Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life (31 page)

I didn’t want this story to end in a bikini, but fine—I wanted the beach. I probably imagined applause and bowing at some point, too. But in fact, it ends at my IKEA table with my hair blowing in the breeze of a secondhand air conditioner. We don’t get montages or grand finales. We just eat dinner and do the dishes, and absolutely no one’s going to clap their hands about it.

With or without a diet, life had intervened. Sometimes, reality just smashes like a brick through your bedroom window and wakes you up in the middle of the night, even if you’re supposed to get up and go to the gym in the morning. On those days, I will be exhausted and snappish and maybe I’ll want to eat some fucking ice cream, and so what? Neither ice cream nor the gym matters as much as cleaning up the glass.

Part of being better means having bad days. Man, I wish it hadn’t taken me thirty years to just have bad days. On a diet, those days will ruin your streak, urging you to cheat until you find yourself clawing through a loaf of Wonder Bread because, fuck it, you’ll have to start over again tomorrow anyway. In the real world, there’s no starting over. Those days are just days in your life. They will suck, and there’s no guarantee that tomorrow won’t suck even worse. Still, every morning you wake up is another you get to have. Whether it’s a good day or a bad day isn’t so important. The only part that really matters is that you get up.

For the record, I have a hard time believing this bullshit on the bad days, too. That’s why I wrote it down.

November 2014

L
ast week, I went apple picking with my three best friends and Harry. For the last seven years, my friends and I have kept up the tradition, jamming ourselves into a rental car and driving up to the Hudson Valley, hoping there will still be apples on the trees. It was Harry’s first time joining us, and he brought along his fancy camera. For once I didn’t complain about the constant snapshotting. I’d asked him to bring it, because this apple-picking trip would almost certainly be the last. In fact, it would be the last day my friends and I would have together for a very long time.

Four months and two hundred pages ago, I wrote that my deepest fear was one of my friends moving to another borough—and I was just barely exaggerating. But that was back before I understood that there were far worse ways to lose someone. Back then, I really thought that untangling my relationship with food, my past, and my body was the hardest thing I’d go through. Idiotic as it sounds, those were the things that had derailed me at every turn thus far in life, and I was
pretty
sure that if I could just get that situation under control, then every other challenge would be cake. Maybe there would be no happily ever after, but as long as I still had my best friends right around the corner and nothing else changed ever again, then I’d be content.

“Jesus Christ, I’m not dying.” Jon dropped his head back and rolled his eyes for the hundredth time that day. “I’m
just
moving to LA!”

Once again, I welled up and threw my hands around his middle like a kid refusing to let daddy leave for a business trip.

“Take another picture?!” I called to Harry, who turned his lens on the two of us standing in a row of overpicked Cortlandt trees. In the photo, I do indeed look childish, gawking up at my tall, old friend, both of us on the verge of laughing. In all the photos from that day, my friends and I look a little silly and wistful, but not nearly as silly and wistful as we felt.

“This time next year…” we kept repeating. This time next year, where would everyone be? What would our lives look like? We all knew better than to answer these questions, but it was hard not to ask them.

Personally, I try hard not to divine my future too specifically. This time last fall I’d decided that the year ahead would be the Best Year of My Life, and I wasn’t quite wrong. But “the best” looked a lot different than I thought it would. I suppose that’s the truth about most things in our lives, and fine—I guess that’s okay, too. If everything turned out the way we imagined it, there’d be no surprises. Even after seeing how rotten surprises can be, I think I still prefer a life with them in it. Good thing I don’t have a choice.

But certain things I’m pretty sure of about this time next year. I’ll be in better health and shape than I was for most of my life. My recent annual physical reports that this is already true. While I’m not going to take any “after” photos, I will disclose that my blood sugar and blood pressure are normal, my cholesterol kicks ass, and my doctor says that all those other hormones and bodily statistics I don’t understand are equally thumbs-up. My weight is no longer my concern, and though I let him weigh me, I ask him to keep the number to himself. It’s not just so I can keep the focus on health instead of weight loss, but because part of being healthy is knowing what my triggers are. Like an old, vicious lover, that number on the scale still has a seductive pull. I could probably handle seeing it, but why would I, unless some part of me wanted to get back together?

That’s one more thing I know with certainty: There’s no going back. No matter what happens down the line, I’ve clawed my way out of the proverbial cave, seen the real light of day, and felt the cold, wet morning grass beneath my feet. I’m staying right here.

I know I still have work ahead of me, and that I will next year, too. This is a process, but so is, like, being alive. Fingers crossed, I’ll still be forging ahead with both for a good long time.

I know this, too: I will still have stupid arguments with my friends. I’ll still cry at the office every once in a while and pretend that no one saw. I will still panic a little when my dad asks if Harry and I are going to get married, and then I’ll yell at him about feminism and generational biases. I will always love my mother and hope that she loves me. No matter how painful our past or uncertain our future, that much I know is true.

