I’ll never be thin. Why is that so hard to accept?

I'm in my third decade now. It's time to think about something else.

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TW: this blog talks about weight loss, dieting and the dreaded BMI chart. But don’t worry, I don’t condone it!

On a holiday in Wales in 1997, my mother watched my brother George and I digging a hole in the brown silt of the beach. George was seven, I was five. As she watched us, filled only with love for our busy little bodies, she noticed the shape of George’s body compared to mine. His stomach was flat and pale like cartridge paper. Even then, mine was domed. She would tell me, years later, that she could already see the beginnings of my womanly shape at that young age. 

It should be a comfort: I wasn’t ever meant to be thin. 

Even as a teenager, when my stomach muscles and collar bones cast shadows, I teetered on the edge of the BMI scale, always leaning into the amber section: “overweight”. You don’t need to tell me that BMI is inaccurate. Like any good cult, this kind of knowledge defies reason—it’s simply believed. Now, as I begin to settle into my third decade, I’m forced to reconcile with the fact that, if I couldn’t be thin even as a child, what chance do I have now? 

Perhaps, for anyone who doesn’t know me well enough, now’s a good time to regroup. Perhaps it’s still useful for me to state the obvious: that it shouldn’t matter, that - in my heart - I don’t believe it matters. But a lifetime of trying and failing and then trying again is a hard habit to break. It’s the most common kind of brainwashing we go through as women. We’ve been programmed to mind—and mind very much. On that secluded Welsh beach, I might’ve been blissfully unaware. But only just. The knowledge was drawing in with the tide, ready to stick to my skin forever like sand. 

“I have to show constant restraint and vigilance. I have to count incessantly. Energy in and energy out. Energy. All that endless energy.”  

I can count on one hand the times I’ve succeeded in being thin. And I have succeeded, for brief electric moments. But in order to be anywhere near, I have to think about food and exercise all the time, like a second self. I have to show constant restraint and vigilance. I have to count incessantly. Energy in and energy out. Energy. All that endless energy.  

And after all that, by European beauty standards, I’ve got it pretty easy when it comes to my looks. I have thick, healthy hair. Straight teeth. Clear skin. Big boobs. Sometimes, I feel monstrous that I’m not happy with my lot. I feel air-headed and ashamed that I still feel the urge to tick this final, impossible box.

Because I’m starting to think that it is, actually, impossible. 

It’s not the Gym Girly Kim K mentality, is it? And physically, yes, I could whittle down my frame until I staggered, light-headed, into the green space of the BMI chart. But will it honestly make my life more fulfilling? On my deathbed, will I feel good about all the effort I’d put in to get there? I almost can’t be bothered to mention that I already walk nearly 10k every day and cook every meal I eat from scratch. I’m bolstering my side of an argument that I have no interest in having.  

“We are all so much more interesting than what we look like. And yet, that certainty floats to and from me. Sometimes, when I need it most, it’s far out to sea.” 

I’m more concerned with what I’m wasting. It’s been said so many times before by people far more eloquent than me, but we are all so much more interesting than what we look like. And yet, that certainty floats to and from me. Sometimes, when I need it most, it’s far out to sea. 

But if I really did begin to believe in the impossibility of being thin, it could be the end to this monotonous twenty-six-year-old conversation I’ve been having with myself: to finally see being thin as being as unmanageable as growing an extra two inches in height, or shrinking my shoe size. It would finally be out of my hands. 

Sometimes, shallow little fantasies will present themselves to me: a reality where I have my teenage body forever, a reality where I have the metabolism of a twelve-year-old boy, a reality where I’m never hungry—only eating when I remember to. I think about how carefree I’d be in my body if these realities were real. And maybe I would be, on some rippling surface level. But I often think about another kind of reality, too.  

In this one, someone tells me that I will stay the size I am now forever, that there is no chance whatsoever of my being any smaller, no matter how hard I try, or how hard the world tries to convince me otherwise. And as they tell me this fact - instead of being horrified - I breathe a deep sigh of relief.    

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