by Issa Rae
Moving to Los Angeles instigated another present-day fatty food obsession: Mexican food. Tortillas and beans and cheese—oh my! So much cheese. So many nachos. So many artery-clogging, delectable, filling foods that don’t even exist in Mexico. Whoever concocted these “Mexican” treats, I love you.
Food is my destination, my journey, my reward, my friend—if only my metabolism matched that of the skinny, crackhead-bodied girls of my high school. How lucky they were! Many of them grew up to be the women who, even when pregnant, looked as if they had only protruding Tic Tacs in their stomachs, women who consumed food regardless of starch or sugar content without gaining an ounce. If my self-esteem weren’t directly correlated to my BMI, my love affair with food would be positively nurturing. I could flaunt my love affair on Facebook and Instagram without shame, posting pictures of myself cuddled up with food. It would be a beautiful life.
But alas, in reality, I’m in a self-inflicted abusive relationship. I’m that thirsty girl who constantly checks for her “man,” wondering about his whereabouts, desperate to see him again. Ironically, if I treated my food like I did my real-life relationships, I’d eat only when hungry. With my true love, food, I embarrass myself to no end to get its attention. As a result, my weight has fluctuated my entire life. In my high school and college years, I was in the plus-or-minus-ten-pounds range. In the latter half of my twenties, I’ve been more along the lines of the plus-or-minus-thirty-pounds range. What the hell is that? Why do I deserve that? Because as we women age our hormones change? Is that it? Mother F-You Nature.
As I write this, sipping on a vanilla milkshake from The Melt, I’m currently stretching the seams of the plus-thirty end of the spectrum and it is truly disgusting. I’ve resolved many times to force myself to get a grip, exercise, and eat right. “Don’t turn into Kirstie Alley” is my personal mantra. As of late, I can last for six days maximum before I wild the fuck out. There’s always a social gathering, an event, a Red Lobster commercial to expose my thinly veiled self-promises for what they really are: pathetic lies.
I have a plethora of self-esteem-damaging stories that should have put me on the straight-and-narrow path toward weight loss. And for a brief moment, they probably did. Like the time in seventh grade when my grandfather was set to pick me up after school because my mom was going to be stuck at the school where she taught French until late that evening. Despite knowing he was fastidiously punctual, I assumed that things would be different this time. I was in a new private school in Brentwood, California. The moving parking lot known as the 405 freeway was the most practical route to get to my school. Sure, you could take the streets if stop-and-go traffic made you feel more efficient, but the 405 was typically unavoidable. Getting to Barrington by three in the afternoon would be difficult, I reasoned.
It was by this logic that when Allison, my school best friend and carpool buddy at the time (in hindsight, a frenemy), suggested we go get a slice at the popular pizza place up the hill, I agreed. I didn’t even protest a bit: “No, I’m pretty sure my grandfather will be here and I’d hate to keep him waiting.” Nope. As much as I’d love to blame peer pressure as an excuse, I simply can’t. No suggestion of a food outing has ever elicited any protest from me. Ever.
So off we went, trekking up the hill, walking past the line of luxury cars filled with parents waiting to swoop up their kids. To my credit, I probably made sure to check the line of cars for my grandfather’s 1987 golden Mercedes and newsboy hat, as Allison and I traded gossip about the day’s events. Not seeing his car in line only validated my decision to round out the afternoon with a food excursion. By the time we reached the restaurant, ten minutes later, the line for ordering pizza snaked outside. That’s when I started to get nervous. We’d be there for at least another thirty minutes just getting through the line. But the smell of pizza dough, garlic, and marinara sauce was enough to soothe my worries. Even if my grandfather was down there, he could wait. Where did he have to go anyway?
