Eating My Mother's Words

I read somewhere recently that a woman’s relationship with food can be even more complex than her relationship with her family. Pair food with family and one would likely need a dual doctorate in psychology and nutrition to navigate the tumultuous twists and turns of this double helping.

Growing up, my mother’s message about food was simple and uncomplicated. Eat well because your body and mind deserves it. Follow the food guide and you can’t go wrong. And eat in the company of others you love. Meals are as much about nurturing relationships as they are about nurturing bodies.

So why did such a simple message go so wrong with my sisters and I?

I am the middle of three daughters and our all-consuming relationship with food and each other is astonishing. My younger sister developed a destructive relationship with food that has plagued her for two decades. For my older sister, Michelle, the need for food became something to conquer in the name of thinness. And for me, my relationship has been mostly based in bewilderment as I try to truly figure out the conflicting messages.

I remember receiving a card one year from Michelle that read something like, As I wish you a happy birthday and look forward to getting together I sit and wonder…which one of us is thinner? She was. She was always thinner than me. Thinness was important to her and the man she married. He once told me he only considered a woman’s ideas if he found her first beautiful.

With long blond hair and a self-assuredness, Michelle was beautiful. And she worked in television and so looking her best, all the time, was as important to her career as it was to her marriage.

Luckily for me, I married a man who doesn’t equate my worth with my weight. Despite this, and my upbringing and my own common sense, I have lived many self-centred and unproductive years. I, like my older sister bought into the camp of denial , thinking that a kick-ass body would bring me happiness. So I joined the ranks of self-flagellating eaters who looked down upon those who ate with enjoyment and without apology. But, like her, I didn’t find happiness. I also didn’t find that kick-ass body.

What I did find was that I was in a constant state of guilt, dealing with stomach aches that festered during Sunday dinners or meals with friends. I lived vicariously through other’s ease with food. I became defensive about what I ate and I was obsessed with self-criticism.
I’ve also read that thinking obsessively about fat and weight loss changes peoples’ thought patterns and brain chemistry. I am here to say that this appears to be true. With all these neurosis it is a wonder I accomplished anything else in my life.

I knew, deep down, that these obsessive acts were doing very little good and a whole lot of harm and I began to desire the easy, utilitarian and social relationship I once had with food. But it wasn’t until my older sister, Michelle, became ill with a brain tumour that I truly realized the pettiness of my obsession. At 40, despite her size 8 triumph, cancer aggressively moved into her brain and her husband left her. It was time to stop the madness.

As a family we wanted nothing more than Michelle to join the statistics of those who beat cancer. We were not willing to let her die. But none of us were doctors or healers or in the business of miracles. We had to preach what we knew best and that was food. We presented to her a list of cancer fighting foods, we shopped for her and we brought her meals. But, I guess, if she was going to die, she was going to die thin. She fought us at every turn.

In her final year of life my sister had to move back in with our parents. Her cancer had robbed her of her strength down the right side of her body. As a result, she needed help dressing and I got to see my Michelle’s body more than a grown sister should. It remained thin, even with her newly found willingness to eat when our mother became her full-time cook, but it was weak. Despite her lifetime effort to gain power and recognition and a husband through a slim body, her body had let her down.

At her funeral, friends and family shared stories of her intelligence, of her caring nature, and of her spunky side. Not one person praised her because of her ability to remain thin. She was beautiful when she died. Beautiful because she was able to forgive her ex-husband, say good-bye to her children and accept her death peacefully. She was beautiful at her death because of her character.

Now I am the one in charge of buying groceries and creating meals for a family of my own. I realize I am no longer just wading though the massive amounts of diet and food related information for myself. I play the larger role of establishing our own family philosophy on food and weight and it is up to me to guide my two sons through the world of contradictory and at times, shallow messages. I need to raise them to honour women for their ideas rather than their bodies.

I’m not saying that eating more and obsessing less would have saved Michelle’s life. But the more I read and listen and think, the more I realize not only was my mother right, but that we were fools, dangerously so, not to listen.