Do you know that there is a whole new movement going on called the Body Positive Movement? Where was this when I was nineteen and 98 pounds? I was listening to the The Home Podcast last night, and after the fun twenty minutes of intro, the guest interview began, and my mind exploded. I love co-host Holly Glenn Whitaker anyway and her Hip Sobriety movement, but this episode about food blew my mind.
When I put the grape down for the 100-day alcohol-free thing, I had a big sit down with the Food Thing, so it was fresh on my mind. All of my lady monsters lumped together can’t compare to the Food Thing, but it’s generally talked about with the language of the alcohol or drug thing.
If you have a food thing, you know it lies in neither of these dungeons. And the Home Podcast guest Lauren Foxen-Duke knows it too. Her Stop Fighting Food work traverses the space between Overeaters Anon, which is food restrictive at its core, and the intuitive eating view, which is terrifying for those of us with mouths like Hoovers.
The Food Thing is a deep girl. For me, that hungry teenager has been on and off my back since the summer before eleventh grade, when she informed me I had a fat ass and a big nose and some boy issues. All I’ve managed to do since then is control her, and never, in a way that was smart.
I’ve been thinking about the various “medications” that have worked over all my years to distract her. Cocaine, of course, was the best. But as a grownup, six ounces of Chardonnay carefully dripped into my system with a dose of Don Lemon every day between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. was also highly effective. Dinner could be merely a handful of chips and a long phone call with an old friend. And now the wine was gone, and I’m starving. There’s this baby sitting on the back of my tongue, and she’s barking like a heartbroken dog.
All I can say is the person who created that 35 calorie ice cream, the vegan one made with the monk fruit, is Jesus.
It occurred to me I have to earn how to eat almost like a human– as in using utensils, sitting down, stopping when full. And guess what? now that these younger new thought leaders are fearlessly tromping on some sacred addiction ground and reframing it, it might turn out even an old girl can learn to love her body. Foxen-Duke says it’s the only thing that truly belongs to you.
I’m so impressed with the millennials I’ve been following since the rebirth of Young Angels of America. I’m going to do my best to suggest and recommend them to you. They’re young. But they’re great.