Yesterday I wrote a bit about the reframing that is required in becoming a thin (or not overweight) person. In the past, substantial weight loss has always required this for me: trying to get a new handle on who I am, who I am in the world, and how my relationship and even identity shift as a result of being "thin person." You wouldn't think such a thing would be existential. It's just more or fewer pounds. But in my experience, it really is: it changes your sense of your own being, and certainly the way others treat you, significantly enough that actual identity is caught up in the transition. I mentioned that in the past this has always been a bit of a stumbling block for me. I can lose the weight. But can I live being an existentially thin person? That seems to require a whole other set of skills, and I'm not sure I can get them from a commercial diet site. I have to learn how to occupy that version of my identity.
I've been thinking about this in terms of how I quit smoking, many years ago. My guess is that I may be the only person on earth who quit smoking this way, but perhaps you have parallels to draw on of your own. For me, it was a two part process. And the first really had to do with this: rethinking my identity. I identified as a smoker. This was over 20 years ago now, but basically it had to do with all those silly things I had been advertised into believing: that smoking was a counter-cultural gesture, that it made me a bad-ass, that it enabled me a certain kind of freedom (there is so much about life I can't control. But I can have a cigarette any time I want!). I really connected to those things. And I realized that to quit smoking, I would have to do more than break the habit, survive the withdrawal symptoms, and learn other coping mechanisms for stress. I realized I also had to stop identifying as a smoker.
And that's what I did. I began thinking about all the aspects of my identity that countered that smoker's identity. What was it about me that was, existentially, a non-smoking person? And so I identified all of the things that correlated with a non-smoker's identity, such as my vegetarianism, my love of hiking, my anti-corporate feelings (why give money to a rich corporation whose sole raison d'etre was to addict me to their poison?), etc. And I focused on this identity with a genuine intensity, told myself repeatedly this version of the story of who I was. And in becoming her, thinking as her, I found what I needed to make the transition psychologically. Three weeks of withdrawal symptoms? Shrug. You just tough it out. I had to BECOME a non-smoker. So that's what I did.
So what does it take to become a thin person? What aspects of my identity or self-perception are wrapped up in being an overweight person, and can I let some of them go? For example, I have often offered up this justification that I can't be bothered to spend time at the gym working on my body because, you know, as an intellectual person I'm above all that. I have more important ways to spend my time than perfecting X muscle or maintaining Y weight. And while this is true in some abstract sense, that Dostoevsky is more important than deltoids, this way of framing it is also a partial truth, indeed a deception. Because the time I spend to make my body healthy is not just decorative. It makes me radiant with life, energy, confidence, optimism--and these things most certainly are as important as Dostoevsky! So I have to tell myself the new, truer narratives about these things, and most of all, locate those parts of myself that identify as a person who seeks radiant health, life, etc. For me, I think I can likewise draw too on those strategies that worked for me when quitting smoking over two decades ago. For example: do I want to be one of those ordinary fat entitled Americans (not to pick on my countrymen--there are fat people everywhere--but with 2/3 of our population overweight, we certainly have an international reputation as a culture of fatness). Do I identify with that?? Good God no! So I have to root out those self-justifications and habits that cause me to be identified as this, when I am not actively choosing it.
Thin Bibliogrrl is not just an intellectual. She is also a radiantly alive person, an optimistic and confident person. Thin Bibliogrrl has enormous amounts of energy. Thin Bibliogrrl surprises people with her real age because she is so healthy. Thin Bibliogrrl does not make the lazy or easy choices, but eats whole foods, rides her bike instead of driving when possible, does not mindlessly gobble down food or alcohol. Thin Bibliogrrl has a balanced life that is not all work but leaves time for taking care of myself, because taking care of myself means I can be more fully present for all parts of my life. Thin Bibliogrrl is not going to get diabetes like her mother. Thin Bibliogrrl does not wait until tomorrow to do things: she seizes the day with all her heart. Thin Bibliogrrl looks goddamn good in a pencil skirt.
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