The False Morality of ‘Clean Eating’

My journey to a fatkini begins with my first two-piece swimsuit

Despite the fact that the swimsuit bottom I wanted was already sold out in mid-May, ‘beach body’ season is just ramping up. After the reprieve of gloomy spring showers, Memorial Day signals the beginning of sprinkler, river, and beach season in the Pacific Northwest.

I had big ideas about what it was going to be like in 2019. In January, I prepared myself- I knew the deluge was coming.

Diet posts, Whole 30 posts, boot camps, exercise, eating ‘right,’ pictures of salads- so many salads- and on and on. It was just a short skip-jump to now, when the sun starts to shine and the buzzword shifts from ‘resolutions’ to ‘beach bodies.’

This was going to be the year that I pushed back.

I would banish the implication that I must have forgotten I was too fat to ever be happy, and that if I loved myself I’d join a gym and eat some lettuce. I would block liberally and un-follow often, reclaiming my social feeds and my self-confidence! It would be the year I reminded the world that loving yourself and your life is not about pounds or inches.

But halfway through January, I just felt tired. As hard as I tried to be above it all, I just wasn’t, and that energy I’d hoped to funnel into a more enlightened attitude was waning. No matter how much you prepare for something, predicting emotions and reactions isn’t an exact science. I found myself hovering somewhere between unprepared, sad, angry, and tired. Being reminded on a daily basis that you’re dirty and bad because you’re not trying to lose weight is exhausting.

Six months later, my energy has shifted.

Writing about what it’s like to be fat in 2019 has ignited sparks inside me.

With the weather growing warmer by the day, I’m ready to give up socks for the summer, dig out my tank tops and capris, and move my dresses to the front of the closet.

New Years and the beginning of summer are two of the most challenging times of year for fat folks. Facebook, Magazines, morning shows, and local papers fill up with stories about beach bodies, being summer ready, fast ways to slim down, and ‘clean eating.’

The moral implication of ‘clean eating’ is that anyone who doesn’t eat that way is UN-clean.

We’ve all experienced shaming in one way or another. Maybe it was in elementary school because your lunch was “weird,” in middle school for listening to Bob Seeger instead of Marilyn Manson, or in high school for wearing thrift-store jeans. Remember that particular brand of internalized self-loathing? Fat people feel that every day because of the shapes of our bodies.

Referring to certain ways of eating as ‘clean’ allows corporations and advertisers to tap in to that deep-down shame we all remember deep inside. It’s not hard to trigger it with talk of ‘eating better,’ and when we feel it the first thing we want to do is get rid of it. They push ‘guilt free’ desserts and ‘skinny cocktails,’ and we flock to them without even realizing that they’re taking advantage of ingrained, fallacious moral values we’ve assigned to the food we eat.

Describing foods as healthy or unhealthy is just one more faulty binary system we can’t seem to let go of.

‘Bad’ foods are described as ‘fake’ or ‘junk food,’ and good foods become ‘super foods’ or ‘miracle foods.’ We are rewarded for putting those into our bodies, patted on the head for having ‘self-control,’ implying that if you don’t eat that way, you must be out of control. When you deny yourself the simple pleasure of a dessert with a falsely modest ‘No, I’ll be good,’ you’re indirectly telling others who choose to partake that they are being bad. Points systems and exercise programs allow us to ‘earn’ extra bites, as if taking pleasure in food is unnatural and must be negated.

Media that equates dieting with treating your body ‘right’ or ‘with respect’ reminds me that by not doing those things, I am wrong and disrespectful of my body and self.

This may seem like an exaggeration to some people. I’m willing to bet that those people have not ever lived in a fat body. The feeling and emotional labor required to be content while surrounded by diet culture is immense, especially when it’s not something you buy into. Diet culture and its false assignment of moral values to food is the precise reason so many people develop eating disorders.

When I say I wanted to feel strong this year, I mean that I wanted to drown out that insidious culture of restriction. To make more of my days about the amount of love I’ve found for myself instead of this fatigue or anger or madness. Beyond that, I wanted to use my voice to advocate for shiny happy things like loving the body you live in and finding peace no matter what month it is on the diet-culture-calendar.

January came and went, and the strength eluded me. I wasn’t quite ready. But summer’s rolling around now, and my exhaustion has been overtaken by other feelings. I’m angry about the way fat people are treated in our culture. It enrages me that I have spent so much time thinking negatively about my body and seeing it as something that’s wrong with me.

This week, I bought my first ever two-piece swimsuit.

Its boy-short-bottoms and a halter top with a sweetheart neckline are dark black against my untanned skin. When I put them on together, the tiniest diamond of pale white stomach glows just below my belly button.

I feel a little silly for feeling so much pride buying a suit that barely exposes more of me than a one-piece would. The separate top and bottom make sense for my shape, the bottoms offer more coverage than a one-piece for the tricky lower part of my belly, and will make for carefree pool days with my kids. As I tried on the top, I looked at myself in the mirror, and imagined a top that might leave more skin exposed. I spoke through the dressing room door to my boyfriend, declaring my intention.

This is the first step towards buying a real two-piece one day.

It’s taken me over five years to get to this point of being okay with exposing even a sliver of my stomach. Five years of work, writing, conversations, and constantly reminding myself and the world that I am worthy, I am beautiful, I am not wrong or bad for existing in this body. It may be five more before I get to that fatkini, but I know that I will get there. Changing the narrative of body shame brings me joy, and lights a flame inside me that I can’t help but fan.

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