When I was in college, I declared Diet Coke my enemy. My reason was the only valid reason to declare something an enemy. I mean, someone wrote a bad blog about it.
A girl I don’t know published an op-ed in her school newspaper listing all the reasons why she’s really into Diet Coke. It wasn’t anything serious, but I was so angry that I started fighting with the girls in the sorority kitchen over it. Didn’t they realize that she was making a fool of us all by publishing something like this?
I was a recent gender studies major in a sorority at SEC. It’s like being Snow White in that scene where she runs through a haunted forest and is constantly being accosted by scary faces. However, that scary face was racism and misogyny. For the first time, I was able to look clearly and say my name. Thankfully for all of us, the evidence for this article appears to have been erased from the internet. So all that remains of me is the angry silhouette of those days and my deep hatred for Diet Coke.
My opposition to Diet Coke was political, a fierce opposition that reflected everything that reeked of “diet,” and it was right there in the name of the can. Going on a diet explicitly meant admitting that I had succumbed to a miasma of feminine self-loathing. If I was going to have a soda, I proudly ordered a full sugar Coca-Cola. This was a political act of self-love that rebelled against the collective ritual of “watching what you eat” while always being mindful of what you eat.
I am on an uneasy truce with my body, pledging myself to avoid dieting and diet foods, and in return believing that my body will never get sick, gain weight, or get out of control. I did. Of course, this was magical thinking, but I was denying any way I could let it control me. Constantly ruminating about not dieting still takes up a ton of space in your brain, leaving you stuck in front of the open fridge and unable to decide what to eat for lunch that stays within your limits. It happened often. Countless rules that intersect and contradict each other in my head. I didn’t explicitly follow the dietary rules that I knew, but they were always in the background, the criteria by which every decision was still evaluated.
Last year, I finally started treatment for my eating disorder, which focused on intuitive eating. This framework discourages assigning morality to foods or food groups and encourages close attention to hunger cues and cravings as a way to guide eating habits. I slowly let go of the thousands of dietary rules I had recorded in my mind, and for six months I felt free. Then prediabetes happened.
The morning of my partner’s graduation in May, as I was finishing up my makeup, I received the news that my A1C was in the pre-diabetic range. I didn’t have time to panic and Google it because I had to pick up my in-laws and begin a very planned routine that lasted all day, including scrambling for tickets, sun protection, and managing snacks. . But after it was all said and done, I lay in bed tipsy from a glass of red wine, reading deep into the prediabetes subreddit with my phone shining about two inches from my eyes. We learned that prediabetes is a condition in which blood sugar levels are elevated above healthy levels and, if left untreated, can progress to diabetes. Like diabetes, a combination of genetics and lifestyle can lead to prediabetes. According to CDCOne-third of American adults have prediabetes. I have a strong family history of diabetes on both sides. Asians are also one of the groups of people at higher risk of prediabetes and diabetes Looking back, that seems like an overstatement.
Until that day, I was a stranger to the world of diabetes, blood sugar, and insulin, but I had a vague idea of the morality assigned to each type. Type 1 is the type you get as a child and is the type that Nick Jonas has. innocence. Innocent. Type 2 is the type that “gave it to themselves” after living a life of luxury. These words remind me of a man in his 60s who refuses to stretch or drink water despite his wife’s pleas. Blame. Immoral.
I thought it would be best to stop blaming others for their health, even if it was in my own heart. But the epidemic of ableism is insidious and can only reveal itself when directed at the only viable target: ourselves. I realized that I was hiding deeper, uglier feelings beneath the surface.
The strongest was shame, which rather than clinging to a single thought tainted the way I saw and interacted with my body. My thoughts ranged from shame at what I had done to my body (which of course was my fault) to fear about how quickly this would develop into type 2 (Reddit said 3-6 months) ), and bounced back from confusion as to why this happened.
I thought it might be because I eat intuitively. Admittedly, the snacks I left unattended last year were the cause of my high A1C. Can I even trust the nutritionist I worked with last year? I didn’t know what to believe to be safe.
