we've been living malnourished lives

In the shadow of the 90s and aughts, an entire generation—millions of girls, just like me—were learning that the worst, least desirable thing you could be was fat.

Not even fat. Just simply… not skinny.

Kate Winslet being relentlessly fat-shamed during the Titanic press tour, America Ferrera cast as the “fat friend” in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, the entire plot of Bridget Jones Diary being centered around the titular character being fat, when she wasn’t, even in the slightest. Then, of course, around the same time, we had Kate Moss dropping gems like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, The Biggest Loser, that fucking Yoplait itsy-bitsy yellow polka dot bikini commercial…

Every ad, every magazine cover, every movie and TV show made the message loud and clear: your worth as a woman—the love you will be allowed to receive, the opportunities available to you—is entirely predicated on how thin you are.

As children, we come into this world clean slates. Societal norms and expectations must be taught to us. And those things that we’re taught shape our perception of reality. Everywhere we looked gave us the same, clear message. And so, our brains became wired to seek deprivation.

Young girls and women of that era became consumed by it. Eating low-calorie, low-fat, and as little as possible. Doing every “fat-burning” exercise that crowded the pages of Cosmopolitan Magazine. Our waking thoughts—that is, what thoughts we had the brain power left to muster—were entirely preoccupied with the discipline it took to withstand and navigate the hunger, and using whatever means possible to obtain the so-called “perfect body.” If we caught a glimpse of so much as a dimple of cellulite, we took it as a sign that we needed to invest more time and energy in its pursuit.

And then, the fatigue set in. The brain fog. The anxiety. The depression. The hair loss. The cold fingers and toes. The missed periods.

The complete absence of any life force energy whatsoever.

The complete absence of anything that feels like a life.

But it went beyond depriving ourselves of food. Along the way, that same wiring translated to every aspect of life. Even if we at least somewhat repaired our relationship with food, we still deprived ourselves of all sustenance, not just taking up less physical space, but energetic space as well. Instead of denying ourselves food, we denied ourselves joy, rest, pleasure, expression, and delight. We became comfortable living in scarcity of all of life’s deeply nourishing elements in order to signal our virtue and worthiness.

When you live an energetically depleted life, everything becomes a transaction. Meditation as a means to get rid of anxiety. Eating healthy as a means to grow our hair back. Lifting weights as a means to build metabolically active lean muscle. Cold plunges to activate (also metabolically active) brown fat.

On the surface, it looks like we’re taking care of ourselves. And in a lot of ways, we are. But underneath it all is just more performative extraction in service of meeting socially prescribed standards so that we might be chosen, all the while still not choosing ourselves.

And let me tell you, from the horse’s mouth, that living this way is exhausting. It’s like mining your life force for the perception of safety. But the great irony is that, in the long term, it does the opposite. We take and take and take from ourselves until all that’s left is the desolate wasteland that is (was) our spirit.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been on a journey to unwind these patterns of deprivation. I didn’t really know that when I started, I just knew that something had to change. Everything I was doing—even the things that looked like self-care—took so much effort. The things I was doing to try to give my life more juice were draining it instead.

It’s been a process of learning and unlearning that is still ongoing. But I wanted to share what I’ve learned so far, because I know I’m not alone in feeling this. So many of us suffer behind closed doors as anxiety about how we look and feel often sends us into spirals of self-flagellation. I think we deserve so much more.

Here’s how it started…