What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety

by Cole Kazdin

Long after that job was over, I equated (and still often do) freedom and independence with eating whatever I want, and the radical idea of eating for pleasure. It is pleasurable. Salty, tangy, crispy, creamy, and chewy. But some days I’m afraid I’ll lose control.

There’s valor in deprivation, and shame in giving in to the chips.

What if “eating healthily” had less to do with the food we put in our mouths and more about how we feel while we’re eating?

Noom is part of a larger trend of weight loss companies masquerading as health-and-wellness programs. As consumers have become savvier and backlash against diet culture grows, the diet industry is adapting. “They’ve co-opted the language of the body positivity movement, terms like ‘anti-diet’ and ‘we’re not about weight loss, we’re about health,’” said psychologist Alexis Conason. “It capitalized on our awareness that diets don’t work. They promise the best of both worlds: You can reject dieting and still lose weight. But it’s not true. It’s a weight loss company, reinforcing those same oppressive norms that the body positivity movements are fighting against.”

Dieting creates profound stress to the body and mind, slows metabolism, and can actually lead to weight gain. The point of this chapter is not to feel helpless around our own bodies. Eating a vegetable-rich diet and regularly exercising are so important for our health. We can do that. It may result in losing weight. The point is to notice that when someone tells us that they have a system for long-term weight loss, they are lying. They are lying. They are lying.

The race gap in eating disorder diagnoses is appalling. Black teenage girls are 50 percent more likely than white teenage girls to exhibit bulimic behavior, and yet BIPOC are half as likely to be diagnosed (much less receive treatment) as their white counterparts.

I had always wanted to be perfect right out of the gate. In my mind, asking for help revealed weakness. True strength was handling everything myself. It never occurred to me it could be the opposite.

When your doctor tells you that, based on your BMI, you’re at an increased risk for diabetes, that’s like me saying, “I’d never date someone from Texas.” A surface, blanket statement that doesn’t take the individual into account. Because then you find yourself sitting across the table from this hot guy who plays three instruments, who’s really kind and sensitive and you ask, “So where did you grow up?” And he says, “Dallas,” and you’re like, Shit, really? AND THEN YOU MARRY HIM. Which is all to say, when doctors get hung up on BMI, or use it as the primary metric for making health recommendations, THEY MAY MISS OUT ON THE MAN OF THEIR DREAMS! And, they may also miss other important indices of health or health risks, like a person’s lifestyle behaviors, family history, and other illnesses.

I’ve spent so much energy ruminating about how food shows up on my body, it hadn’t occurred to me to examine how food shows up in my brain. How nourishment (or lack thereof) impacts my anxiety, how without knowing it, I may have impeded my own recovery by not eating enough or as often as my body needs.