The exhausting pursuit of your past hot girl self
What it’s like to be haunted by the skinny minny body of your former years and how to break free from all that time-wasting, energy-sapping guff
TW (I'm not usually in favour of these but here goes): I'm going to talk about diets, weight loss, body image etc so if that's not something you want to read, feel free to click off - also, if you find it nauseating reading about an already slim person yearning to be more slim (which I quite understand) this might not be one for you xxx
I don't think I've ever looked better than the summer of 2019 when I was 31 years old.
It was my first summer in New York and my first summer anywhere with three consecutive months of blue skies and beating sun and temperatures that never dipped below 25 degrees. I was tanned - well, as tanned as my pallid British skin ever gets - and happy, in love with a city and its people, carefree but with enough money to fund pretty much anything I wanted to do and, what's more, I was the skinniest I've ever been.
Naturally. Without thinking about it. It just happened. My body shrank until my tummy really was as flat as a pancake and my shoulders were boney and the boy I was seeing could hold my waist with his hands and his thumbs and forefingers touched. I loved it. I loved being a skinny minny, I loved people commenting on just how slender I was, I loved wearing anything and it looking fantastic. I even loved the occasional concerned comment from my parents that I was, in fact, too thin. But most of all, I loved not thinking about my body. Not going through endless calculations while getting dressed to make sure I looked as slim as possible, not feeling self conscious in changing rooms, not experiencing the dig of too-tight jeans. And the magical thing was - I was eating whatever I wanted.
Looking back, the most glorious aspect of my skinny era was not obsessing about food. I didn't think about it except when I was ordering from a menu or going around a grocery store. I didn't weigh myself. I was free of the whirring, mental carousel of body self consciousness and food obsession that I fear every woman has experienced.
I still don't quite understand why my body, and seemingly metabolism, metamorphosed as it did when I moved to the States. Partly, I think the food didn't agree with me. And New York made me nervous. Perhaps that nervous energy made me burn calories. (Evelyn Waugh penned one of my favourite descriptions of the Big Apple - 'there is a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy'.) I also co-opted the militant attitude with which New Yorkers approach pretty much everything including exercise - why work out twice a week when you could exercise every day? Soon I had a membership at a yoga studio in Union Square and I was going to sweaty vinyasa flow classes multiple times a week, often dropping in to do one at 9pm on my way home. And, for the first time since my teens, I wasn't turning to food for comfort. I was too busy, too swept up in the wonder of the city and this new life, to comfort eat.
Then I returned to London. Slowly but surely, my body adjusted. I expanded. My boobs got bigger, my tummy is no longer a pancake but now has a small fleshy pouch. My butt is bigger, my face has filled out. I can no longer squeeze myself into the vintage Levis I ran around New York in. When I wear my yoga leggings, I have a little muffin top of midriff squished too tight. I’ve been unable to resist the siren call of my favourite newsagent chocolate bars, wine gums, soft Haribo gummy sweets and the aptly-named Irresistible Sea Salt & Chardonnay Wine Vinegar crisps. I once again turn to food to feel better when I am low or lonely or, as is most often the case, just plain old bored. I suspect I've put on around a stone since my skinny minny days and, although my BMI is firmly in the healthy arena, I would be lying if I told you I didn't miss my hot girl 31-year-old self.
Every time a picture of her flashes up in the featured photographs on my phone's home screen (which surely should not be allowed) I can't help but look in wonder at that trim tummy, stick-like thighs and jutting clavicle. I miss that body. And I've done some pretty stupid, kinda funny things in an attempt to get it back, such as signing up to Slimming World (for £60) only to find that they refused to accept me because I was not overweight enough so adding an extra half a stone to my weight to get around this (probably quite sensible) barrier. And yes, when January rolled around again, amid my litany of resolutions (save 10 per cent of salary, start investing, write novel), was the usual tiresome Bridget Jones-esque body-related ones: lose ten pounds, get into vintage Levis, blah blah blah blah blah. God, I even bore myself!
You know what I miss? Not thinking about this bullshit. I miss the freedom from obsessive thoughts of food and weight and dress sizes and dumb intentions for healthy eating and carb-free dinners and intensive exercise. It's so fucking boring!