A couple years ago, those things would send me crawling into bed with a glass of wine and a sleeve of Thin Mints. Now, I know there is no avoiding the hard times, and there are no guarantees about when the good times will come around again. The Thin Mints can’t help me there. But getting out of bed might.

I know that giving up diets means I never get to be done with one. Changing your life means you’re never done changing it. Just like when you fall in love, you’re not “done” falling in love, nor are you wholly cured of all relationship neuroses. And just because you turn thirty, that doesn’t mean you’re finished being a twenty-something idiot. Getting older doesn’t mean I’m a grown-up. Certainly, no one who’s seen the state of my closet would argue that.

People talk about late bloomers like they’re somehow handicapped, but I kind of like being one. This is not a bad place to be: a thirty-year-old writer with rock-solid friends, someone to love, trying to do the work of being happy and maybe finding a slightly less crappy apartment.

At the end of this path, I find I’m still on it. No matter where I am, I’m on it. Climbing that windy orchard hill, and reaching up to yank a Braeburn off the tree, I felt a rush of knock-out joy, so grateful that I’d finally gotten up and started walking, with the ones I love beside me, and each on their own path.

I’m not done. I don’t want to be done.

First of all, I must thank Grand Central Publishing for making this book a reality, and embracing it with such excitement and warmth. You made me feel as if I’d been invited to sit at the cool kids’ table, and was somehow now a cool kid myself.

Thanks to my editor, Emily Griffin, for your truly incredible guidance and vision. You saw the things I couldn’t or didn’t want to see, and told me so with sensitivity and patience, and more than anything, I’m grateful for that honesty. I also want to thank Sara Weiss, the first editor who championed this book in the early stages and guided me through my first draft. I honestly didn’t know if I could do it, but you did, so I believed you. Thank you for that.

To my agent, Allison Hunter, I can hardly think of how to thank you adequately. A pony? A unicorn? I give up. Your wisdom and support throughout this process have been invaluable, and I am forever grateful.

On that note, I must thank Andy Ward, who introduced me to Allison, and Susan Kaplow, who introduced me to Andy. I also gratefully acknowledge Susie Duff, who first gave voice to the thought I was too scared to say:
You should write a book.
Without these people all of this would still be a daydream. Thank you.

I am endlessly grateful to Refinery29, not just for giving me a job, but for giving me the right job. Writing at this publication has taught me to work harder than I ever have, because the work is worth it. Thank you for allowing me to take risks, having my back, and reminding me that my voice is of value. My special thanks to Christene Barberich, who urged and empowered me to be the best, brightest version of myself, every day.

Thanks to my writing teachers—thanks to
all
writing teachers, in fact. In particular, thanks to Julie Faulstich, my high school English teacher, who created a safe, exciting space to try and fail and try again. I hold that space within me whenever I sit down in front of a scary blank page. And, thank you to Jack Murnighan, who said that I could be a writer and I should be. I don’t know if I would have tried if you hadn’t flat-out told me to.

Thanks to Theresa Kinsella, who so patiently guided me back to my senses and taught me how to eat like a human again. Thank you to Stephanie Irvin, who showed me how truly capable my body was. Thank you to my therapists, because without therapy I would never have had it in me to start this journey, let alone stick with it. Of course, huge thanks to Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, the authors of
Intuitive Eating
. These are the people who gave me the tools to change my life.

Thank you to my family, especially my parents, who always, always believed in my ambitions, even when my ambition was to be a Broadway star / screenwriter / indie film “it” girl / David Sedaris. You never once told me it was impossible. You never urged me toward something more practical. You gave me an education, and you never made me feel like an asshole when I needed help making rent. Regardless of anything else, you taught me to believe I could do it. Thank you so much.

Thank you to my dear and understanding friends for sticking by me, even when I am a frazzled, unwashed mess, as I’ve been for much of this last year. Further thanks to those friends who have lent me their lives for this book. In particular, thanks to Jonathan Parks-Ramage, whose story smashed into mine as I was writing. Thank you for your great generosity in letting me use your personal crisis as third-act material. I’ll try to time my breakdown for when you’re writing your memoir. Deal?

Thanks to Kelsey Osgood. There are some things I can vent about only to another writer, and you always let me do so with such patience and empathy. Thank you to Cheryl Strayed, who reminded me to be brave, compassionate, and wholly honest with myself in these pages. And thank you for reminding me that in the end, it’s all probably going to be okay.

Finally, thank you, Harry Tanielyan. You have borne the brunt of me, riding out sleepless nights and whole months of crippling anxiety. You celebrate my successes, and more than that, you remind
me
to celebrate them. You make me want to do the work of being better, and this book is the brightest reflection of that. I am so grateful for you I can hardly believe it.