SJ Longthorne

“The stress hormone cortisol—the one evolution designed to kick in when you’re being chased by a tiger or, it turns out, rejected for your looks—increases appetite, reduces the will to exercise and even improves the taste of food.” https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong …

This middle finger goes up to the boy in school who went around all the girls — but not the boys — and measured their waists one by one with his hands, pronouncing them acceptable or otherwise. My friend was a healthy kid. He called her “chunky”, and later she’d throw up.

I’ve never been medically overweight, but that hasn’t stopped people telling me they think I am, by their standard. Not once has this encouraged a healthy lifestyle; the formidable urge is to get rid of the weight as fast as possible so the comments end as fast as possible.

Cue disordered eating, years and years of misery, of self-induced social exclusion that I’m still prone to, of every thought being plagued, of dreams where I slice off my fat and my breasts, of fad diets that don’t work, of messing up my digestive system. Worth it? No.