are not quite as bad as what you've posted about previously.

My mother and I have a pretty fraught relationship in other areas - eg. me objecting to her co-dependence with my sister - but in terms of food and body image, we're golden. We spent half an hour on the phone talking about the authentic Polish sausages we were going to drive to NE Minneapolis to get on my next visit FFS.

Nope, I've never had this before. (Well, once, but that was because I stopped The Pill in the middle of my cycle because it was making me psychotic.) I thought it was just spotting yesterday, but today it's full blown (will spare you the details). Ugh. It's exactly 15 days from the start of the last one. Feeling pretty flattened to be honest.

It is perfectly normal to have a mini-period at that point in the cycle, when one has fibroids. In my case, I'm having the painters in about once every three weeks because of these nasty womb-squatters.

I have generally not been food-shamed too badly despite being fat, or I've been oblivious to it, but I still know that feeling of worrying omg what will the supermarket cashier think, the "Coke please" "ok, diet Coke" "uh, no" (when I used to drink a lot of diet Coke I had headaches every day - maybe just coincidence but it makes me wary anyway. so I don't like it when they don't even ask and just pour me a diet Coke), worrying that I'm that coworker who's conspicuously always eating, etc.

My new GP sent me to do "food diarising" with the nurse. I've been really bad about doing it, mostly out of laziness and a grumpy "it's none of anyone's business", but also the shame of admitting to everything I eat: the nights when I'm too tired to shop properly or cook, or when I'm trying to fit in with someone else who apparently only eats pizza or chips, or when I'm sad/busy and my brain stupidly tells me junk food will get me through.

And it's not just the fat/calorie content which is potentially shameful but all the other food-related shame, like I can hear the nurse's voice going "you eat a lot of ready meals, don't you? can't you cook? why do you buy pre-made sandwiches when you could make them? you ate noodles 3 nights in a row, that's a bit weird, isn't it? have you ever heard of fresh vegetables?"

Last week I went for conveyor-belt sushi with someone and ate about a third of what he did but I still felt the barbs in the waiter's "ooh you must have been hungry" (we stacked our plates together). Maybe I take things too personally.

I've been told 'you girls can EAT' but tbh I think that was either making misguided conversation or misguided 'flattery'. I did one of those food diaries for a general health check-up and honestly, there is no way to win with them. I.do mainly cook from scratch but because they extrapolate from a few days I got lectured on the amount of sugar in dried apricots (I ate one packet over the 5 days) and that I should 'lay off the pizza express' (first one in about a year that happened to fall into the diary period) so basically it's their job to make you aware, but they can also sod off.

I do sometimes wonder how much of this is internalised (that worry of "OMG, is the supermarket cashier judging my groceries" - actually, no, she's probably just counting down the minutes until her next smoke break and doesn't care what you're buying) and how much of this is actually genuinely external (i.e. every other example on this thread, the Georges of the world). It's a mixture of both, with the external stuff endlessly reinforcing the internalised monologue.

With regards to comfort eating and binge eating - I used to be a massive comfort eater. (Also, with weird highly ritualised "bad food" episodes. Like, seriously, the first year I first moved back to England, I went through a phase where I would kind of compulsively go to the Swiss Cottage MacDonalds and eat a cheeseburger. I don't *like* the taste of meat. I *really* don't like Macdonalds food. But there was this weird "I am doing ~the forbidden thing~" mortification/punishment/thrill to it, and of course would go home and feel sick, and beat myself up for doing it. I've done this with alcohol, I've done this with sugar, or whatever "the Forbidden Thing" is.) But breaking out of that has been partly HAES, and partly my therapist. When we were talking about my desire to binge in response to An Upsetting Event, she told me something very unexpected: she gave me "permission" to go have a treat. She was like, what's your favourite ice cream? I was all "Ben N Jerry's Caramel Chew Chew". She told me to go and get a pint of it, and eat it, slowly, savouring every single mouthful and enjoying the taste and the texture. She told me, make an event of it, put on my favourite music or my favourite film while I ate it. Enjoy the hell out of it. Experience it as total pleasure and enjoyment. If you are comfort eating, you are allowed to comfort eat, *if* you allow yourself to get comfort out of it. Not view it as this weird, ritual mortification thing that I feel guilty as hell for doing. But as this lovely thing that is supposed to make you feel better, and does actually make you feel better because, wow, that tastes really nice.

But it's weird. Now that this is *available*, as a thing I can do, and enjoy, and I'm "allowed" to do it, I don't get the compulsion to do it all the time. I can keep a bar of good chocolate, or a box of my absolute favourite ginger biscuits in the house, all the time, and not just surrender to the urge to scarf the whole thing immediately. Sometimes they stay there for weeks! Keep it for when I need a little burst of pleasure! Which is, apparently, the kind of relationship with food that "normal" people have! This is amazing to me. I've never experienced food in this way before.

And it's like... remembering watching my Mother, joylessly and compulsively eating her way through a whole box of totally unsatisfying low calorie weight watchers "Ice Milk" or whatever, and beating herself up for doing it. And seeing myself doing the same fucking thing, and hating myself for doing it, on so many levels. The idea of decoupling guilt from pleasure, and just going "you know what? pleasure is really fucking nice. Might as well enjoy it."

I dunno. This is a different thing from what you're describing, APS, which sounds much more like the experience of being too tired and depressed and flattened to cook. Which is, y'know, you are tired and depressed and flattened, and cooking is work. (Its sometimes pleasurable, but it is still work, which is something that not all people have the time or the energy for. Which is fine!) But the idea of detaching the guilt (and the accompanying internal monologue) from that. "I eat like this because: reasons." You've been trying to address the reasons of depression and exhaustion and being flattened. But they are still *valid* reasons to be eating the way you do. And until those reasons are dealt with, your *eating* is not the problem. But decoupling guilt from food is hard when you're being overtly judged in the form of nurses or the internalised monologue of your food diary.