I'm trying to keep my thinking in check. It's not easy. I come from a long line of women obsessive about their weight. My grandmother used to hop on the scales multiple times a day. As a teenager, I fully succumbed to this myopic nonsense - convinced I was fat and ugly when, of course, I was neither, and wasted a whole lot of time, endured a whole lot of pain and bowed out of far too many fun opportunities thanks to the delusion. Now I look back on pictures of my 18-year-old self, struck by just how pretty she was - flawless skin, peaches-and-cream complexion, neat little figure - and consider how sad it is that she never saw it. The rational side of my brain knows that in ten years' time when I look back at pictures of myself now, I'll think the same thing and wonder why I was so determined to fit into an old pair of jeans.
I know I’m not alone in this blizzard. I’ve yet to meet a woman who enjoyed a healthy relationship with food. And I don’t think she exists.
Towards the end of last year, I was at a dinner table with a host of stylish, high-functioning and, yes, slender women. One opened up about her experience with eating disorders. She had run the gamut from anorexia to bulimia to obesity. She had been to rehab and spent a year working with a nutritionist. She said that she was now free from body image obsession. The table was agog, hanging on her every word.
‘How?’ spluttered one woman, who had steered clear of the bread basket, ordered a chicken salad and complained about feeling fat.
This is what she said.
‘You’ll never see yourself the way you actually look, you’ll always see yourself as bigger than you are.
‘Your mood determines what you see in the mirror.
‘You’ll always be happier if you don’t body check.
‘Photos and and different reflections can’t be trusted.’
I am going to try my best to remember her words every time I’m tempted to launch an attack to regain my skinny minny body. Because deep down, this pursuit of my former self is just a mission to return to the past which is a big old waste of energy and, y’know, impossible.
So here’s to a 2024 of trying, at least, to make the most of what we have and enjoying the moment we’re in instead of turning obsessively to something that’s already been and gone, baby. I feel that there’s more to play for in 2024.
Some recommendations…
Only two this week and they are both books.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton
Loved it. Very Nick Hornby-esque. It’s about heartbreak and told by the main male character (which is really cool - I can’t imagine it’s easy to write from a male viewpoint and she nailed it) who has just been dumped by his girlfriend of four years.
It’s funny - I was chuckling out loud to myself on the tube and got so engrossed that I ended up going a stop too far to Liverpool Street when I was supposed to get off at Bank.
Plus it’s also really sad. She is a phenomenal writer in how she can make you laugh and also make you feel hollowed out by the pain of life.
I think I will try to write a proper review of it for next week’s Substack - do you think that’s a good idea? Would you be interested in reading a sort-of book review? Let me know.
Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Cracking read. I spent the whole of Christmas and the dead days with my nose in this book. It’s a sweeping saga about two friends, a man and a woman who don’t hook up which was actually strangely refreshing. They also create video games together and I’ve always been a horrid snob about people who play video games but this book made me think - hmmmm, maybe I should play video games?! Finally, it’s a novel about work and it made me think how interesting it is that we spend the vast majority of our time working (sorry, I know this isn’t a pleasant thought!) and yet such a tiny selection of art touches upon this fact, you know? Novels tend to be about love stories or family dynamics or murder mysteries or those summers that last forever when you are a teenager and very rarely deal with the day-in day-out grind of the 9-5. So it was kinda cool to read a novel that put work front and centre.
Oh, and I wrote this opinion piece for The Telegraph this week about the absolute stupidity of the Natwest chairman saying it ‘wasn’t that difficult’ to buy a house. If you like to get enraged by Boomers’ lack of understanding of the economic headwinds millennials and Gen Z are caught up in, take a read. (paywall)
And that’s it from me this week. I hope you are having a great start to 2024. Thank you for subscribing to my Substack. It means the world to me. If you are so inclined, feel free to click on the heart below or share the piece with someone who may enjoy it. See you next week! xxx
Loved this piece Issy! So spot on and it inspired me to think that maybe us just loving our body and not hating on it actually helps it to thrive and essentially be healthier. Maybe no science on that but I did hear on the recent Netflix “You are what you eat” series that one studied came up with some findings that if the participants thought what they were eating was good for them then they had better health outcomes than the people who ate the same but didn’t think it was healthy.
Oh also book reviews please. I was already thinking you should suggest books to read… now I will have some good suggestions to put to my book club that make me look 🤓 so thank you x xx