Note: Midway through writing this blog post, I realized it had gotten out of control. Even by my standards. So I'm going to publish it in parts. Don't ask me how many parts, since I don't know yet. Don't complain that this is a blog and blogs are about brevity; since as we all know this is the Internet and nobody cares what anybody else wants. Here is Part One.
Confessions of a Fat Kid: Myths of Exercise (Part One)
I've read several magazine articles recently that question the power of exercise. It seems like the in thing.
In these articles, various writers debunk the notion that exercise can aid in making people thinner. These articles contain everything convincing articles should have - anecdotes! research! science! - but I still disagree with them completely.
At one point in the distant past, exercise definitely transformed me physically. What it didn't do - what nothing has the power to do - is reshape my experiences, and that is the myth of exercise but also, maybe by extension, the myth of beauty.
When I was younger, I was a seriously round kid. Okay, let me say it: I was a fat kid. I was also solitary, literary, and confident. (I sometimes attribute these last few traits to having been a fat kid, but in retrospect this was probably just my personality)
Which is not to say I didn't have run-ins with fat policing. I remember a time when my three best friends and I were trying to figure out what to play at recess. I said "who thinks we should play soccer?" to which my friend AW snarkily replied, "who thinks Anika should go on a diet?" When the other two raised their traitorous hands, I ran back into the classroom and refused to come out, even when they begged. I'm not sure what bothered me more at the time - the fact that he thought I was fat or the fact that I lost an argument.
There was that time my dance teacher, while correcting my stance on a particularly difficult Odissi move, leaned in, tapped my stomach and said, "You would be more graceful if you lost some of this." But she could be pretty evil so I didn't pay a lot of attention.
The only painful conversation I ever had about this was with a girl who was, for three years, my best friend. We met in fourth grade and she was the first "best friend" I'd ever had. This was a seriously meaningful event in my life. For two years we slept over at each other's houses, traded gossip about the boys we (okay, mainly she) had kissed, and spent a lot of time sharing our neuroses about the future and what it contained. What if we died alone? What if we never graduated high school? What if boys never liked us? What if our gym teacher and math teacher were having an affair? She was the first and last person in my life in my life of whom I could say I told her everything (I'm not sure if that's a good thing.)
One day, she finally got up the courage to tell me something she'd never told me before. "You know what I thought the first time I saw you?" she asked. "We were sitting in line waiting to be assigned to our classes and you got up to throw something in the trash can."
"Okay," I said.
"And I thought, I hope that fat girl isn't in my class. And I feel so bad about it because now I've gotten to know you and you're so great." And she started to cry. I patted her on the shoulder.
"It's ok," I said, as nicely as I could. "I am fat." (The first and only time I remember saying this.) My confession only made her feel worse, and she gave me a hug and we both started sobbing. In a sense, her confession gave me great practice for life. It was my first realization that people out there can find you wanting for a reason that has nothing to do with you. (As a Hindu, a journalist and an unmarried woman, I often meet people who think I'm doing nothing right - I really think my years as a fat kid gave me great practice for dealing with them)
But I didn't like the phrase "fat kid." In the world we live in, "fat," particularly "fat kid," suggests a maladjusted, unloved, unhappy person. I have never been any of these things. But perhaps the greater fallacy is to suggest that any "fat kid" anywhere is any of these things. Those are the misconceptions of the thin, who can't imagine anything worse than being us; it never occurs to them the feeling might be mutual.
So anyway, I was really happy. I had plenty of friends and I was easily entertained. Sure, the guys weren't chasing me down the halls, but I always was (and remain) pretty grateful for that; particularly in those formative years. On the occasions that boys were interested in me, I found their attention pretty stressful and ignored their advances anyway.
Then, when I was 17 and towards the tail end of my junior year in high school, I randomly lost about three pounds in a week. I hadn't been trying, it kinda just happened because I was in a school theatre production and didn't have a lot of time to eat. I stepped on the scale and noticed the difference and that's when it occurred to me for the first time: what if I did this on purpose?
Like a lot of fat kids, it never really occurred to me that I could be thin. Other people would tell me how great it was, but I thought about it the same way a lot of people approach other people's religions: I'm glad it works for you.
Thus began my first serious diet. It was summer break and I was slated to spend two and a half months in the scorching deserts of central India, working for a nonprofit that built schools in rural villages. I think my weight loss program was dramatically aided by the unfamiliar surroundings. Every night I was in a different town. Plumbing and electricity were erratic if not invisible, everybody spoke a different dialect of Hindi (and I barely spoke Hindi at all). Every night I fell asleep on the edge of terror; but it was also the most exhilarating experience I'd ever had in my life.
