Anonymous asked: You eat a lot and your job (freelance writing, I assume) is a rather sedentary one. How do you stay so slender? Has it always been that easy for you?

Readers’ questions about my body probably rank #1 among Questions I Avoid Answering. (As a side note, I am kind of surprised that my blog makes it evident that I eat a lot, but perhaps I should have expected as much given the numerous recipes I’ve posted which involve deep-frying the crap out of every imaginable edible substance known to man.) I’m not comfortable telling readers what I do with my body, because I don’t want it to be construed as a guideline for what others should do with theirs. This is for a host of reasons, which I will detail below in a conveniently numbered list:

1. I am not a nutritionist and have no idea what is or isn’t healthy for your body (or really, even for mine). As observed, I make and eat deep-fried crap. Why in the world are you coming to me for guidance? Corollary: women’s magazine editors are also not nutritionists and should not be consulted for health advice. If you really want to lose weight, don’t do it by reading half-baked advice on fad diets that instruct you to undertake liquid-only fasts and don’t do it by asking a blogger with zero medical expertise. Go see a doctor.
   
2. Skinny does not always mean healthy. Even if I were a nutritionist, I don’t think the proper medical advice would be to follow a diet regimen that makes you skinny, but rather one that makes you healthy. For a lot of people, being healthy does not equate to being a size 0, and for them, being a size 0 might actually be really bad for their health and come with nasty and/or potentially fatal side effects. I know there’s a vain quote that goes something like “I’d rather die thin than live fat”, but trust me, no one is going to be commenting on your figure in your eulogy.
3. Weight and beauty goals are inherently misguided. Of course, it’s easy for me to say this, since I embody conventional femininity and never deal with hurtful attitudes about my appearance, right? Wrong. As I’ve written before, my blog made me the target of some of the cruelest remarks in the Internet’s existence. But even after I slimmed down to my pre-puberty weight, I still got the exact same comments about my unattractiveness, and I realized that my struggle to come to terms with my body is primarily a mental one, not a physical one. The sick thing about the beauty ideal is that it’s completely unattainable. You can be a 36-24-36 and some idiot will tell you that you have wrinkly hands. (No, seriously, some commenter actually said this to my objectively gorgeous friend Lingbo.) Instead of trying to conform to someone else’s standard of beauty, figure out what you’d be happy with in the absence of said standards. My boobs, for example, are never going to be perfect according to Heidi Montag, but you know what? I’ve dealt and moved on and am going to live with my somewhat boyish figure. (And no, I wouldn’t have plastic surgery even if it were free.)
4. Not everyone can be skinny. And I mean this in the least bitchy way possible. Weight is very much correlated with class. As noted in a recent blog post going around Tumblr, living a “healthy lifestyle” in America is often code for being rich enough to buy all-organic and go to yoga classes. In other words, most people do not have the time, money, or energy to devote to maintaining their good looks, and for them, there are more pressing concerns than obtaining a flat tummy. So I’m not going to tell you to join a gym since I wouldn’t be able to afford it myself if not for my “couple’s membership” and I’m not going to tell you to shop at Whole Foods, because the last time I went there, it cost $80 to buy all the ingredients needed for a batch of homemade tomato sauce. Most of the health advice I’ve encountered in women-oriented publications espouse regimens that are either completely crazy, out of a normal person’s price range, or both (the aforementioned Blueprint Cleanse). Ask yourself: do you know anyone who’s spent a week at an all-inclusive “health spa”? Because I don’t.

If I haven’t made it clear before, let me state for the digital record that going on a quest to reach the beauty ideal will only bring you misery. One of you guys submitted a question a while back on this topic saying this:

“I am also a small, Asian female but I have trouble keeping my weight under control. I’m only 16 but I’ve been round my entire life and I’m kind of sick of it.”

