Please Don’t Count Food Points in Front of the Children, by LA Crompton

Filed under: Themes, The Skinny on Fat

Please Don’t Count Food Points in Front of the Children

 by LA Crompton

It occurred to me this morning, while absentmindedly eating a discarded bowl of Winnie the Pooh cereal with a child-sized purple plastic spoon, that my eating habits have changed somewhat since becoming a mother. The realization sent me to the cupboard in search of a more respectable breakfast: my own bowl of Pooh cereal with an adult-sized metal teaspoon. While my tastes occasionally run toward the juvenile, I am grateful that deciding what to eat is no longer the super-charged emotional event it once was.

Adolescence marked my initiation into the prison of an eating disorder that morphed into every imaginable form over nearly ten years. I engaged in a war against my body because it began to grow more curves than I deemed attractive. In fact, judging by the fashion magazines I so cherished, my body was growing more curves than the world deemed attractive. And since my adolescent mind could not possibly realize that the world was wrong, and that my body was fine, I began a diet.

Diets teach us to mistrust the natural cues of hunger and fullness that our bodies send us. When diets are unsuccessful (which is nearly all of the time) they leave one feeling like a weak failure. We think there must be something wrong with us that we can’t stick to a simple diet (no matter how ridiculous said diet may be). When diets are successful, they can sometimes become dangerous. The overwhelming approval one gets for losing weight can be unbelievably powerful. It can send one chasing after ever smaller numbers on the scale until one arrives at a weight far below the one God intended.

This is what happened to me.

For a long time my life was reduced to a tunnel vision focus on what I ate. Even as I moved out of the all-consuming obsession of anorexia, I continued to perceive my body as disgusting and needy, all because it wanted to be fed. I hated it and saw it as my greatest enemy. I constantly tried diet after diet, looking for peace, but was either cranky because I was hungry, or else cranky because I felt like a loser for eating. I could not become totally free until I began to question the infallibility of the skinny ideal.

I am grateful that the Lord granted me the wisdom to see my natural curves as beautiful long before I became a mother. It is, in fact, a miracle that after years of hating and starving my body it helped to bless me with a perfect little girl. When she was born and I felt that overwhelming love for her sweet precious body, I wept with the knowledge that the Lord looks at me with that same adoration. Looks at my body with the acceptance and love it once so craved.

If God intended mothers to have flat tummies, we would gestate our babies in our backpacks. And if we weren’t supposed to have hips, we would carry our children around in pouches, not on the convenient hip-seats the Lord lovingly provides. Mommies are more fun to climb on when they are nice and soft, not all pointy and skinny. Thinking we cannot possibly love or accept our wonderful life-giving bodies until we lose ten or fifty pounds is truly “following the hollow philosophies of this world.”

Seeing my little girl playing now so innocently, I cannot imagine her ever criticizing her sweet body. I look at the media and at the statistics and I know that the odds are very high that she will. (42% of first through third grade girls want to be thinner and 81% of 10-year-old girls are afraid of being fat.) My daughter very well may look down at that miracle of her body one day and see it through the world’s eyes – as wrong. If she is built like her mother, she may be horrified by thighs too large and a butt too big – flaws as dictated by the mythological “ideal.” Perhaps she will decide to try to change what she sees. Perhaps she will decide to hate what she sees. And I scream inside at the thought and want to claw down that wall the world builds between women and their own bodies. I want better odds for my daughter. I want her to see her body through my eyes as precious. To see it through the Lord’s eyes as beautiful.

Imagine the pain of having your daughter tell you she doesn’t like her body. The body formed in your womb that you prayed over and loved before she was born. Now imagine you are that daughter going to God, complaining about this lump or that curve, and see His response. Take a minute and thank your good body for serving you so well. Let your daughters see you loving and accepting your body AS IS, and perhaps they will have a shot at making peace with the women’s bodies they will one day possess.

I have worked hard to appreciate my body and feed it freely. It has repaid me by finding a healthy natural weight that may not get me on the cover of any fashion magazines, but that enables me to keep up with an energetic toddler. I tune into what my body needs and oftentimes am surprised that it knows what to ask for: A huge variety of wholesome foods and sometimes Pooh cereal, all in balance, all taken in with love. Of the hundreds of messages received DAILY telling you that you need to change in order to be beautiful, I want to be part of the voice shouting above the din, “You are beautiful, just as you are!”

Just ask the Lord.

Just ask your kids.

Since gaining victory over her 10-year battle with an eating disorder, LA Crompton has been working to help others achieve freedom from weight obsession. As a teenager, she loved fashion magazines and began dieting in an effort to mimic the emaciated images she viewed as glamorous. LA became anorexic, shrunk down to a skeletal form and began modeling herself. As she turned to bulimia to maintain her unnaturally low weight, her health became seriously compromised and her life spiraled out of control. She left the modeling world in pursuit of work that did not require self-starvation and became committed to getting well.

After graduating first in her class from St. John’s University with a BA in English and Journalism, she wrote for numerous national publications. One article, written for Allure, focused on the practices she witnessed while selling cosmetics at an upscale department store. The cutting exposé she delivered was watered-down by editors and published with disclaimers nullifying her experience. It was clear to LA that the magazine was careful to avoid offending its cosmetics advertisers. She began to question the underlying motive of the glossies.

LA has shared her testimony of recovery in High Schools and Youth Groups in the New York area and beyond. After promoting body acceptance for nearly five years, her efforts were redoubled when she was blessed with a precious baby girl. She could not stand the idea that her daughter might one day look down at her perfect little body and hate it for having curves. She writes articles and speaks to mothers encouraging them to give up dieting and warning them to stop criticizing their figures in front of their children.

LA has written a book for teenage girls sharing her story and shedding light on the true ugliness of eating disorders. The book, DREAMER GIRL, consists of a series of free verse poems that explore the emotional side of weight- and food-obsession. She also creates activist artwork to help bring an end to the fabricated lie that women must be thin in order to be beautiful. Her heart remains burdened for those caught in the unyielding cycle of body hatred, but she knows that freedom is possible.

Meet LA at http://www.dreamer-girl.com.

Permalink / Comments