فصل 17

CHAPTER 17

The Lie

I AM DEFINED BY MY WEIGHT

When people talk about divorce, they use words like irreconcilable or messy. But those words are too light—too easy for the destruction of a family. Divorce is a book falling onto a house made of Legos. It’s a cannonball shot over the bow that crashes through the deck and sinks the other ship. Divorce is destruction that starts at the top and breaks everything apart on the way down. So, no. Messy isn’t the right adjective.

Horrible, ugly, hateful, annihilating—these are closer.

When I was sixteen, my parents were in the middle of a horrible, ugly, hateful, annihilating divorce that had been on again, off again since I was nine years old.

During this season—the final death throes of their relationship—I had just received my driver’s license and a hand-me-down car. It was a 1989 Suzuki Samurai, and it was also a stick shift—something I had no earthly clue how to operate. It sat for weeks in the driveway collecting dust—an eyesore of a reminder that it wasn’t being used and that I wasn’t capable of operating it.

I hinted to my older sister, to her boyfriend, and to my mother, hoping that someone would take me out on a weekend or an afternoon and explain the intricacies of operating a clutch. If I knew how to drive that car, I could get myself to school. If I knew how to drive that car, I could get a job and start saving money. So many possibilities existed on the other side of that manual transmission.

One day, out of nowhere, my father decided he would be the one to teach me how. And even then, amid the excitement of wanting to know how to drive myself around, I knew this was a catastrophically bad idea.

Daddy had a hair-trigger temper. It was an ever-present part of my life growing up, but during this time period, it was so much worse. We were only a little over a year and a half removed from the death of my big brother, Ryan.

In retrospect I can see that my father was struggling for normalcy, that he was trying to parent the only child he had remaining at home. He was also trying to teach me to drive stick shift in my brother’s car—the hand-me-down made possible because Ryan didn’t need it any longer.

What must that have felt like for him—or for any of them who had hesitated to take me out driving in Ryan’s car? Had Daddy drawn the proverbial short straw? Was he the only one strong enough to move past the pain and do what needed to be done? Perhaps another person would have battled their emotions in a different way. Perhaps my mother would have cried or my sister would have lashed out, but my father . . . his strong emotions tended to bubble in only one direction straight to the boiling point.

I didn’t understand any of my pain or trauma at the time. Likewise, I was sixteen and couldn’t fathom why my father was so angry. We’d driven to the outskirts of town where I could practice without other cars around. I can still see us on that abandoned country road as he screamed commands into the air between us “Clutch! Shift! Gas! How many times are you going to stall out before you get this right?”

The more he screamed, the more I stalled. The more I stalled, the more I cried. The more I cried, the angrier he became.

I have no idea if that episode lasted for ten minutes or an hour. I only know that I retreated further and further inside myself until I was shaking. He finally demanded to drive.

We rode home in tense silence.

As an adult I can understand now how hard he battled his temper with us kids and how upsetting it was for him to lose it. An executive, a pastor, and later a PhD, he was utterly competent out in the world but often at a loss at home. I can see that now. As a child I was blind to it all. I spent most of my life in fear of upsetting him. In a situation like this, where I had well and truly failed and he was so, so angry, I wished—not for the first time—that I was the child he’d lost.

He dropped me off at home, and I found myself in an empty house scared and confused and sick to my stomach. Then I walked to the kitchen.

I come from a long line of emotional eaters, so my first thought was that something in that kitchen would surely make me feel better. I found an unopened box of Oreos and I pulled out two. They tasted so good I had another.

I remember sliding down to the floor alongside the cabinets with the box in my hand. I’d been here plenty of times before. Food is an easy companion. Food has never let me down. Only this time, something shifted. With each cookie I ate, I cried harder. Then I ate more. At some point, the noise in my head shifted. It stopped being about my dad and why he was so angry. I thought about myself and all the ways and reasons that I was wrong. Good, I thought, eat them all. Eat every last cookie. Eat everything in this room. Eat until you’re ugly and worthless and the outside finally matches the inside.

I sat on that floor and I cried and ate until I was sick.

That was the first time I remember punishing myself with food, but it wouldn’t be the last.

My issues with my body—the way I saw it and, subsequently, myself by association—didn’t start that day, but I do think they took a flying leap from something that may have affected me peripherally to something that became front and center in my life. My weight was no longer just a part of me like hair or teeth; now it was something that defined me. It was a testament to all the ways I was wrong.

Later on that same year, I got mono. I wish I could tell you that it was because I had an intense make-out session with a teenage vampire, but in fact, I caught it from some water fountain outside honors chem. I was bedridden for a week and could barely swallow, let alone eat anything.

When I emerged from the haze of sickness I’d lost a massive amount of weight. I was so very tiny. I couldn’t stop staring at myself in the mirror. I wanted to buy new jeans in this new size. I was positive that my life was now going to be everything I’d ever hoped for. I would be popular, I would go to parties, I would attract the attention of Edward Cullen . . . I mean, as a size two, anything is possible and everything is likely. I vowed on my soul that I would not gain a single pound back.