In the mornings, before going out to the villages, I'd do an hour's worth of stretching exercises that I'd memorized out of a book. Indian food revolves around whole grains; in farming villages, this is even more the case. I shocked many a farmer's wife by refusing to eat rice and roti with the same meal. I ate a lot of hot lentil soup instead. I never took seconds of anything. (It didn't occur to me at the time that this routine was a bit too intense) I didn't even have regular cell phone service; my diet and exercise routine was the only certainty I had. I was 17 and surrounded by strangers in the wilds.
Then, right before I went back to the US, my sister and I got our hair frosted by a professional in Mumbai. It was the first and only professional color treatment I ever received; I only got my first salon haircut when I was 16 . My parents had gone with me, sitting gingerly on the chairs and gaping at the $70 price tag. ("For a haircut?" my dad gasped, in true immigrant style. "I can see that hair stylist's thong through her pants," was my mother's only observation.)
We returned to the US. Now, because I'd spent most of the summer wearing diaphanous salwar kameez, it didn't occur to me that I had lost much weight. But I had.
When I came back, none of my clothes fit. My Mom and I went on a marathon trip to Kohl's. My "style" throughout high school had always been flamboyant and attention-getting; I was fond of short skirts, bright colors and long hippy dresses. I owned - and wore! - knee-high black leather boots, back when that trend was still only kinda respectable.
So I stocked up on all my usual faves, while my mother vainly tried to steer me towards clothes that had a modicum of elegance and class (a battle that every mother fights and loses, valiantly)
The first event of the school year was a party at a friend's house. I showed up looking like my new self. To say that jaws hit the floor would be a serious understatement; it was the sort of moment that could probably have concluded a teen romcom.
"I thought your parents had come in with someone else's child," gasped my friend, the same one who had once made that tearful confession in third grade.
"I would kill to have legs like yours," said another.
I still didn't grasp the extent of the transformation - I wouldn't; not until I saw my senior picture and barely recognized the person in it. But that was months away.
To be suddenly an item of interest was a shock, but these were people who had known me for years. They probably talked about my transformation a lot more than I realized - it was a mark of my naivete about my fellow high schoolers that I returned from summer totally changed and thought everyone would just get over it - but we quickly got back into the groove of plays, books, etc that we'd known for years. I continued to workout every day and continued to reduce how much I ate. Eventually I hit 500 calories a day and started to get headaches. I realized I was getting into dangerous territory and eased up on the calorie restriction. (My weight loss might seem dramatic but I was 17; I don't think what I did was in any way unsafe.)
End of Part One. Okay, there are going to be two parts. The second one appears tomorrow.
Confessions of a Fat Kid: Myths of Exercise (Part One)
I've read several magazine articles recently that question the power of exercise. It seems like the in thing.
In these articles, various writers debunk the notion that exercise can aid in making people thinner. These articles contain everything convincing articles should have - anecdotes! research! science! - but I still disagree with them completely.
At one point in the distant past, exercise definitely transformed me physically. What it didn't do - what nothing has the power to do - is reshape my experiences, and that is the myth of exercise but also, maybe by extension, the myth of beauty.
When I was younger, I was a seriously round kid. Okay, let me say it: I was a fat kid. I was also solitary, literary, and confident. (I sometimes attribute these last few traits to having been a fat kid, but in retrospect this was probably just my personality)
Which is not to say I didn't have run-ins with fat policing. I remember a time when my three best friends and I were trying to figure out what to play at recess. I said "who thinks we should play soccer?" to which my friend AW snarkily replied, "who thinks Anika should go on a diet?" When the other two raised their traitorous hands, I ran back into the classroom and refused to come out, even when they begged. I'm not sure what bothered me more at the time - the fact that he thought I was fat or the fact that I lost an argument.
There was that time my dance teacher, while correcting my stance on a particularly difficult Odissi move, leaned in, tapped my stomach and said, "You would be more graceful if you lost some of this." But she could be pretty evil so I didn't pay a lot of attention.
The only painful conversation I ever had about this was with a girl who was, for three years, my best friend. We met in fourth grade and she was the first "best friend" I'd ever had. This was a seriously meaningful event in my life. For two years we slept over at each other's houses, traded gossip about the boys we (okay, mainly she) had kissed, and spent a lot of time sharing our neuroses about the future and what it contained. What if we died alone? What if we never graduated high school? What if boys never liked us? What if our gym teacher and math teacher were having an affair? She was the first and last person in my life in my life of whom I could say I told her everything (I'm not sure if that's a good thing.)
One day, she finally got up the courage to tell me something she'd never told me before. "You know what I thought the first time I saw you?" she asked. "We were sitting in line waiting to be assigned to our classes and you got up to throw something in the trash can."
"Okay," I said.
