After Being Called a Pig, Food Has Never Looked The Same

The words we use matter

Back in the 1980s, we didn’t eat what I would consider to be a healthy diet now. Our staples at home included Hamburger Helper, pigs in a blanket, tuna casserole, and a lot of fast food take-out. It was a lot of carbs, meat, dairy, and processed junk being ingested. My mother didn’t have an issue with her weight partly because of genetics but mainly because she didn’t eat much.

She was busy drinking alcohol and doing appetite-suppressing drugs. She wasn’t worried about what I was eating, as long as it was easy and cheap, until I started to gain a little weight.

While at Costco yesterday, I was reminded of an incident with my mother. My daughter and I were walking down the frozen food aisle and she spotted pigs in a blanket. I rarely think of those dinners but the memories came up of those little Vienna sausages, wrapped in crescent rolls, with canned gravy over the top.

I loved those pigs in a blanket.

My daughter exclaims, “Oooh, I love those!” I laughed because I have never made them and I have no idea where she gathered her fondness for this random meal and what I think to be ancient food.

She tells me that she’s had them at friends houses but I don’t buy them. I loved them as a child but don’t have fond memories of them. It was silly of me to pass them up because of my memories but I deferred her to pick something else. Starbucks egg bites in bulk would have to do.

Back when I was eating my 1980s diet, which funny enough made me gain weight during that awkward pre-teen time, my mom was growing deeper into her addiction. The passive-aggressive, vindictive ways she spoke to me cut deep internal wounds into my soul that I didn’t know at the time would affect me throughout my life.

One night, after she cooked up her famous pigs in a blanket, she began to laugh as I was eating them. Then, the cut of the knife took place, the dagger to my pre-teenage heart that would change everything.

“You look like a pig.”

However, after this, my memory is fuzzy because the words made me partially block it out. I want to believe that she didn’t say I was a fat pig but for some reason, those words stand out in my mind. It could also be because I remember the vivid entry in my diary from that day.

I drew a big pig on the page and wrote “This is me. I am a fat pig”. I began to think that if I was thin, people would like me. That makes me sad to think about now especially because I’ve witnessed someone that I love very much struggle with her weight and body image, too. I wonder if she has also drawn herself as something obese.

After that comment, I was crushed but still continued to eat what was provided over fear of upsetting my mother. But, I also knew that I shouldn’t eat as much now because I didn’t want to be a fat pig. I knew I would never be as thin as my mother and that she would continue to judge me. That was my reality.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that the comment really began to affect my life. It was a constant internal struggle to be thin and look a certain way to my peers. I no longer lived with my mother in my teenage years because she simply couldn’t care for me anymore, but the words stuck to me like superglue.

As a teenager and the new girl at school, I just wanted to be liked and accepted by my peers. Having debilitating social anxiety made everything worse but I thought as long as I wasn’t overweight, my life would be a lot easier. I started to view some foods as bad foods, ones that I shouldn’t have often. If I did, I should limit my other food choices to balance it all out.

The problem was, I was a growing teenager and always hungry. I began to do this weird thing with my bread, just breaking off small pieces so a slice would last longer. It would have nothing on it, just a plain piece of bread.

Then, the teenage acne started and a friend of mine told me that if I started taking Metabolife it would help my acne and curb my appetite. That was a win in my book. If I could just not be so hungry all the time, then I would be the size of my dreams. By then though, I had lost the awkward preteen weight because my body was going through puberty and evening out. Looking back, I had no reason to be worried about my weight and certainly shouldn’t have started taking these over-the-counter diet pills.

Being 5’4” and 125 pounds is nothing I should have been fretting over. But, on the cheer team, I was a base and not a flyer. All of the small girls were flyers, so I still thought of myself as the bigger girl. The thought would creep in that my mother was right.

Metabolife gave me some energy, cleared up my pimples a bit, and I got down to 120 pounds but still wasn’t one of the small girls on the team. In my mind, they were tiny and I was average. They weren’t thinking about and recording their feelings about certain foods though.

I started to notice that if I just ate chicken, broccoli, and a little rice for dinner, I would stay at the same weight. Sometimes I skipped lunch, which made me feel even better. But, those days came when my friends and I would gorge on chili cheese fries and burgers after school. I loathed myself on those days. But, I was never overweight and it simply was something I created in my mind because of that comment that lingered and never left.