Forty-five additional minutes passed before we each got our order of a slice of pizza, a drink, and fries to go. By now, the sun had unexpectedly started to set. I’m always too lazy to figure out whether it’s daylight saving or not. (All I know is I’m not a fan of the time change that has the sun right in your face when you wake up and takes it away at five o’clock in the afternoon. I don’t give a damn if it gives me an extra hour of sleep; it is not worth the productivity of which it robs me.) As we made our way down the darkening hill, I got a dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach. The line of cars was long gone, and I could only see a few cars parked in the parking lot in the distance, one of which was the golden Mercedes that had once been my father’s, the first car he had bought with his new eighties ob-gyn salary. If only I could walk up to the car and find him inside. He’d probably take some of my fries as punishment for being late and that would be that. But no, my dad had long since “upgraded” to a gray Saturn.
This would be my best frenemy’s first time meeting my grandfather, and it began to dawn on me that they’d make a horrible first impression on each other.
Perhaps it was the way that I greeted my grandfather, with a smile and a peppy, “Hey Papa!” that sent him over the edge. Or maybe it was that I hadn’t been considerate enough to get him anything to eat or drink. (Although he wouldn’t be able to taste it anyway, as he had lost his sense of taste and smell during some odd sickness that he caught decades ago.) Or maybe it really was just the fact that he had probably spent over two hours in traffic, coming all the way from Inglewood, only to wait an additional hour for his greedy, greasy-faced, non-resisting-pizza-ass granddaughter. Yeah, that was probably it.
I opened the door and he didn’t even bother to greet Allison, which was highly unusual for him since my grandfather was known for four things: his New Orleans drawl, his love of bow ties, his docile friendly charm, and his overreacting temper.
“Ah, where were you? Do you know how long I been waitin’?” he asked, skipping the charm and going straight for the temper.
“I’m sorry. I just went to get some pizza. I didn’t know you were here.”
“You went to get some pizza?!”
His pent-up irritation made his voice thunder with disdain. My grandfather was all for buying us fast food when we deserved it. “How ’bout some MackDonald’s!” he’d offer my siblings and me whenever we’d come to visit. But if we asked for McDonald’s or any other type of fast food, he’d shake his head violently and take to the kitchen, announcing, “We gon’ make our own MackDonald’s,” as he added green peppers and onions to his homemade hamburger patty. Yuck.
Allison sat in the backseat, sipping her drink and watching in amusement as she munched on her fries like they were a bag of popcorn. My grandfather took a look at my plate of food, and then he said the unthinkable, confirming all the suspicions I had about myself yet was too afraid to admit.
“That’s how come you gettin’ to be so FAT,” he declared, starting the car with disgust. In fact, the way he pronounced “FAT” sounded like he was clearing a clot of Russian phlegm out of his throat, readying to spit it on my slightly protruding seventh-grade gut. I was hot with embarrassment and shame. I couldn’t even look at Allison in the backseat, already certain that she would go home to repeat this story to her older sister as they laughed at my expense. Of all the people to say that in front of, she was the worst one. But more than that, the confirmation from my grandfather that I was fat was a punch in the gut. Yet another reason why I didn’t fit in; or why the boys in my school looked past me; or why I’d never be considered as pretty as my friends.
As we rode in silence on the car ride home and my eyes filled with tears, I looked out of my window into the night sky and made a silent plea for God to make me skinny. Then I took a bite of my cold slice of pizza and tried to chew quietly.
Moments like that (and more that followed) should compel me to turn my life around, to starve myself, and to
get myself in better physical shape. And for a time, I do. But then, I hit a wall. Sometimes it’s a wall that I’ll build for myself, and sometimes it’s one that life builds for me. I’ve been my ideal weight only twice: one time was by accident and the other was the result of not eating food for ten days.
The first time I lost a noticeable (to everyone else but me) amount of weight was in high school, when I went to visit my relatives in Senegal after not having seen them for five years. (In case you missed the explanation of my name, my father is Senegalese.) I was fifteen and my parents sent my little brother, my little sister, and me off to Africa by ourselves, the first time we had ever traveled such a long distance without them. The morning after we arrived, my dad’s side of the family gathered around the center outdoor terrace of our family home and made a huge deal about seeing us. My aunts, in particular, rejoiced about how fat my sister and I were.