"And I thought, I hope that fat girl isn't in my class. And I feel so bad about it because now I've gotten to know you and you're so great." And she started to cry. I patted her on the shoulder.
"It's ok," I said, as nicely as I could. "I am fat." (The first and only time I remember saying this.) My confession only made her feel worse, and she gave me a hug and we both started sobbing. In a sense, her confession gave me great practice for life. It was my first realization that people out there can find you wanting for a reason that has nothing to do with you. (As a Hindu, a journalist and an unmarried woman, I often meet people who think I'm doing nothing right - I really think my years as a fat kid gave me great practice for dealing with them)
But I didn't like the phrase "fat kid." In the world we live in, "fat," particularly "fat kid," suggests a maladjusted, unloved, unhappy person. I have never been any of these things. But perhaps the greater fallacy is to suggest that any "fat kid" anywhere is any of these things. Those are the misconceptions of the thin, who can't imagine anything worse than being us; it never occurs to them the feeling might be mutual.
So anyway, I was really happy. I had plenty of friends and I was easily entertained. Sure, the guys weren't chasing me down the halls, but I always was (and remain) pretty grateful for that; particularly in those formative years. On the occasions that boys were interested in me, I found their attention pretty stressful and ignored their advances anyway.
Then, when I was 17 and towards the tail end of my junior year in high school, I randomly lost about three pounds in a week. I hadn't been trying, it kinda just happened because I was in a school theatre production and didn't have a lot of time to eat. I stepped on the scale and noticed the difference and that's when it occurred to me for the first time: what if I did this on purpose?
Like a lot of fat kids, it never really occurred to me that I could be thin. Other people would tell me how great it was, but I thought about it the same way a lot of people approach other people's religions: I'm glad it works for you.
Thus began my first serious diet. It was summer break and I was slated to spend two and a half months in the scorching deserts of central India, working for a nonprofit that built schools in rural villages. I think my weight loss program was dramatically aided by the unfamiliar surroundings. Every night I was in a different town. Plumbing and electricity were erratic if not invisible, everybody spoke a different dialect of Hindi (and I barely spoke Hindi at all). Every night I fell asleep on the edge of terror; but it was also the most exhilarating experience I'd ever had in my life.
In the mornings, before going out to the villages, I'd do an hour's worth of stretching exercises that I'd memorized out of a book. Indian food revolves around whole grains; in farming villages, this is even more the case. I shocked many a farmer's wife by refusing to eat rice and roti with the same meal. I ate a lot of hot lentil soup instead. I never took seconds of anything. (It didn't occur to me at the time that this routine was a bit too intense) I didn't even have regular cell phone service; my diet and exercise routine was the only certainty I had. I was 17 and surrounded by strangers in the wilds.
Then, right before I went back to the US, my sister and I got our hair frosted by a professional in Mumbai. It was the first and only professional color treatment I ever received; I only got my first salon haircut when I was 16 . My parents had gone with me, sitting gingerly on the chairs and gaping at the $70 price tag. ("For a haircut?" my dad gasped, in true immigrant style. "I can see that hair stylist's thong through her pants," was my mother's only observation.)
We returned to the US. Now, because I'd spent most of the summer wearing diaphanous salwar kameez, it didn't occur to me that I had lost much weight. But I had.
When I came back, none of my clothes fit. My Mom and I went on a marathon trip to Kohl's. My "style" throughout high school had always been flamboyant and attention-getting; I was fond of short skirts, bright colors and long hippy dresses. I owned - and wore! - knee-high black leather boots, back when that trend was still only kinda respectable.
So I stocked up on all my usual faves, while my mother vainly tried to steer me towards clothes that had a modicum of elegance and class (a battle that every mother fights and loses, valiantly)
The first event of the school year was a party at a friend's house. I showed up looking like my new self. To say that jaws hit the floor would be a serious understatement; it was the sort of moment that could probably have concluded a teen romcom.
"I thought your parents had come in with someone else's child," gasped my friend, the same one who had once made that tearful confession in third grade.
"I would kill to have legs like yours," said another.
I still didn't grasp the extent of the transformation - I wouldn't; not until I saw my senior picture and barely recognized the person in it. But that was months away.
To be suddenly an item of interest was a shock, but these were people who had known me for years. They probably talked about my transformation a lot more than I realized - it was a mark of my naivete about my fellow high schoolers that I returned from summer totally changed and thought everyone would just get over it - but we quickly got back into the groove of plays, books, etc that we'd known for years. I continued to workout every day and continued to reduce how much I ate. Eventually I hit 500 calories a day and started to get headaches. I realized I was getting into dangerous territory and eased up on the calorie restriction. (My weight loss might seem dramatic but I was 17; I don't think what I did was in any way unsafe.)
No comments:
Post a Comment