I believe I am fat even though I know I am not and it’s fucking killing me.

The first time I cried in public in China was when I first got to Shenzhen and went to the grocery store and couldn’t figure out how to navigate the app and scanning machine to pay. The second time was today.

I have wanted to talk about this for a long time but shame and fear has kept me from telling anyone. Well, not today I guess, Satan.

I had lunch with a friend today. He was telling me about his girl problems, how he doesn’t have the self-discipline to tell himself no knowing that this girl has already rejected him and is treating him as her standing plan b (or likely c, d, or f). I argued that it was self-respect he was lacking, and to further practice my Chinese and make my point clearer, I offered up an example from my life to illustrate the difference between self-discipline and self-respect.

I said, I’ve been trying to lose weight for over a year (maybe longer, even) now, stopping and starting, tracking every bite, exercising, etc, but I haven’t lost any weight because even though I can stay on track 95% of the time if I eat at home, when I eat out with friends I don’t have the self-discipline to eat mindfully and frequently end up overeating. Chinese social eating is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to pace yourself, because the food just keeps on coming.

I had just been out the night before and ate way too much, stuffing myself to the point of discomfort on my favorites, rice noodles, fried rice, eggplant, and grilled lamb. All extremely oily and fatty foods. When I got home, despite being stuffed, I was craving something sweet. I fell into a familiar mental trap, telling myself “well, I already blew my diet today, I might as well have whatever I want.” The premise is that I can’t normally have what I want. I have to deprive myself daily, constantly, and the only time I get what I want is when I’ve been “bad”. How fucked up is that logic? I reward myself for doing the opposite of what I want. How is that going to reinforce the results I am looking to achieve?

Anyway, I ate a cookie. Standing over the sink. In the dark. Did I enjoy it? Yeah, I fucking moaned. I felt shame in the pit of my chest. I felt like despite what my body looks like, the fact that I might be, depending on the cultural framework you’re looking at me from, within normal bodyfat percentages, I am, inside my soul, a fat girl. A girl who loves to eat. Loves the feeling. Loves the process. A girl who has often wished she could just be bulemic so she could eat more food (don’t worry, I am not bulemic. I mean, worry, for sure, I’m not in a good place with food, but at least don’t worry about me throwing up).

So this morning I didn’t eat breakfast. A friend has been recommending intermittent fasting and I figured I’d try it. One less meal can only help, right? My response to acute stress has always been loss of appetite. At lunch, out of control, out of my element, I wasn’t sure what to order. I scrolled the menu looking at pictures and not bothering to read the descriptions, only able to read a few of the characters anyway. I ordered a chicken dish, chicken and vegetables in a very oily sauce over rice with a bowl of seaweed soup. I picked at the meal, drinking the soup to fill up on broth, eating the chicken and the vegetables with just a few bites of rice. I made sure not to overeat, not to get too full.

We left the restaurant to go get (non-alcoholic) drinks and chat more. He ordered iced lemon-lime tea, I went to a grocery store next door to get a bottle of plain water.

We sat and chatted some more. I was wearing a short skirt and tight shirt, acutely aware that my stomach is flat not because of virtue or genetics but because in my mid twenties I got liposuction to achieve the body shape that no amount of diet or exercise would ever give me. After my surgery, I was both so happy with my results and so ashamed that I went to those lengths that I barely told anyone for years. I was also, sitting across from him at the drinks shop, acutely aware that at my current bodyfat percentage and weight, my inner thighs rub together when I walk and chafe uncomfortably. I wear skirts infrequently for this very reason.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I turned to my friend, himself very fit and in his mid twenties, and asked him directly, “do you think I’m fat?” He looked at me and grimaced, a wide toothless smile spreading over his face. The answer was yes, he just couldn’t bring himself to say it.

In an instant all my fears and insecurities, all my negative self talk was confirmed. I swept in to rescue him from the awkwardness. “I know”, I said, “I know I am”. He nodded. He went on to explain that his standards are very high though, and that in Asia most guys like thin girls, and that this is actually a good problem to have because it’s something within my control to fix, whereas there’s so many people on Earth with unfixable problems.

I nodded, remembering his age and gender, trying not to hold it against him.

Still, his words were sinking in, finding a place to land amidst the spaces I had myself hollowed out over the years in exactly the shape of his thoughts.