“Vous êtes pata! ” one aunt exclaimed. (Translation: “You guys are fat.”)
“Vous mangez bien la-bas,” another aunt commented, laughing. (Translation: “You girls are eating well over there.”)
This was both jarring and embarrassing.
Still, I made no conscious effort to reverse my weight. It was only a combination of diarrhea, the three-meal “eat what you can” plan, a lack of snacks, rigorous exercise (otherwise known as walking in the heat), and going clubbing at night (the clubbing age limit was sixteen) that effected a change I had no willpower to make on my own. Oh, and the fact that I had become a pescatarian just the year before, much to the confusion of my cousins, worked miracles.
“You don’t eat meat . . . on purpose?” my older cousin asked.
“Yeah. Something I heard on the radio about how meat is processed and manufactured.”
“But, that’s the U.S. We don’t do that here. You can eat meat made in Senegal. It’s natural. It’s halal,” he tried to persuade me.
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“I wish we could afford to not eat something by choice,” he mused.
When I came back to the States at the end of summer, I had a “cute shape” (my mother’s words), having finally gotten rid of the baby fat that refused to grow the fuck up and move out of my body. My friends noticed the change. My new nickname was “skinny bitch.” It was the best compliment I ever could have received and allowed me a new confidence. Yet just as I started to grow accustomed to my skinny curves, college and the Sophomore Twenty happened.
The second time in life that I lost a significant amount of weight, I was aided by being broke in New York. I had already lost a significant amount just by trying to survive with two part-time jobs in the city, but I still wasn’t satisfied with my appearance. My younger siblings can attest to the fact that I’ve wanted a six-pack since I was in the sixth grade. I’m sure I could attribute this body image must-have to countless music videos featuring the perfect midriffs of TLC, Aaliyah, Destiny’s Child, and Mya. Also, the fact that midriffs were in style in middle school, in my opinion thanks to Clueless.
Needless to say, I didn’t accomplish that goal then. One spring, two years after college, however, everything changed. Five of my close friends and I decided to take a trip to the Dominican Republic together. A girls’ trip. Half of us were single and half of us were not, but we were all determined to act as one cohesive, partying, semi-slutty unit. One of my friends was already notorious for her sixty-five albums on Facebook, full of memorable, oft-embarrassing pictures of me and my other friends. She could make or break your photo history. This thought alone made me resolve to look my best for this trip, better than I had ever looked before. I had to get in shape. So, I took on the Master Cleanse, a.k.a. the maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and lemonade diet, a.k.a. “the Beyoncé Diet,” and gained an entirely new perspective on dieting.
I decided to take “before and after” pictures. Considering my previous life felt like a giant “before” picture, I could have selected any picture I wanted, but I wanted to do this right. I decided to take full-on, gutty-flabtastic front and profile pictures, to show the world what I was. I would keep those pictures on file as inspiration, and they wouldn’t be seen by the public until after I’d demonstrated some progress.
Next, I decided to enlist my mother. How I convinced her is still a mystery to me. Maybe it was the guilt she felt for passing her notorious abdominal genes down to me.
“Haha,” she’d say, poking my stomach, setting off an involuntary wave of mini-jiggles, “you got that from me.”
Maybe she, too, shared my desire to wear midriff T-shirts without high-waisted jeans. Either way, she decided to join me.
“I’ll do it with you. But only for four days.”
And that was enough for me. Despite my hatred of group projects, I’m a collaborator. A team player. When it comes to difficult things that I want to accomplish, I’m all about working with people. Even writing. While there’s a satisfaction that comes with completing something all by yourself, sometimes things are just more efficient and promising when you know that people are in the trenches, suffering with you.