When I read things like this, it makes me really upset. You’re sixteen; don’t waste your teenage-y angst on how much you weigh. Our bodies should not be viewed as enemies to be kept “under control”. The antagonism women direct toward their bodies for not looking perfect lends itself to really unhealthy attitudes. I did this for years when I was an adolescent, and not only did I end up with sick ideas about food and my body, but I also worried people who cared about me. And I am not proud to say this but one of the reasons I stopped purging is not because I came to some sort of feminist awakening, but because I didn’t want to do long-term damage to my teeth. (Incidentally, I am thinking of starting a blog series called, “I Am Not A Good Feminist”.) Then in the first four months of college (2005), I gained 20 pounds and more or less kept that weight until 2008. (I’m only 5’ 2” so this made a huge difference in my appearance.) And guess what? The world didn’t end just because I wasn’t as skinny as I was at 15. In fact, I felt a million times more attractive at 18 than I did as a teenager. In retrospect, my weight gain probably saved me a lifetime of irrational fears about my body. I’ll always be grateful for that.

I once wrote a very lengthy entry (entitled The Gym-A-Phobe’s Guide To Having Your Cupcake & Eating It Too) on what it was like for me to healthily lose the Freshman 15 (in my case, the Freshman 20) over the course of a year. This was less about getting skinny than it was about conquering my insecurities about physical activity, which I’d manage to avoid for a good two decades of my life. (Fun fact: I cannot bike, swim, or do anything involving a ball.) I still stand by what I said then, the gist of which was that exercise, particularly weight training, can be empowering, but only if you don’t view it as a means to an end. Just as I will never run like Caster Semenya, I will also never look like a runway model. And even if I did, I assure you that the sacrifices necessary to do so would leave me terribly unhappy. Because I recognized my own limitations, exercise became a fun activity instead of a burden.

If you want to know what it was like for me to get in shape, here is the very boring truth: I lost weight by running near-daily, never drinking, and eating healthier. I wouldn’t call this traditional “dieting”, since I don’t believe in having a blacklist of off-limit foods and I think calorie-counting just makes you fixated on numbers that don’t mean anything in terms of healthfulness. I also allowed for plenty of indulgences and started cooking so that I could eat lighter versions of my favorite restaurant dishes. (Perhaps I’m lucky enough that I can sometimes eat crap without gaining weight, but even if this weren’t the case, I would probably opt for the weight gain over deprivation of gastronomic pleasures.) I always thought that guilt was a mandatory element of any health regimen, so I was astonished that I never felt guilty for falling off the wagon. It was only later that I realized this was because there was never a wagon to begin with. I also learned that there are no quick fixes and no one can radically alter their body overnight without seriously messing it up. When I was actively losing weight, I only shed one or two pounds a month, looked essentially the same for the first six months, and eventually plateaued at a weight that was maintainable even given the occasional cupcake and deep-fried substance.

I kept up the regular exercise regimen for a year but when I went back to school last fall, I regressed a lot. I now run monthly, drink occasionally, and keep very questionable eating habits. But I only weigh 108 pounds and wear size 24 jeans. In terms of sheer numbers, am I skinny by societal standards? Sure, but I am under no illusion that my admittedly sedentary lifestyle is in any way healthy. I certainly don’t feel healthy or fit, and I hope to change this now that I’ve graduated and have more time. I’m glad I’ve gotten to a point where I’m more concerned about my ability to walk up to a four-story apartment building than I am about the number on a scale. Because if I were still worrying about the latter, then I’d probably be puking my brains out in a toilet right now. Instead, I’m going to eat a chocolate chip cookie, finish this blog post, and go on a hike.

More burning questions? Ask them here.

Related posts on body image, dieting, and health:
What Sex Blogging & The Freshman 15 Taught Me
The Gym-A-Phobe’s Guide To Having Your Cupcake & Eating It Too
Reader Question: “How do you reconcile your feminism and beauty/fashion consumption?”
Reader Question: “What are the merits of having small breasts?”
The Blueprint Myth