Eat the Damn Cake

Occasionally, I like being reminded of how unimportant I am. Because otherwise, I start to think I’m really important.

And then I start to think that other people are probably paying pretty close attention to me, because I’m really important. They are definitely judging me. They are thinking things like “How come she doesn’t have a normal job?” They are thinking, “Wait, that girl got plastic surgery? How come her nose is still so big?” And they might also think, “Why is it that that girl can’t move her leg in one direction while her arm is going in the other direction?”

This is true, and it’s embarrassing. I know, because I once took a Zumba class with my bonus mom (MIL). She is training to be an instructor. As in, she is awesome at it. I am out of shape. In addition to having to sit down between dances, wheezing and gulping water, I think I hit the woman next to me at some point, with an incorrect and overenthusiastic leg motion. “Was she OK?” asked Bear, when I told him. “I don’t know!” I said. “I had to try to catch up with the next move!”

But because I’m beginning to suspect that I’ll die a young, terrible death if I don’t get some exercise soon, I tried to follow one of those dance exercise DVD routines on Netflix last night.

You know, the ones where the really fun woman in half a shirt and tight pants is doing fifty things at once while she chirps, “You’ve got it, ladies! Shake that booty! Here we go now! Four, three, two, one! To the left! And back! And front and right! And now left and front and back and right and arms up! You’ve got it now! When your legs go left your arms go right! When your legs go back your arms go front! Alright now! Turn it up! It’s gonna get a little hotter now!”

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So I had this job interview thing back in the town I went to college in. It was the first time in years that I’d been back there.

College was not an amazing experience for me. It wasn’t a really bad experience either. I have some really fond memories of sitting in my dorm, with the white cinderblock walls covered in print-out photos I’d taken of flowers and boys and my friends, writing music and eating dining hall takeout. I didn’t have one of those epic college experiences that people seem to always be having, where I made the best friends I’ll ever make, got so drunk that hilarious things happened, found myself, discovered what inspired me most, and earned the right to forever reference all that as the “best time of my life.” Which I think is good, really. Because it would be sad to get the best time of my life out of my system so young.

In college, I was pretty sure I’d like whatever came next better. I couldn’t wait to be out in the world. I knew I’d like it. And I was right. There was only ever one thing that I missed about college:

Fat sandwiches.

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I can’t get them out of my head. Actually, this is my second post about them. Because they are that amazing. They are the extreme sport version of the regular sandwich. I’m bad at analogies today. They are gross. They have everything you can imagine on them. I build my own– with cheesesteak, mozzarella sticks, french fries, lettuce, gyro, hot sauce, and white sauce. I am not ashamed. I am not exactly proud, either, because I think that makes me sound like I’m trying to kill myself.

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This is a guest post from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous. Here are a few things about her that she’s comfortable with me sharing: she is 27, lives on the Jersey Shore, works in the mental health field, and recovered from an eating disorder (she’s co-authoring a book about it). Here’s what I want to say about her: she is really, really cool. We’ve been having an email correspondence for a while, and I asked her to write something for the blog. Here is what she wrote:

I recall a conversation that I overheard when I was six or seven years old.  My aunts, my dad’s sisters, were talking. They all would have been in their 30s or early 40s at the time.  They were are all relatively successful (and relatively thin).  So, I hope, at this point, that you are assuming that these women were discussing politics or their families or the meaning of life or anything other than what they WERE talking about: diets.

I did not hear the entire conversation, but I heard enough.  What I remember is that my favorite aunt (favorite because she lived next door and I saw her most often) described her food intake for a day, at least for a “good” day.  She said that she drank 16 ounces of skim milk for breakfast, ate a dressingless garden salad for lunch, and then allowed herself to have a “normal dinner” at night with her boyfriend.  I wish I did not remember these things.  I shouldn’t, I guess, considering that my memories of second grade are few and far between.  But I do.  And I also remember asking this aunt, who probably didn’t realize that I was listening to the conversation at all, “Aren’t you hungry?  I mean, eating like that?” And I remember her reply, just as clearly as I remember picking up batteries from a local pharmacy yesterday.  She said, looking sadder and more serious than I had ever seen her, “Yes, ALL the time.”

It’s hard to explain how I felt, hearing this as a little girl.

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I don’t have a full post today because I stayed up all night last night reading a book about Wall Street. I mean, all night. Until seven in the morning. That’s really stupid. I am dead to the world right now.

But since I am too dead to write, I thought I’d share something else. Some of the recent photos that I’ve received from readers and quietly added to the Cake Gallery without letting anyone know. I’m a bad businesswoman. Maybe I need to read even more about Wall Street. Maybe I really, really don’t.