So we embarked on our journey together and it was literally shitty. I ass-peed for the first time in my adult life. I got up to urinate frequently; my record was four times during an hour-and-a-half-long meeting. So as to distract myself from eating, I watched movies and online food videos. Watching other people eat on television was soothing. I used my blog to document my journey and attracted a slew of followers interested in my weight-loss journey. The rapid results surprised me. I posted a Before and After picture of my five-day progress, and there was a noticeable difference. I continued for five more days, for a total of ten days WITHOUT FOOD! I took my final After picture and I had a fucking six-pack. I had never seen my abs before that. I posted my proud pictures on Facebook, and my feed and blog exploded. People who had made fun of me for doing the diet before suddenly expressed a desire to try it. If approval can be judged by Facebook comments, let’s say I passed expectation. Best of all, I was ready to proudly rock a bikini in the Dominican Republic.
Completing the Master Cleanse opened up a whole new door of masochism for me. I was now privy to my starvation limits and would undoubtedly subject myself to something of equal or greater suffering in the future, just to reach my body goals. Because once the compliments come in, you’re totally seduced into equating self-worth with skinniness. Wow, you look great! Oh my God, so skinny! Geez, what’s your workout plan? The compliments were the most addictive drug of all. I live for the validation that accompanies weight loss.
Moving to Los Angeles only intensified my need to be thin. Though fellow dieters seem to be everywhere and restaurants provide more “fit friendly” options, it took a more conscious effort on my part to stay in shape, as walking in L.A. is not an option. On top of which, as I started working consistently, I had more money, which meant more access to food. Rather than lose weight, I found my weight increasing. My comfort with food simply outweighed my determination to be a smaller size.
Then, at the end of 2013, after fourteen years of being a pescatarian, I had an epiphany while I was in the midst of the Earthbar Juice Cleanse. I had survived the cleanse for five whole days the year before, but this time, I kept it real with myself and decided that three days was enough. I had just come back from a weeklong East Coast trip, where I had eaten room service and pizza every single night and drank at least four out of the seven days I was traveling. I was already forty pounds heavier than I wanted to be and newly entering an industry where every extra pound matters. My body was begging me for a restart. So when I got back to L.A., I made a vow to change my ways. But something happened during the cleanse: I started watching marathons of Chopped and Master Chef and began to question why I stopped eating meat in the first place. I honestly couldn’t recall. Then it all came back to me. I was in the ninth grade and my father had picked me up from school; NPR was playing on the radio, as always. About th
e same time we were assigned to read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, I remember listening to a story about how meat was processed and what hot dogs were made of. Then and there, I decided to give up meat. Even my dad, whose regular palate matches that of a protein-craving pregnant woman’s, declared that he would stop eating meat, too. The following day my last meat meal (on purpose, anyway) was chicken enchiladas. My dad’s resolve was less firm. He continued to eat the hell out of all meat (except pork).
Now, nearly fifteen years later, after years of dealing with the confusion of my extended family and peers—“Not even chicken? Chicken doesn’t count!”—I decided that I wanted bacon.
On the final day of my cleanse, I cleared my entire schedule to take a trip to Trader Joe’s, Costco, and the Farmer’s Market. I had to stop myself from picking up every single type of meat imaginable, but still came home with ground turkey, a Wagyu steak, chicken drumsticks, chicken breasts, and the most important of all: bacon. Or so I thought. My entire life, my mother had restricted us from pork. As a girl, I thought it was out of respect for my father’s religion. But when I grew older, I found out it was because my mother just didn’t think pork was “clean.” This logic didn’t really matter to me, as I had resolved to stop eating all meat except fish anyway. But when standing in the aisle of Trader Joe’s, deciding which type of nitrate-free, hormone-free, organically clean pack of bacon to choose, I opted for the turkey bacon—the kind with which we’d grown up.
That evening I returned to my apartment with bags of groceries, filled to the brim with meat, meat seasonings, and vegetables that taste good with meat. I couldn’t even finish the final two vegetable juice cleanses I had paid for; my appetite had already transitioned. I could barely sleep that night, as I dreamt of my first breakfast meal, with its new addition: bacon.