But I was hungry. I was so stinking hungry all the time. I know they say nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, but I assume that’s because they’ve never had Nachos BellGrande. I gained the weight back and then some.

When I moved to Los Angeles at age seventeen, I was hyperaware of how out of place I was as a size ten, and I vowed that geography was really the only thing that had held me back. I was ready to get a gym membership, run a marathon, and eat only salads from there on out—none of which happened. A lifetime of stress eating meant that I gained even more weight after my move.

I decided to try diet pills.

I don’t even know what brand they were or where we got them, but for a couple of months, my roommate and I lived off of diet pills and SlimFast shakes. It totally worked. I trimmed down and loved everything about my new, smaller body. Sure, I was hungry all the time and I felt jittery nonstop, but I looked awesome in my jeans.

I expected that life would pick right up and be easy before long, and my dreams would soon manifest and become true. I noticed that more men were checking me out, to the point that the attention was starting to really bother me. Anywhere we went I could feel their eyes staring at me. I expected guys to charge the table anytime we went for dinner. I gave dirty looks to any male within a ten-foot radius. I was not totally sane, but I also wasn’t self-aware enough to realize it.

One day I got home from work early, and I happened to look out the apartment window. Across the way I saw two iguanas sunning themselves in the window of someone else’s condo. Two iguanas the length of my femur just hanging out in the kitchen window. One of them turned his head slightly, caught my eye, and stared me down. You’re going to think I’m making this up, but I swear on my life I thought that lizard was looking into my soul. I was entranced; I couldn’t stop staring. I watched those things for what felt like hours, and I became certain that if I didn’t keep staring back into his eyes (across a hundred feet of space), something bad would happen. At one point I remember thinking, When was the last time I saw a human being? Are these iguanas and I the only creatures left on earth?! My roommate found me like this later that afternoon. When I tried to explain to her what I was feeling—as rationally as I could for someone who had just stared down lizards for hours—she asked, “Do you think it could be the diet pills?”

Well, now . . .

I was so grateful to discover that there were more beings on earth than just me and the lizards who’d survived the apocalypse. I ran and grabbed the bottle and read the label for the first time. May cause extreme paranoia was side effect número uno. Blessed assurance!

I stopped taking the pills and started eating solid foods again, and just like every other time, the weight piled back on.

I wish I could tell you that extreme paranoia/lizard Armageddon would have been the end of my career in weight obsession or yo-yo dieting, but I can’t. I tried all sorts of crazy things. Susan Powter, Suzanne Somers, Atkins, Lean Cuisine, juice cleanses, master cleanses . . . the list goes on. And every single time I would start on a diet and inevitably slip up. One “mistake” (like having a piece of cake at a birthday party) would signal total annihilation to my brain. One piece of cake meant I might as well eat the entire cake, plus the chips and the dip and pizza and anything else I could get my hands on. I’d restart that same hateful binge session I’d learned at sixteen in the kitchen with the Oreos.

I had identified at a very early age that women who were thin were beautiful. Thin women would fall in love and have handsome husbands. They would also have career success, make good mothers, have all the best clothes. I don’t know that I ever said those words aloud, but I absolutely believed them.

Sixteen years later, this isn’t a truth I like to admit. I don’t like to talk about my messy childhood or my negative self-talk or the ridiculous lies I used to believe. I don’t like to focus on the things I got wrong, but they’re like that little crack in the side of a teacup, an imperfection you only see when you hold it up to the light. The imperfections cover the surface of my life; they help tell my story. For good or bad or worse, they’re part of me.

Later on when I went through my first pregnancy and subsequent weight gain, this struggle became so much worse. I wanted so badly to be like celebrities I saw in magazines who had a baby and then left the hospital in pre-pregnancy jeans. I held on to those twenty-plus pounds of baby weight for a year, and the second I started to make headway on them, I got pregnant again. I wondered if I would ever get out from under the pounds.

I think this is the part in the typical inspirational and motivational book where the author would tell you that a journey of self-discovery and a lot of therapy helped her learn that weight did not define her. This is where I should tell you that I am worthy and loved as I am. This is absolutely true, but that’s not where I’m headed with this chapter. That isn’t the kind of book I want to write. Here’s what I can tell you truthfully about diet and exercise and weight and what it means in my life.

Who you are today is incredible. You have so many wonderful qualities to offer the world, and they are uniquely yours. I believe your Creator delights in the intricacies of you, and he is filled with joy when you live out your potential.

I also believe that humans were not made to be out of shape and severely overweight. I think we function better mentally, emotionally, and physically when we take care of our bodies with nourishment, water, and exercise. The lie I used to believe was that my weight would define me, that it would speak volumes about who I was as a person. Today I believe it’s not your weight that defines you, but the care and consideration you put into your body absolutely does.

Because I work in media and because I’ve had years of accidentally upsetting people online without ever meaning to do so, I already know that my saying this will annoy some people. I can already imagine the emails I’ll get. The list of reasons why you or someone you know is justifiably obese, the trauma you’ve lived through . . . in some cases, food is your coping mechanism. Or maybe I’ll hear the opposite. Maybe you have an eating disorder like anorexia. You’re thin but totally unhealthy because your body doesn’t get the nutrients it needs. Or maybe you drink every single day because you’re a single parent or you’re walking through a hard season. All of these things are justifiable, all of these are valid reasons to negate caring for yourself . . . for a time.