So here are a few of the awesome cake shots I’ve been getting:

Amazing, right? Send me yours!

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Unroast: Today I love that I am too tired to look in the mirror.

P.S. Congratulations/mazel tov to my grandmother, who just received an award for all of her volunteer work at her local hospice! That woman is amazing. She never stops working. She also reads this blog regularly, so I know she’s seeing this. Hi, Grammoo! I’m sorry you have to read about your granddaughter’s awkwardness and body images issues and marital stuff on the internet!

P.P.S. There’s a version of my post about talking to other women about weight gain up on HuffPo. Just so people know I still appear occasionally on really big international forums, other than this blog Wait, can you call HuffPo a forum? That sounds wrong. Maybe if people were nicer in the comments it’d sound more right.

What is that? Apparently it’s something. One of the readers of this blog sent me some info on it, wondering if it might be an interesting thing or possibly, possibly a real one.

Orthorexia is when someone is obsessed with eating healthy foods, often to the point of self-harm. It’s not a medically recognized term, but Wikipedia is all over it, of course.

OK, our culture wants to medicalize and pathologize (I’m getting red squiggly lines for both of those words as I type this. Get with the picture, Word!) everything in the world. I don’t know anyone who can’t recite at least one Greek-based term for something that’s wrong with them. I have scoliosis (as you know from the yoga post) and anemia, myself. Wait, neither of those is from the Latin, right? I probably also have several things relating to my tendency to nod enthusiastically when other people speak, my abnormally acute interest in little summer dresses, and my inability to stop cutting my hair.

Naming things often gives them meaning. But some things have meaning even before someone tags a fancy title on them.

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I have been eating a lot. A lot. And it bothers me that I feel guilty because of it.

Bear read a book called Good Calories, Bad Calories not too long ago. And he’s pretty sure that refined carbohydrates will be the death of me. It sounds like kind of a smart book, actually, but I don’t want to read it. Because I like killing myself with muffins. Not killing myself. I like eating muffins.

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Bear doesn’t eat any carbs. Neither does my little brother Gabe, who is a diabetic, too, and who interns for Bear now, at Bear’s new job. Gabe comes and stays with us, and he and Bear talk about the world economy (it’s always depressing) and eat salad together. I am learning more about the world economy as a result.

My other brother, the middle one, put himself on a strict diet and workout schedule years ago, when he started college. He lost a lot of weight and gained a lot of muscle and he doesn’t eat any carbs. He also doesn’t drink diet soda, because of the artificial sweetener. He drinks water with lemon juice, which is actually quite good. His willpower is crazy. It’s more like a superpower. It can probably make him fly by now.

Neither of my parents eat carbs. My dad is a diabetic and my mom has cut them out of her diet (though she’ll have a piece of chocolate or a bite of my cake occasionally).

I’ve written about this before, but I need to write about it  again, because here I am, in my new apartment, eating carbs all day long, and feeling guilty. And writing about it on a blog called “Eat the Damn Cake.”

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And I am really, really excited about it.

Skinny is Diana Spechler’s second book, published by HarperCollins (how amazing is that? AMAZING). She is a big deal. And in Skinny, she writes about body image issues in such a complex, jarring, and deft way that I kept getting surprised, every time I turned a page.

Skinny is the story of a young woman named Gray who struggles with guilt after her obese father’s dramatic death. She begins to compulsively overeat, driven by an enormous hunger she can’t sate. She follows a clue from her father’s past to a weight-loss camp for kids, down south. At the camp, she tries, and fails, and tries some more to understand what it means to carry weight and love. There’s sex and difficult relationships and sweetness and triumph and somehow through all that there is nothing clichéd or easy about Gray’s relationship with her body or the bodies of the people around her. In fact, Spechler makes this story important by refusing to allow it to slip into a familiar niche. And she writes like it’s exactly what she’s supposed to be doing. Which it clearly is. And she clearly is. (For Diana’s site, click here.)

It is so cool that she is here on ETDC, talking with me about her book, which you guys should read. (You can look at it and then decide to buy it here.) Here is our conversation:

You know, that question I absolutely have to ask: What inspired this book?

It’s always a little embarrassing to admit that the answer to this question is “me.” I inspire myself so deeply, Kate. But seriously, I’ve struggled with body image and eating issues since I was thirteen. At some point in early adulthood, I realized that just about everyone else does, too. We all think we’re too fat or our breasts are too small or our thighs are too big or our feet are ugly. In my case, I have objectively ugly feet–really long toes and a bunion. I get pedicures, but I’m fooling myself; painting my toenails is like adorning a leper with precious gems. Anyway. I wanted to explore body image and eating disorders. So off I went to a weight-loss camp for a summer to do research.

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