Thursday, July 31, 2014

Life In Between

Life In Between        F.Z.

This book discusses how it is to live as an "average" person and as a "fat" person, with the caveat that "fat" here is used as a descriptor, not a negative. It is simply an adjective, like "tall," "short," "thin" or "blue eyed." There is no value judgment about size implied in its usage.

The writer talks about different stages in her life when she was heavier and when she was slimmer. The only time she veered into "sort of slim," territory, she tells us, is when she was 12 years old, 5'6, and went down to 123 pounds when she had a bad case of bronchitis (during which time she was nursed and loved back to health by her grandma, mom's mom).

She also discusses her mom's eating disorder and the fact that her mom was one of the five percent for whom dieting mostly worked. Her mom was constantly on a diet and made her feel like a pig when she was eating, it turns out, like most teenagers. Of course the writer dieted, and  kept yo yo dieting herself up to 250 pounds, then down again, then up. Until she figured out that it was in her best interests to stop dieting.

But she talks about the times she was "slimmer." To her surprise, there did not seem to be as much difference as she had imagined in the way people treated her when she was "average" sized. She started to realize, slowly, that perhaps it was most important for her to feel better about herself no matter what she weighed.

The lesson took years, but started to sink in. Slowly.


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