One of the things I was most excited to do when I moved here was to restart cross-country skiing; I love it but, sadly, for one reason or another, have not skied in twenty years. Now that I don’t have children in school or classes to teach, I have been eager to restart, and because ski technology has changed significantly in my prolonged off-season, not to mention that my feet have gotten bigger, my husband and I went to the local outdoor store to procure new equipment.

We were immediately helped by a nice, knowledgeable young man named Brett, who showed me some skis that he thought would be appropriate. When it came to sizing them, he measured against my height and then casually asked my weight. I replied, truthfully, that I really didn’t know. I have not weighed myself since August 2020, when I read Your Body Your Best Friend; even at the doctor’s office, I have turned around while being weighed and asked not to be told the number. Brett suggested that if I didn’t know my weight, I could just step on the scale, that one, right over there!

“Oh, I’m not stepping on a scale,” I said, and my husband laughed. “That’s a dangerous question!” he said to Brett, and what was so interesting to me is that Brett looked completely puzzled as to why a woman would hesitate weighing herself not just in public, but ever. Like, he was genuinely nonplussed. Why would weight be any different than boot size or height; this was value-neutral information used to select the appropriate ski equipment.

Honestly, it’s aspirational. I cannot imagine being in a mental place where knowing my weight didn’t cause a steep descent into utter madness, regardless of what that weight is. I cannot imagine just knowing my weight without some kind of insane moral value judgement, the way I feel about my height and the size of my feet and hands. In the end we compromised; Brett told me the weight range in kilograms for the skis I was looking at, and I was able to tell him that I thought I was within that range.

I am still a little depressed about the Weight Watchers book I read last week, friends. I don’t know if it was because I read it just before my Ladies’ Holidays when I was already in a fragile emotional state, but wow, did it ever bum me out. The idea that we are living in a society that essentially wants women – sure, men are subject to weight judgements too, but let’s face it, it’s mostly women – to take up less space and to always be hungry or, alternately and concurrently, not hungry but guilty and full of shame, just made me so sad. The thought of all these millions of women who have been weight cycling their entire lives, just futilely dieting and gaining and back again, and then made to feel shame about it, made me feel like wrapping up every one of them in a hug.

The author herself, and most likely, millions of other women, seemed to have two modes when it comes to food: restriction and the accompanying obsession with food (did we learn nothing from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment?), or shame about eating and the accompanying obsession with food. Restriction and shame, those seem to be the options. There was no joy whatsoever.

I learned something unsettling this week, and it has to do with Ozempic. I know there is a lot of discourse around this drug, and I am not going to touch on that. What I am going to tell you is something that I did not know, and that is that while Ozempic has been used very effectively for fairly significant weight loss, once a person stops the drug the weight is regained. The only way, apparently, to maintain the weight loss from Ozempic use is by continuing usage of Ozempic, indefinitely. The thought of people staying on a drug that is probably not tested for extreme long-term usage – how could it be, when it’s relatively new? – for the rest of their lives just to maintain an arbitrary Ideal Weight has me upset on a macro level. What are we doing in our society?

Once you open your eyes to the insidiousness of diet culture, you can’t not see it everywhere. Conversations about skipping dessert to be Good happen everywhere, or thoughts like I want to eat a lot at this event so I won’t eat all day to prepare abound, women everywhere are thinking I ate those cookies yesterday so today I’ll skip lunch. Whole swaths of food are demonized as Bad, every time you turn around it’s something different: oils, sugar, carbs, whatever some so-called expert has decided to pick on. Food is fuel, of course it is, but it is so much more than that. Food needs to nourish our bodies AND our souls; it is nutrition and it is community, it is family and it is joy, it is culture and tradition. When we reject these things, we are rejecting little parts of ourselves. Of course we need to make choices that are best for our bodies, of course we do, but our physical bodies are only one part of us.

What upset me the most from that Weight Watchers book was somewhat of a throwaway line, and that is that Jean Nidetch said that being thin needs to be more important than any food, and suggested this life hack: on your birthday, every birthday, for the rest of your life, bake a cake, cut the cake, serve the cake, but DO NOT EAT THE CAKE. Now, I probably would not have noticed this line at all if she talked about pie, which I loathe, or even something I feel neutral about, like doughnuts. I don’t dislike doughnuts but I never feel like eating one, and so if someone told me that there would be no more doughnuts or pie for the rest of my life, I’d never blink an eye. Done and done! But cake! We all know how I feel about cake. The thought of slicing a cake and not eating any on my own birthday, ever again, is the saddest food-related thing I can think about.

Maybe it’s because I’m 48 and although I hope I have a little more life ahead of me than behind me, likely that is not the case, but I just refuse to spend even one more minute like this. I refuse to think that if I have that, then I shouldn’t have this. The fact is that I genuinely do not think about my weight at all anymore, unless I’m in a ski shop and they ask for it, but it’s taken work to get here.

On the subject of cake, it was my husband’s birthday, and so we spent the weekend feting my Shmoopy. Obviously there needed to be cake involved, and for this special occasion, we went with carrot. It was delicious.

Weekly Reading

Falling. Let’s say you’re on a plane. The pilot discovers, after takeoff, that his family is being held hostage and he is given one of two choices: crash the plane, killing everyone on board, or his family dies. What’s he going to do? This is an entertaining thriller of a book, although probably not recommended for anyone who, you know, has a fear of flying. I don’t, so it didn’t bother me BUT I could not stop thinking about the author. The author, get this, is a former flight attendant who WROTE THIS BOOK WHILE WORKING THE RED-EYE. That’s right, as the passengers slept on overnight flights, she wrote a book about terrorists threatening every person on board and the pilot’s beloved family. What kind of a warped and twisted mind does that? I don’t know but I’d love to be her friend. Imagine getting your little bag of pretzels or Celebration cookie from a seemingly-innocent flight attendant who is imagining your death. Actually, given how some people behave on planes, this is kind of a reasonable response. Thanks to Stephany (HI STEPHANY) for the recommendation (listen to her podcast, The Friendship Paradox!).

Daughter in Exile. I think this is an incredibly honest and accurate book about what it is to be an illegal immigrant in the US; this story follows a young, educated Ghanaian woman who gives up her job at the Thai embassy in Senegal to go to America with her boyfriend, who turns out to be a cad, uninterested in her when he discovers she doesn’t have wealth. Stranded in America, pregnant, she struggles just to survive, the people around her in equal measures helping her and also taking advantage of and hurting her. I’m sure this is very realistic, with one awful thing after another happening to her, but it is very hard to read. I guess it is just a slice of life. I can’t say I enjoyed it; I did not like the writing style and I found the dialogue to be pretty stilted and unnatural. I think, however, it was a very eye-opening novel to the immigrant experience. 

The Woman in the Library. This was SUCH a fun and entertaining read! It’s a murder mystery with clever parallel story lines – a mystery being written, and a beta reader reading that mystery. Very fun indeed!

We took advantage of a beautiful weekend, and having my son home for my husband’s birthday, to take our annual family photos. Would you like to be included on my holiday card list? All you have to do is include ME on yours! At the risk of sounding like a Christmas Asshole, I am only interested in card EXCHANGES, so if you too love sending out holiday cards, and want one from me, let me know! If you sent me a card last year you are already on the list, never fear. In any case, have a lovely week, everyone; hopefully there will be cake or something delicious involved. xo