I dunno. Different strokes for different folks, though. Experiment until you find out what works for you. This is the thing that worked for me.

I also feel guilty for ~getting heavy~ on the thread, and would really like to lighten it with confetti and heritage apples and Kessler gifs.

I'm sorry.

Hey, you already mentioned those ginger biscuits, so that'll do....

She told me to go and get a pint of it, and eat it, slowly, savouring every single mouthful and enjoying the taste and the texture. She told me, make an event of it, put on my favourite music or my favourite film while I ate it. Enjoy the hell out of it. Experience it as total pleasure and enjoyment. If you are comfort eating, you are allowed to comfort eat, *if* you allow yourself to get comfort out of it.

I think this story is awesome! Yes, allow yourself to be comforted, not punished. So beautifully healthy and also! Ice cream!

I just started reading a book about mindful eating which talks a lot about doing just that as a way to regain a healthy relationship with food. It's pretty interesting stuff tbh.

E, which book? I seem to be collecting books about that on my Kindle...

yeah I'm curious

http://www.savorthebook.com/ - I used to work in the same dept as one of the writers.

I am really struggling with food issues lately. I've realized that ever since I was a teen, I've cycled between restrictive eating, orthorexia, or massive binging. And it's totally tanked my thyroid, and as a result, probably made me much heavier than I'd be if I'd NEVER DIETED IN THE FIRST PLACE. I've basically been on a massive binging streak since Christmas, and as a result put on 25 pounds. I keep thinking "tomorrow I'll go back to eating paleo"... but, ugh, WHY. I apologize if any of this was triggering.

I also read a book called "Diet Recovery" by Matt Stone that's been pretty eye opening about the effects of restrictive eating on overall health and metabolism, and kinda realizing I don't like this feeling of 'doing good' versus 'doing bad'

I think a lot of this information (about how dieting makes you fatter, including the ~here's the science bit~ behind how that works) is in the actual Health At Every Size book, by Linda Bacon. Which is one of those books I wish could just be issued to every man, woman and genderqueer at the age of 13 or something. (Granted, probably younger, but you get the idea.)

But I completely understand struggling with this stuff, and sympathise completely.

yes, this dude Matt Stone references the Linda Bacon book. I've never been able to keep off any significant weight loss for longer than four years.

The Linda Bacon book, genuinely (and I know I say this about every other book) but it really did change my life. Because it started with "this is the science behind why permanent weight loss is not effective" and then went through dealing with food shaming and body shaming, and then started talking about mindful eating. I'm trying to re-read it once a year, to make sure the ideas stay fresh in my head and don't slip back into shitty expectations because it's so hard to throw off stuff that's so ingrained. I wish it had existed 10, 20 years ago, but I'm just glad enough that it came into my life now.

I need to read that!!!

Well, this week I've just been eating what I want. I'm eating carbs. And I'm finding... whoa, I actually have energy. CRAZY.

Reading all this, taking it in. I have had my own issues, even this week, but I don't want to pass it down to August. I did feel ashamed for all the bullshit I went through this past week with the whole swim suit thing, body thing. I am 43 and felt 14 about my body and self-esteem. Working out is a mental fix for me and I'd feel better about so much more if I could stay moving on a regular basis. I hope to get there and started on Monday.

I love how August loves being in her lil body, she looks at herself in the mirror and the looks she gives herself kill me. So much pride and happiness there. We were all that way. To hear what everyone has gone through, remembering my own issues and battles, it's heartbreaking. Really, I mean it is fucking heartbreaking.

She is already aware and mimics much of what I do. I feel it is my responsibility to start cracking down on myself when it comes to negative comments, attitudes about my body. That is more important to me than trying to stop cussing.

I think that trying to disconnect this stuff from *shame* is pretty important. You had some body issues last week, you talked about it, I hope that talking made you feel better about it! Like, I had food issues this week, I talked about it, I felt better about it.

Me, I'm not a big fan of exercise, but one of the most important lessons of adulthood is that exercise is crucial - not for dieting, or looking good, or conforming to expectations of appearance - but for maintaining equanimity, and feeling good emotionally. I had tons and tons of shame and awfulness surrounding ~EXERCISE~ for years. It took discovering forms of exercise that make me feel great, to get my head around exercise. I like walking. I LOVE walking, whether it's just a mile up the road to the common and back, or a seven mile hike going up hills and looking for views and forests I've never seen before, and the deep noticing that happens when I'm walking. It feels so good! It feels so right!, being in my body, walking I love, love, love my body when I'm climbing hills, because it feels so good to be in it, I feel so proud and strong when I get to the top! (Especially if there's an amazing view.) And feeling good in my body is not something I get to experience very often, so it's such an amazing thing when I do.

So whatever it is that gets you to that feeling - whether it's climbing the North Downs or doing a work-out - do that thing! Go with the "this feels so GOOD" rather than that awful sense of shame over ~having~ to do it, or not doing it.

I dunno; the idea of being responsible for a child terrifies me. Because they do pick up everything you do. They model everything. So you can't just tell kids "do this, do that" you have to model things like self image, and model consent, and model mindful or intuitive eating (or whatever we're calling it). That idea scares the shit out of me.

Right now I'm trying to do things in reverse. I'm trying to model healthy boundaries, and model consent with my Mother right now, because I didn't get raised right on those issues. I can't change her, but I can change me. And just hope that changing me is something that will reflect back to her.

But this is not a fun place right now, so I'm going to go and take a walk to my favourite woods.