Sausage Legs

*Content warning:  fat-shaming, body dysmorphia, disordered eating 

I promise this whole blog is not going to focus on weight or body image, but wellness and body positivity go hand in hand; it's a long, winding path to self-love from self-destruction, and this is a long winding blog post for the purposes of pure exposition.

In order to understand how I got to where I am now, it's important to provide context, so I'm going to start way, way back in the year 1985.

That's me, at age 7.  

My father's nickname for me at this age was 'sausage legs'.  He would squeeze my thighs and tell me they looked like sausages.  I wouldn't have minded, if I weren't also hearing from my mother that maybe I was getting a little too chubby.  By age nine, she was suggesting calorie-counting.

Look at the picture again.  

For years, I believed that the aspiring ballerina above was already in desperate need of a diet.

In middle school, I recall hearing from my parents about the 1,000 calorie diet ("My doctor suggested it, and I really lost a lot of weight that way").  I heard about the grapefruit fast ("too restrictive for me, but it works").  I was repeatedly reminded that I could stand to lose a few pounds.  That's me, to the right, at age 12 in a fashion show for a local children's clothing store (I was permitted to wear pantyhose, and this was a Very Big Deal to me at the time).

I don't think my mother started quoting measurements at me until I was in high school.  She let me know that when she was my age, she had Liz Taylor's exact measurements:  36-26-36.  This was considered to be the perfect ratio for a woman.

Both parents let me know on a regular basis how overweight I was becoming, including such tongue-in-cheek comments as "gee, maybe a little anorexia would help."

Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, or maybe I just really liked pizza (and would still, if it wouldn't leave me writhing in intestinal agony and clawing at my inflamed skin as I broke out in hives).  

Man, I really liked pizza, though.  And bagels.   I miss bagels.  So much.  We'll get to that later.

Anyway, I did gain some weight in high school and was more plump that I would have liked to be.  I can say that now.  At the time I was convinced I was nothing short of obese.  ("It's a good thing you're so fat") she said as none of the drama club's costumes fit me; ("I can make you a fresh new costume for the show!")  (She did, actually, and it was quite nice.  She was flawed, but she loved me.)

Here I am at my Junior Prom with a really fabulous gentleman from the aforementioned drama club (stickers added to protect his privacy).

I gained even more weight in my senior year and graduated from high school at a size that is, to this day, the heaviest I've ever been (14).

Looking at this photo now, I see a lovely Rubenesque young lady with impeccable nineties styling (I know you can't see the detail well in this photo, but that's velvet on top, satin on bottom, and the geometric cutouts in the back were exquisite.  Not shown: actual silver 2" character shoes with strap for better dancing).  

Looking back, I would have loved to be friends with a girl like this when I was in high school.

At the time, I believed I was hideous and huge and unworthy of success or love.  I wasn't pretty enough to be an actress (this was told to me in my adolescent years) and I was a physical disappointment to my family.

In my freshman year of college, I was determined to avoid the 'Freshman Fifteen', and I launched myself into a strict regimen of low-fat, high-carbohydrate eating.  I breakfasted on bagels, ate egg whites and rice for lunch, and dined on a 6-inch meatless sub from the dorm sandwich shop.

I would play little games with myself, and see how long I could go without eating.  I could fast easily through two meals in a day, but with my activity level being what it was (I did dance classes, went to the gym daily, and performed in extracurricular musical theatre groups), I needed to eat enough protein and carbohydrates to function.  Nevertheless, I would test myself at the salad bar, seeing how little I could put on the lettuce and still make it through the day.  

If you're saying to yourself:  "Why, Dianna, this sounds like disordered eating patterns", YOU WOULD BE RIGHT.  THIS WAS EXTREMELY MESSED-UP BEHAVIOR.

But it worked.  I lost weight.  Look at those skinny arms and legs.  

I don't know how far I would have taken this behavior if I hadn't spent a semester in France learning how to eat for pleasure and met my loving future husband (we're still together and we still like each other).

This places us at about 2002, when the aforementioned husband and I moved to the city together to pursue our collective passions for a career in theatre.  My weight continued to fluctuate as I yo-yoed back and forth between counting calories and falling off the wagon.  Rooming and touring with actors taught me even more tricks to keep pounds off.  Though I never went to the extremes some did, I did join a program that reduced all food to a single-digit number.  I used spray "butter" on rice cakes and ate fat-free bologna and Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches.  In those days, a banana had the same 'value' as a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich.  Did I mention that I was already lactose intolerant and had a casein allergy at the time?  That did not stop me.  (I hear the program has changed this system to be more nutritionally beneficial, but for me, the damage was done.)  We actors would congratulate one another on our regular consumption of diet sodas and daily plain tuna with lettuce.  "I'd rather have mercury poisoning than be fat" I recall hearing one young actor quip.  He was very thin, indeed.

The next decade was an interesting one, punctuated by a spinal health crisis, the details of which I will save for another post.  Let's just fast-forward to 2014.  I had spent years slowly building strength, recovering from a lumbar discectomy, and I had finally accepted that my body was going to bold and beautiful.  I was perfectly content being plump, and I rocked that skirted bikini.  I even had a nickname for my physique:  "chubby fit".  I had a healthy layer of insulation, but I stayed active and was able to do most sports.  This mid-thirties body was the inverse of my college frame (slender & weak):  large & strong.

And then a friend of mine asked me if I might be interested in trying a triathlon.  And I moved out of the city and into the suburbs.  And life got even more 'interesting' than it had already been.  

But that's another story altogether.

Thus ends the tale of my diet rollercoaster.  I will save my current eating habits for another post.  These habits do not involve 'dieting', and I highly recommend not 'dieting'. 

Thank you for reading this blog, and thank you for treating it with care.