The Hard Thing

Diet culture equates hard with healthy. 

It tells you that exercise needs to be sweaty, grueling, and regimented, come hell, highwater, below freezing temperatures, or winter bugs. 

It tells you that eating needs to be premeditated and mechanical and that meal prep is a nonnegotiable, never mind the fact that you’d rather be sledding with your kids or catching up on the Crown or that you’re so sick of red peppers you can hardly see straight. 

It tells you that on this day whatever-it-is into that shiny new year’s resolution, those of you still holding on by your fingernails to avoid joining the ranks of the already-lapsed are winning, but remain just one missed workout away from a speedy descent into mediocrity. 

But you know what else is hard? Doing the things that are good for you in the face of diet culture. Things that diet culture deems lazy or undisciplined or (gasp!) easy. 

But I see you, refusing to make another weight-based resolution because you remember how it’s gone before, how all-consuming it was to follow and how horrible you felt when you stopped. Your word of the year may be “balance” or “gentleness” or “stillness” or “connection,” and you may be blocking diet ads like your life depends on it. And it probably feels really hard.

I see you, settling into a rest day. Turning off your alarm and tolerating the antsiness that ensues. You’ve learned so many unhelpful messages about exercise, and their guilt- and shame-laden barbs are loudest on a rest day, But if you turn up the tv or tune into the music that you’re listening to as you whip up your favorite boxed brownies, you can almost forget that they’re there. But gracious, it’s hard.

I see you, following your meal plan despite the fact that your eating disorder voice is berating you and scaring you, despite the fact that it’s excruciating to eat a snack in the middle of class and that you are almost never hungry. I see you doing everything in your power to hold onto hope that it gets better. It does. But what you’re doing is really hard.

Sometimes the hard thing isn’t what diet culture says is the hard thing. Sometimes the hard thing is the “easy” thing. The backing off thing. The resting thing. The doing less thing. The doing different than diet culture thing. 

Whatever your hard is, I see you. You are not alone, and you’re doing a great job.