We were silent for a moment. Tears started to pinprick the back of my eyes. He busied himself with his phone. I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue.

“What’s wrong?”, he asked, “you look sad.”

The dam broke. I burst into tears, leaning over the table and sobbing into my hands. He rubbed my back saying “it’s ok, it’s all going to be ok, is it about that boy?” I honestly couldn’t believe how dense people with extra testosterone can be. “No, I said, it’s because I’m frustrated that I’ve been trying to lose weight for so long and haven’t been successful yet, despite doing it successfully twice before. I feel fat. I feel ugly. I hate the way I look. I can’t bear to look at myself in pictures.”

He went on to tell me Chinese men like foreigners, and that I’m attractive despite being fat, and that I can lose the weight, and that if I have time to cry I have time to research weight loss methods.

As I listened to him I thought about how much effort and care he was obviously demonstrating for me, like a cat bringing in a dead mouse, and how I still consider him a good friend, despite the fact that he so obviously doesn’t understand what I am going through and how to help comfort me in my distress.

Still, my mind faded into overwhelm. I sank in my seat. I wanted him to leave. Finally, he did. He had a date with another friend to pick lychees. I hugged him goodbye and sat, lost in a haze of post-cry funk. He texted me “don’t just sit there”. I knew he was right.

I eventually did get moving, knowing a walk would do me good, and sent some voice messages to a friend, and went to see another friend in person, which helped too.

By the time I got home I wasn’t sure what to eat or how to live. I found myself in a very familiar place of hunger and emptiness as safety, control, security. Breaking that felt unsafe, crossing a threshold, losing control. I took another walk when I got home, moving my body and dripping sweat even though night had already fallen. Shenzhen summer heat and humidity has set in, and despite everyone saying everyone loses weight in the summer because you can’t eat much in the heat, it turns out you can, and I have, and so no weight was lost.

I probably have an eating disorder, or something adjacent. I ordered groceries on my walk and by the time I got home they were on the table in the lobby waiting for me. I took them up and made dinner. Shrimp, chicken breast, bok choy, and bean sprouts in a pan that I put oil in then wiped most of it away with a napkin, adding water to cook down the veggies. I logged it as 0.1 teaspoons of oil. I topped it with sliced cucumber. It was a full bowl of food. I usually eat rice too (my trackers says I need carbs, and I like rice) but I left it out, thinking only about fat loss, muscle preservation and gain, macronutrients, protein, what I look like, what other people look like.

I start eating and realize I am eating too fast. I think about a TikTok video I saw where someone said to eat a bite of food then put your utensil down, don’t prep your next bite. I know this is what I should be doing but I feel like I broke another dam inside me and now I am eating. The food tastes so good. An out of control feeling. A finish all the food in the bowl feeling. I want to learn to eat mindfully, slowly, to fullness. I want to be in tune with my body. Instead I finish the bowl too quickly, shoveling the food in one bite after the next, and drink the cooking liquid at the bottom, far too salty but I drink it anyway.

I still have more carbs in my log, I get a banana.

I go back and forth on the banana. Should I eat it? I want it so bad it scares me. I’m scared that I want to keep eating even though I’m full. Still, I should eat it. I haven’t eaten enough today. I shouldn’t undereat too much, too high a deficit and I will hurt my metabolism and regain all the weight I lose. Eat all your calories and stay consistent. Eat the banana. I feel full and I hate it. I feel out of control.

Is this what people refer to when they talk about “emotional eating”? I don’t like, get sad about a boy then have a pint of ice cream. I’m just in a permanently abusive relationship with food. I am ashamed to admit this but just want to be thin. I hate the internalized fatphobia. I hate that I think fat is ugly. I hate that I don’t judge other people’s fatness as harshly, by far, as my own. I don’t even know if my goal size is healthy for me, or if I should learn to accept where I am at now.

I scheduled a call with an online coach who wants to charge me $3,000 US dollars for her program. It’s a guaranteed program, she says. As long as I show up for it and do what is required, I will loose the weight and keep it off. I checked my bank account today and did hard math to figure out if I could do it.

