I read an article that had a misunderstanding about “skinny women” and I’d like to set the record straight.
I enjoyed reading “A Diet Writer’s Regrets” in The Atlantic recently. Rebecca Johns recounts her years as a writer focusing on diet and nutrition articles for women’s publications. The irony was while she was writing about diet tips and nutrition advice, she herself was overweight.
Until she started Mounjaro, one of the many GLP-1 drugs on the market that help people lose weight. Suddenly her cravings were gone and she did not obsess about food all day long. She’s shedding weight almost effortlessly.
Johns writes about not even thinking about food anymore, and that Mounjaro has rewired her brain, which to her is the biggest benefit.
Then she writes: “The friend who told me about using Wegovy checks in with me regularly to share her own success, and she reports similar mental changes. ‘This must be what skinny women feel like all the time,’ we say, and marvel that such a thing is possible.
Uh, no.
Let me explain. First, I don’t consider myself skinny, but I am tall and lean. My weight puts me squarely in the “appropriate” range for my height, according to medical charts. I’m also not speaking for all skinny or lean women, and perhaps I am the exception.
Everything that Johns wrote about regarding the way food ruled her brain—the constant thinking about the next meal, planning the day’s meals upon waking, the shakiness and fog that comes after you try to skip a meal or that comes even 2-3 hours after eating a full meal—that is me.
I’ve been hearing about the mental effect of the weight-loss drugs and I, too, would love to be relieved of that obsession. Every day feels like a battle to stay lean. I’m hungry right now. I woke up not long ago, hungry. But I’m going to wait at least a half hour, because if I eat now then I will be hungry around 10 a.m. and that’s too early for lunch and so I’ll want a snack and and and…
While I was still in bed, in the minutes before getting up, I planned my lunch and supper for today. Probably a salad and leftover sweet potato and rice for lunch, and leftover food like ham sandwiches and pulled pork at my in-law’s house for supper. And holiday cookies :)
I think over the past 35 years of my adult life I have now trained myself to resist the food that I’m always craving. Now of course, I eat! I eat with gusto. I like my snacks and I love my cookies, especially this time of year when lots of treats are available. But I’m always holding back. I’ve trained myself to have just one cookie, but in reality I want five or six.
In my manuscript, I’m trying to discover why I’ve trained myself to resist. What am I afraid of? As I uncover the answers to that question, I’m learning more about myself and I’m also untraining myself. Because like Johns, I feel that this constant thinking about food does not feel much like freedom.
And it’s something that all women face, not just women of a certain body size. One goal I have in writing this book is to shed the myth that “skinny women” do not have their own food struggles and body image problems.
I love your honesty. I have a very close friend who is quite underweight, but she tells me she thinks about food all the time. I worry about her being too thin, but she worries about losing control. She was fairly overweight at one point and I think she fears going back there, but she tells me she has always been obsessed with food, regardless of her weight. It's an interesting thing to explore.
To me calling someone skinny is offensive, while thin is not. Most truly skinny people can not gain weight, and it is a curse they have had from childhood. Thin or lean are better words.