Childhood trauma is not a life sentence. Extreme emotional pain doesn’t guarantee emotional pain for the rest of your life. I know this is true because I am a living, breathing, flourishing example of someone who chooses to rise above the trauma of her past. The reason I know this is true is because the world is filled with people who have it so much harder than me and so much harder than you, yet they show up for their lives every single day.

You can choose whether or not to stay there. You can choose to continue to abuse your body because it’s all you know. You can choose to live in that place because it’s the path of least resistance. You can choose to settle for a half-lived life because you don’t even know there’s another way, or perhaps you have no idea how to pull yourself out of it. But please, please stop making excuses for the whys. Please stop telling yourself that you deserve this life. Please stop justifying a continued crappy existence simply because that’s the way it’s always been. Just as you’ve chosen to stay in this place for so long, you can also choose to get yourself out of it.

You need to be healthy.

You don’t need to be thin. You don’t need to be a certain size or shape or look good in a bikini. You need to be able to run without feeling like you’re going to puke. You need to be able to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. You need to drink half your body weight in ounces of water every single day. You need to stretch and get good sleep and stop medicating every ache and pain. You need to stop filling your body with garbage like Diet Coke and fast food and lattes that are a million and a half calories. You need to take in fuel for your body that hasn’t been processed and fuel for your mind that is positive and encouraging. You need to get up off the sofa or out of the bed and move around. Get out of the fog that you have been living in and see your life for what it is.

Does your Creator love you as you are? Yes! But he gave you a body with all of its strength, and even its weaknesses, as a gift. It is an offense to your soul to continue to treat yourself so badly.

So no, this isn’t the book where I tell you that the answer to your struggle with weight loss is to love and accept yourself as you are. This is the book where I tell you that if you truly want to practice self-love, you’ll start with your physical body and do the work to figure out why this is an issue in the first place. Do you think I’d understand my emotional eating if I hadn’t done years of therapy to get to the bottom of it? Do you think I’d so easily share the story of that day with the Oreos if I hadn’t done everything in my power to step out of that shadow? Do you think I magically figured out how to lose weight after a lifetime of living off cheese and gravy?

No. I had to work.

I had to study and go to therapy. I had to try out different workouts until I found some I love. (For me, it’s long-distance running and weight training.) I had to fight the urge to binge when I made slight deviations from healthy eating—and this habit took me years to adopt. I had to teach myself new coping mechanisms for stress (sex is a win-win for everyone, for example). I had to figure out how weight loss works and discover that it’s actually the simplest thing in the world. A million diets exist based on the idea that if they can confuse you or make you think there is an easy way out, then you’ll buy whatever they’re selling. The truth is, it’s the same now as it always has been.

If the calories you consume in a day are fewer than the calories you burn off in a day, you will lose weight. The end.

Figuring out healthy meals that taste good to you, or workouts to try . . . that might be tougher, but don’t let the media fool you into believing that this is complicated. Learning to be healthy when you’ve never done it before might be hard if you’ve got a lifetime of habits to break, but the mechanics of it are actually very simple. And the version of you that’s healthy and well cared for is worth every minute of that work.

THINGS THAT HELPED ME . . .

1. Mantras. In my first fiction book I ever wrote, the main character walks around everywhere she goes reciting a mantra “I am strong. I am smart. I am courageous.” She’s nervous and unsure of herself, so she says it over and over all day long. That book is based on my early days in Los Angeles, and that mantra is based on exactly what I used to say to myself daily. A lifetime of believing that your value—or lack thereof—is determined by your body or your face or your whatever means that you’ve got a lifetime of negative talk in your head playing on repeat. You need to replace that voice with something positive. You need to replace that voice with the opposite truth—the thing you most need to believe. So come up with a mantra and say it to yourself a thousand times a day until it becomes real.

2. Editing my media. If you’re struggling to live up to a certain standard, if it seems as though everywhere you turn you see a gorgeous size-zero model with perfect, glossy hair, and if every time you see this stuff it depresses you or gives you anxiety, then stop consuming that type of content! Unfollow the models on Instagram; stop looking at those pages on Facebook. Surround yourself with positive, uplifting role models who focus on being strong and healthy. I’m not saying women who do makeup tutorials or Instagram fitness models are bad (I personally love those chicks!), but there are seasons when following them doesn’t make sense. Be smart about it.

3. Preparation. You have to prepare in advance for anything you want to do well. Period. You want to make sure you get in a workout tomorrow? Then you need to pack your bag today and schedule exercise in your calendar. You want to make sure you reach for healthy snacks instead of your kid’s Goldfish crackers? Then you better take some time at the start of the week and meal prep some wholesome snack options. If you wait until the last minute, you are not likely to achieve anything. You want to accomplish a healthier life? Map out how you’ll get there.