Things took a huge turn during my senior year of high school. I was introduced to an even better appetite suppressant, one that would make me stick skinny and I loved it. I would often pinch the sides of my stomach and I loved feeling the bone without any fat attached. I had to get the smallest dress I could find for prom and I thought I looked amazing. Looking back, I was too thin and looked better before this madness hit my life.

My addiction grew because I liked the way that drug made me feel and even better, I wasn’t hungry at all. This was unsustainable, of course, and it led me down a dark path but I kept thinking, at least I was thin. It wasn’t until I had a kidney infection from my usage that was so incredibly painful, that I took a step back to realize what I was doing to my body.

I had to quit and start eating healthy instead. I transferred addictions, one to only eating healthy “good” foods while trying my best to stay away from all the “bad” foods that I had named. And, if I ate those bad foods, I would make up for it by limiting what I ate the next day. I started counting calories which made me insane. My thoughts revolved around making sure that I ate healthy foods.

While I never completely starved myself, I wasn’t treating my body with respect. I became obsessed with eating healthy but not feeding my body the nutrients that it needed in my early 20s.

Then, I got pregnant and what do you know, I found it to be a free pass to eat whatever I wanted. I was exhausted from dieting, making sure I ate healthy all of the time, and the constant calorie counting. I wanted to eat all of the things I had labeled as bad.

A few times a week, I would stop at a local place for a giant hot cookie with ice cream on top. Pizza, burritos, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on overload, and cereal became my favorite things. If I had a salad, it was a huge cobb with all of the fixings that might as well have been a hamburger. I gained twenty pounds one month and the doctor made me feel bad, telling me that I needed to watch it the next month.

I was put right back in that space as a pre-teen. I felt I couldn’t even continue eating the way I wanted to as a pregnant woman. So, I reeled it in but ended up gaining 40 pounds or so toward the end of my pregnancy, leaving me depressed when I couldn’t fit into my clothes for months afterward. I never thought that this was a normal occurrence after having a baby, only that I didn’t have the self-control to keep it under wraps.

I vowed not to do the same with my next pregnancy and only gained 30 pounds but my sweet little girl was a lot smaller than her sister. She was healthy, which was all that mattered, but in the back of my mind, I was so happy that I would fit into my clothes sooner. The destructive path that I was on was not sustainable when I went back to drinking after I had both of my kids. Things just got worse, I was a bloated mess with two little girls, trying to fool everyone around me.

I became a depressed mom with a drinking problem, bloated and splotchy and when I tried sobriety for the first time, I vowed to be anything but bloated. I went back to only eating those good foods on my list which consisted of vegetables, fruits, and mostly plant-based items. I slimmed down and felt my best but I was still pinching my sides every night, making sure I wasn’t getting bigger. The scale in my bathroom became my enemy. If I was a few pounds over my ideal weight, I would eat less that day. The next day, I would eat a lot and it was a vicious cycle.

As years passed, I was on and off the wagon with drinking, which led to a yo-yo of my bloated and slim self, and it became so exhausting. When I finally got sober for good, because I wanted to be sober, I decided that I had to start looking at food in a different light. My daughters are teenagers and I have to model good behavior. They already had enough weight issues from being dancers that I didn’t need to add any more stress to their lives.

I decided there would be no more influencing them to eat super healthy all of the time. They could make their own choices and I needed to take a step back. While I have not rid myself completely of this obsession with good and bad foods, I am much kinder and more gentle with myself now.

I stopped weighing myself. I stopped counting calories. I try to eat in an 80/20 fashion where 80% is healthy and then I allow myself to be a human being that indulges in guilty pleasures from time to time. I eat ice cream every night and a few snacks after dinner. I balance that out with healthy meals and it has made me a lot happier.

I try to eat a plant-based diet now because it makes me feel better, not because it is going to make me thin. I know now that I have my metabolism from that mother of mine to thank and didn’t need to spend all of those years obsessing about my weight.

I know I am not a pig and I never have been. It’s taken me years to be accepting of what I eat and I am still a work in progress.