I want to be thorough as I discuss my way through
my weight issues, and I think we can all agree that junior high looms
large in any discussion of body consciousness.
Body/fat issues that stand out to me about this long-ago time (and yet no so long ago, is it? How simple to suddenly be there and feel that humiliation…) are these: my knee-socks keep falling down. My clothes from last year don’t fit. I blamed these phenomena on my being fat. The truth is, I needed new clothes. I needed soft knee-socks that stayed up, not those thin nylon excuses for socks that slid down constantly, that didn’t stay up unless I secured them with rubber bands, and even then, not always. I needed new tops that didn’t pull across my growing breasts. I needed bras. My mother had a rule: no bra until you can hold a pencil under your breast. What a stupid thing to say. At the very latest, a girl needs a bra when she first asks this: “When can I have a bra?” The answer is “now.” Because having a bra is not about being physically mature enough to fill one out—it’s about the fact that everyone else is wearing one…and they know you aren’t.
Junior high is bad for everyone—I know that. And everyone feels awkward and body-conscious at that time because everyone’s body is undergoing massive changes. How nice for those other children who went home to, “Don’t worry. You’re beautiful. Let’s get you some new socks.” I went home to, “Here’s fat Olivia.”
My mother again: at 12, my mother said, “You weigh 125. You should never be more than 125.”
In eighth grade (at 125), I fasted for the first time. I went forty-eight hours without food. It wasn’t the last time. It wasn’t the worst time.
I fasted because there was a book in the house called Fasting: The Ultimate Diet. If you’re 12 and at the utter limit of what you should weigh (ever!), you definitely want the ultimate diet. The author was a pastor who fasted for spiritual reasons, but mentioned that he lost 20 pounds on a two-week fast. After all, if Jesus could fast for forty days and forty nights, you should be able to do a week or two! Twenty pounds would have put me at 105, almost the holy grail of 99, don’tcha know. I fainted in class. Not awesome.
Note to junior highers: fasting is not a plan. At 12 or any other age. Fasting is for religious purposes, or humanitarian purposes or whatever other purposes. It is not for losing weight. Fasting will make you fat, because the moment—the very moment—you break your fast by eating that apple, you will not be able to stop your body from eating until it is satisfied.
Your body wants to be loved not hated, nurtured not deprived. I’m just now thinking about that.
Body/fat issues that stand out to me about this long-ago time (and yet no so long ago, is it? How simple to suddenly be there and feel that humiliation…) are these: my knee-socks keep falling down. My clothes from last year don’t fit. I blamed these phenomena on my being fat. The truth is, I needed new clothes. I needed soft knee-socks that stayed up, not those thin nylon excuses for socks that slid down constantly, that didn’t stay up unless I secured them with rubber bands, and even then, not always. I needed new tops that didn’t pull across my growing breasts. I needed bras. My mother had a rule: no bra until you can hold a pencil under your breast. What a stupid thing to say. At the very latest, a girl needs a bra when she first asks this: “When can I have a bra?” The answer is “now.” Because having a bra is not about being physically mature enough to fill one out—it’s about the fact that everyone else is wearing one…and they know you aren’t.
Junior high is bad for everyone—I know that. And everyone feels awkward and body-conscious at that time because everyone’s body is undergoing massive changes. How nice for those other children who went home to, “Don’t worry. You’re beautiful. Let’s get you some new socks.” I went home to, “Here’s fat Olivia.”
My mother again: at 12, my mother said, “You weigh 125. You should never be more than 125.”
In eighth grade (at 125), I fasted for the first time. I went forty-eight hours without food. It wasn’t the last time. It wasn’t the worst time.
I fasted because there was a book in the house called Fasting: The Ultimate Diet. If you’re 12 and at the utter limit of what you should weigh (ever!), you definitely want the ultimate diet. The author was a pastor who fasted for spiritual reasons, but mentioned that he lost 20 pounds on a two-week fast. After all, if Jesus could fast for forty days and forty nights, you should be able to do a week or two! Twenty pounds would have put me at 105, almost the holy grail of 99, don’tcha know. I fainted in class. Not awesome.
Note to junior highers: fasting is not a plan. At 12 or any other age. Fasting is for religious purposes, or humanitarian purposes or whatever other purposes. It is not for losing weight. Fasting will make you fat, because the moment—the very moment—you break your fast by eating that apple, you will not be able to stop your body from eating until it is satisfied.
Your body wants to be loved not hated, nurtured not deprived. I’m just now thinking about that.
-Olivia
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