Reading articles about managing prediabetes made me feel like all my old eating rules were coming back. My new priority going forward was to prevent long-term spikes in blood sugar levels. Blood sugar levels always rise after a meal, but there are things you can do to keep your blood sugar levels from rising for too long. Things like going for a walk after meals, making half your plate vegetables, and prioritizing protein over protein. combination of carbohydrates, proteins and fats and And always remember that sugar is a carbohydrate and basically everything in this country has sugar in it.
I reluctantly embarked on a new diet over the course of three months to see what effect a lifestyle change alone would have on my A1C.
I spent this summer experimenting with low-carb recipes, drinking tons of apple cider vinegar mocktails, and chopping raw vegetables. Meanwhile, Oprah, Lizzo and Kelly Clarkson showed off their new, lithe bodies after taking weight loss pills, and Ariana Grande I have posted a comment that concerns me. about her health condition evil Press tour. I switched from oat milk back to dairy for lattes, smoothies, and Kourtney Kardashian’s supplement brand. Lemereleased the GLP-1 Ozempic camo. Since I ate so many salads, I came up with a glucose-friendly meal that didn’t feel like a sacrifice. Buffalo wings and Caesar salad have become my new go-to when eating out at restaurants. influencer Liv Schmidt banned from TikTok If you post content that promotes eating disorders.
I have a huge sweet tooth, so cutting out sweets was the hardest part. I love sour candy, I love chocolate chip cookies, and I love cherry coke. During the first few weeks of starting my new diet, I dreamed of eating cookies and whole cakes, but even in those dreams I felt embarrassed knowing that my blood sugar levels were spiking and ruining everything. .
It was unpleasant because I was always hungry, but it was also because what I was doing was very similar to dieting. I refuse to call it that for now, preferring hand-waving euphemisms like “my new lifestyle” or the more vague “you know, everything changes.” I was amazed at how easily I could picture a dieting woman looking up the nutritional content of every food item and logging her meals on MyFitnessPal to tally up her macros.
One day, in front of a coffee shop normal gossip After the live show, I realized that the yogurt contained nearly 30 grams of sugar, so I put the yogurt back. I told a friend I was in line with that I was behaving this way because I have prediabetes, and not because I’m someone who actually cares about my sugar intake. clarified. As I write this now, I’m wondering what’s different.
After 6 weeks, I didn’t feel as lost. People said I wouldn’t like sweets as much and they were right. I still want to eat chocolate, but my desire for sweets is not as pronounced as before. After three months, my A1C had dropped and while I wasn’t quite out of the pre-diabetic range, I was pretty close. The changes I made worked for me.
She also lost 13% of her weight, returning to her pre-pandemic size. Clothes that used to fit me are now falling off quickly, and I’m upset about that because I used to like the way they looked. My family praised my weight loss and I murmured my gratitude, but I was uncomfortable knowing that the change was so visible that people across the country could record it through their cell phone screens. By losing weight, I felt like I was betraying the person I was, who had been treated for an eating disorder, who didn’t believe in “good” or “bad” food, and who wasn’t afraid of calories or carbs.
A few weeks ago we got tickets to a late movie. When I got to the lobby, I saw they were in the theater. coke freestyle machine. I was overwhelmed by so many sugar-free options. I bought a 20 oz cup and filled it with caffeine free Diet Coke, half cherry and half vanilla. I know about aspartame, but I also know how it feels to be able to eat this sweet treat without experiencing a spike in blood sugar or the hassle of caffeine. The feeling was amazing. As I sat in the darkened theater, I couldn’t believe how excited I was to be able to drink this drink I’d been scoffing at for so long: Diet Coke.
There were many topics this year too. How our cultural pendulum regarding desirable female bodies is swinging back toward thinnessand at first I hesitated to write this essay because I was worried that I would be complicit in the body positivity backlash. The hardest part of these changes was finding a way to keep multiple truths in mind at once. I believe in the political roots of the body positivity movement, no matter how distorted modern concepts have been by 50 years of capitalism. But my body is just a little less capable of processing carbohydrates than the average body, so I’m starting to learn to forgive myself for looking and acting like a woman on a diet. I know I feel my best when I’m intentional about when and how much I take. Sometimes that means having a little Diet Coke as a snack.
