Hungry For Control

body image, calorie counting, and the joys of being a girl.

Black Swan (2010)

It was sixth grade and the cafeteria hummed like a beehive. I sat with my friends at lunch. One cradled a chocolate protein shake that she hoped would build her up. Another peeled back the plastic film of Lunchables, crackers and slimy ham sitting in their compartments. I had yogurt with flaxseed that my mom always packed for me. They were stick-thin and light as reeds. I wasn’t. I never was.

My mom never told me to lose weight. It’s often that women’s stories about body image begin with their mother—her offhand comments, quiet criticisms, the reflection of pinched stomach fat in the mirror. All of these are gestures the daughter will inevitably absorb.

My mom was different. She didn’t tell me to lose weight or try to limit my portions. She filled our kitchen with whole grains and bought books on the Blue Zone diet. She idealized the way Europeans seemed to eat and live—endless walking, red wine instead of soda, and measured portions. She wanted longevity, not thinness. The voice that told me I was too much wasn’t hers. It was mine.

It was a Friday at the end of the day. I was crouched at my locker, shoving my bulky binder into my backpack, dreaming of the quiet of my bedroom and the smell of home. Then a boy from my science class stood in front of me, his voice hushed.

“Just so you know, I heard someone say something about you.”

“Oh. What?”

“Some guy in our class called you fat. I just thought you should know. I’d want to know.”

Would you? I wondered. Would you really want to know that your worst fears aren’t private? That, instead, they’re written on your body for strangers to read? “Thanks for telling me,” I said as my eyes welled, tears dripping onto the fabric of my backpack.

So, Amanda, it wasn’t all in your head. You’re fat. They see it. How will you self-soothe now?

My weight fell and rose like a tide until 2020 when everything shifted. In quarantine, the world learned how to bake bread, make whipped coffee, and crochet. I learned how to carve myself down. I watched Chloe Ting videos at dawn and read guides on how to intermittently fast at night. I followed a strict diet of black coffee and dinner. I slathered lotion on my stomach and tied saran wrap tightly around the pale flesh with the hope of burning fat overnight. There was nowhere to go, so my dwindling energy had no stage to collapse upon. There was no one to see, so my moods could turn from storm to sunlight to storm again, unnoticed. I ordered clothes in extra small, not bothering with measurements. There was a quiet smugness: I’m tiny and it’s tiny. That’s all that matters.

I rehearsed the reunion. They’d see me and never believe I was the same girl from sixth grade science. I’d be skinny, and maybe even pretty. And I was right. My old best friend saw me on the first day of junior year. “You look really good. How did you do it?” she asked me, curiosity coating her words.

I answered coyly, as if a magician refusing to show her hands. “Do what?”

“You lost so much weight. You look amazing.” The words I always wanted to hear. I did it. “Nothing, really. Just started going on walks.” She nodded, filing it away like a recipe. “I’ll start to go on walks then,” she said, and I nodded, in awe of her belief.

But when my first love saw me, his words were knives wrapped in concern: “You looked unwell. Your face had no color. You looked sick,” he told me once I began eating two meals a day. His use of past tense frightened me then. If I don’t look sick anymore, I must be eating too much. In reply, I called him dramatic, rolling my eyes flippantly. “It wasn’t that bad,” I’d say. Even in recovery, I’d echo the words. Not that bad. He just shook his head. “The fact that you’re even saying that is concerning.” What was framed as concern did nothing besides annoy me. It didn’t pierce the armor I had built around myself; it didn’t even dent it. I had learned to dismiss warnings—to argue with anyone who tried to measure me against someone else’s idea of health. Illness felt like a rumor I could deny.

I clung to one measure that still felt mine: my period. I never believed I was sick because I never lost it. If that happened, I had gone too far. Meanwhile, my hair thinned, fingernails weakened, and I shivered at the slightest breeze, but family members told me I had become so skinny. So tiny. And in my mind, that was proof enough that it was all worth it.

It even changed the way men saw me. Now they wanted me. I was pretty because I was thinner. I was the same girl with the same face and the same mind, but that never mattered. I began to fear love itself. What if comfort meant softness? What if softness meant losing everything I had bled and starved for? What if the pretty little number on the scale vanished?

I’m twenty-one now and still find myself staring at my naked body in the mirror, poking and prodding at my own skin like a sculptor disappointed in her clay. I order cocktails by their calorie count. I drink diet soda because the number on the label is smaller. Every time I reach for the reduced-fat option in the grocery store, I see the girl who believed shrinking herself would change her life.

I try not to count or curse myself when I surpass 900 calories. I try, and yet the same shadow lingers. Sometimes I think about that cafeteria table in sixth grade, Greek yogurt sweating under the fluorescent lights, flaxseed sprinkled on top. My mom never asked me to shrink myself. That was something I learned to do on my own.

Now when I stand in front of the mirror, where I count and curse and bargain with myself, I wonder what it would mean to choose that vision instead of mine. To live for endurance and not for tininess, measuring by years and not calories cut away. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that. I am still learning to see my body as a vessel designed to carry me forward rather than an enemy to whittle away.

I live in the in-between, haunted by the girl who wanted to disappear, wondering if I will ever inhabit a body that feels like my own.

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