When I got home I logged all my food for the day. No breakfast. Lunch is a mystery as eating out in China always is. The meal was very oily. How much chicken? A cup? It was in small pieces, I have no idea. Should I say 1 tablespoon of oil? 1.5? 2? If it’s 1.5 I am already over on fat for the day. How do people in my weight loss app facebook group say they can’t figure out how to eat enough fats? You can’t eat one tablespoon of oil a day? I can barely figure out how not to go over. What are y’all doing? Eating poached chicken breast and steamed veggies?

I am tired. I do a sleep meditation once in a while that asks you to name your deepest most heartfelt desire in life. Usually I think of radiant health, vibrant energy, being out of my chronic knee pain finally. Lately I’ve been wishing for fluency in Chinese. But along with every desire I have is the competing desire to be thinner. Sometimes I get frustrated with it and ask myself, “ok, what if you could only pick one? Chinese or being thin? What would it be? If I could snap my fingers and make you stick thin, but I had to take away all the Chinese you’ve learned, would you do it?”

Fuck me, I wouldn’t. I can’t agree to those terms. I worked damn hard for my Chinese and I love learning it and using it. I am a language nerd through and through. Part of me looks at that and says, “phew, good, you haven’t lost your mind yet, you still are healthy and want healthy things in life”, and part of me looks at that answer and says “see, this is why you can’t loose weight, because you don’t want it bad enough.”

I’ve been both girls. I’ve been the girl who sits outside eating a cold chicken breast and raw carrots out of a plastic bag with people walking all around me holding hot steaming buns. I’ve also been the girl who after a long hike with friends or at a party, when everyone breaks out the snacks, reaches into the bags repeatedly. Chips, cookies, peanuts, candy bars, chocolate.

I think about this every day. Every meal. Every workout. Every photo of myself I see. In each photo, I’m fatter than everyone else around me. Especially in Asia. Every time I look in the mirror or see my reflection. This has taken over such a large part of my attention that it’s stepping on my joy in living my own life.

I remember being 23, before my first diet, being proud of my relationship with food. I told everybody “I’ve never been on a diet”. I would eat pasta with pesto or alfredo sauce regularly. I would buy ice cream or cookies and have a few bites then forget about it. It would go bad, I would have to throw it out. I didn’t obsess over food. I had complete freedom and ease in my relationship with food. I never ate past fullness. Ever. I also never stayed up past sleepiness. 9pm sharp I would get sleepy and go to bed. I was in absolute lockstep respect with my body. I would constantly complain that I was hungry, because I ate like a fucking bird and would be hungry half an hour later. Usually, there was not an opportunity to eat until later, though, so I would just eat later. No biggie.

Do you think I will ever get back to that mentally healthy place? I miss that girl. I want to break up with food. I think food and I should see other people. I want to be able to take or leave it. Not care if it calls. Not pick up the phone. Not text it back.

I know I am not fat, not like, medically obese, unhealthy, or overweight, but I believe that I am fat despite this knowledge. And because don’t act on our knowledge, we act on our beliefs, I am acting like I am wrong to exist in this world, like I take up more space and I should, like I am damaging people’s eyeballs with my existence. I am self conscious everywhere I go. I wonder what people think of me.

In all actuality, most everyone in my life, Chinese and Western, who I’ve mentioned I am trying to lose weight are genuinely surprised and reply that I do not need to.

I wish I could undo the zap our culture puts on people (especially little girls’) heads. I wish I could pull this poison weed out of the ground, roots and all. I don’t want anyone else to ever have to feel this way. There’s a small part of me that wants body acceptance, too, but I remember when my body betrayed me, when I put on 50 pounds in my late twenties and tried radical body acceptance and couldn’t. I was miserable. I hated my body. I got on weight watchers and over the course of a year lost all of it and then some. I kept tracking after reaching my goal weight out of habit and fear that if I stopped I would gain weight. Eventually I convinced myself to stop tracking, but I kept paying for the app anyway, convinced if I stopped I would gain weight. Eventually I finally canceled my subscription.

And, slowly, I did regain some of the weight, though not all of it. I desperately want to lose this weight, despite knowing there’s a probable chance I shouldn’t. So, I’m going to keep tracking, keep trying, and maybe even lose 3 grand to the effort. This is where I am at. I hate it here, but my philosophy has always been that if you are in hell, you don’t stop and sit down in hell. You keep going. If you want out of hell you have to walk yourself out. One of these doors has got to open. If you know me, you know I am stubborn. I will absolutely keep trying. One banana at a time.