Satisfy Your Hunger

My mother rarely talked about food in an unhealthy way or commented on food as if it should be something controlled. Society did that. The worst part of losing 20 pounds in a month during my senior year of high school was the compliments. I would answer silently in my gut.

"How did you do it?!" I starved myself.

"WOW, you look great!" I feel terrible and ashamed.

"What's your secret?" It's not a secret. I don't want to invite you into this pain.

"You look awesome!" So, I only look awesome if I’m skinny?

Those compliments made me feel like there was a perfect body to strive towards rather than loving the one body I was given. Those compliments didn’t boost my self-esteem but rather my shame. What if how we got to what society deemed as great was actually one of the worst things we did to our bodies?

How I give compliments when people are going through body changes has completely changed. I won't give classic comments when I see a friend post a bikini shot, or at least I try not to give these types of compliments. I shift the compliment to how the person feels.

How do you feel?!?

The “how” shifts the focus on them personally and their actions rather than commoditizing their body. It checks in with the person first before putting our assumptions on someone. Also, why is it even okay for us to comment on people's bodies? I just don’t want to perpetuate making people feel like their bodies are commodities to compliment, and I don't want to contribute to the system that believes there is such a thing as one perfect body.

How messed up is it that we control in our brains what that “perfect” body is? This frames how we compliment people. How do we change the language in compliments to not affirm one ideal of perfect without doing our own inner work?

It drives me a bit wild when people say, “Stay hungry.” I get what it means, but I often take it too literally. You can be hungry for something and starving at the same time. I think it’s more important to satisfy your hunger than it is to stay hungry. How often as women are we told to suppress our appetites for things - pleasure, food, adventure, success, money, love? What if we actually satisfied our sense of adventure, what if we satisfied our hunger?  When you satisfy a sense of adventure with something as simple as a long drive, it propels you forward to create more spaces for adventure. If I could say one thing today, it would be to go satisfy something. For me, that’s making myself a hot chocolate, grabbing my favorite snack, diving into a book, and going to bed at 8:00 pm. Satisfy your hunger. It's one of the most healing, rebellious things you can accomplish.