My year of no hunger and constipation
In the wake of The Cut's article “Ozempic Is Changing the Definition of Being Thin,” Lilly rehashes the year she lost her appetite.
tw: weight loss, disordered eating
2021 was the year I lost my appetite — when, long story short, a stomach issue had me feeling permanently full and essentially unable to go to the bathroom. I spent nearly all day, every day fixated on getting the feeling of hunger back. At first, I thought I must have been too full, so I only ate cans of chicken noodle soup for 5 days. But my body was so hungry — despite my not knowing it — that it just made me more sick and more unable to … you know. By the end of the week, I had a permanent headache and my stomach felt rock solid. As time went on, there were so many foods I was scared of eating because they either made me so nauseous I couldn’t think straight or made my stomach bloat to twice its size: hard-boiled eggs, salads with raw greens, and pizza are a few that I remember.
So, in the days following the publication of Matthew Schneier’s article “Ozempic Is Changing the Definition of Being Thin,” which described the stories of legions of people injecting themselves with the antidiabetic drug in the name of weight loss, in The Cut, I couldn’t get one quote from the article out of my head.
In one section, Schneier's stylist friend exclaims: “Especially for women who have been thin their whole lives — but not skinny, not fashion thin — the idea of touching that without having to sweat is really fun … It’s really fun for them to have their jeans hang off of them like they’re a Hadid. There is an addictive quality to it.”
What jars me most about this quote is the repetition of the words “really fun” — how casual it all is, how excited they are, right in the middle of one of the bleakest articles I’ve read about body image I’ve ever read (and I, like many of you, grew up reading articles about how to learn to subsist on water and celery). I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to read this and simultaneously hear Kate Moss saying “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” one of the many archaic and dangerous bits of dieting advice that were commonplace during my childhood in the early 2000s.
I don’t necessarily want to throw myself into the already crowded debate on whether or not people should be taking drugs for weight loss (for the record, my answer is: no, they shouldn’t, but it’s not up to me and I don’t really want to hear one specific example of why you really should be taking Ozempic), but what I did want to talk about was the absolute joylessness of this all: of succeeding in eating so little that your body starts to eat itself, of teaching your body to go against the very things it does to survive. From what I’ve gathered, in layman's terms (and I am very much a layman here) the antidiabetic drug is akin to an appetite-suppression shot. The users in the article boast about never thinking of food and eating only around one meal per day.
When I lost my appetite, it felt like losing a crucial connection with my body. Suddenly, it was a completely foreign part of me, separate from my mind and unreachable. I saw doctors and sat in dimly lit rooms, breathing into bags that were supposed to tell me what bacteria was invading my system. Time passed. I felt crazy, like I was the only one who understood that I was missing a vital sign of being alive. I ate fiber, and more fiber, because according to the doctors, it was going to be the magic ingredient for fixing everything. I got a scale, because I was told I had to monitor myself to make sure I wasn’t losing too much weight. What was too much? No one told me. I weighed myself somewhat regularly for the first time in maybe five, six years, and dreaded the results each time, whatever they were. A nurse at my OBGYN’s office congratulated me on my weight at my annual exam. I gave a small smile.
When I lost my appetite, it felt like losing a crucial connection with my body.
Mentally, this was a really unhealthy period in my life. When I was younger, women’s magazines that I probably shouldn’t have been reading had promised me that this would feel like a victory — and even though I hadn’t been seriously interested in weight loss since I was a teenager, I still felt cheated. This was so, so devoid of fun. Food had often felt like an enemy to me for various reasons, but now I felt like it was actively taunting me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my body was broken.
It took a lot of work, internal and external, for me to start feeling connected to my body again, like I could trust it to tell me what it needed. After 7 months of trying to find the cause of my hungerless existence, one of my tests came back positive, and I was able to take the right antibiotics I needed to start the healing process.
But another kind had already started to happen, inadvertently, during this miserable year. By then, the scale had collected a layer of dust on the floor of my bathroom. And a few weeks before the antibiotics — after months of not only trying to find the right combination of diet and exercise for my body, but also doing the mental work of abandoning the image I had of my body as sick or broken or needing to be changed — I felt a pang of hunger in my stomach for the first time in almost a year. I cried. At the time, I had also been cooking almost nonstop — partially because it’s always been my favorite distraction, but now because it helped me find a crumb (and then many crumbs) of joy in food again. Food became something that could cure me, mentally and physically.
So, when I read about people in this article who say things like “I’m now one of those people who’s just, like, not that hungry… And I feel better than everyone,” I feel an immense pain for them. The Ozempians are in a liminal state that — whether by doctors, by friends, or by themselves — they’ve been convinced is permanent. It’s one I know well, against my will. What I’ve learned is that the body and the mind crave connection — and when you lose that, there’s unfortunately no wonder drug to reverse what you’ve done. I wonder: What’s next for them? What does life look like when it’s time for their bodies to eat again? How do they teach themselves to look forward to eating again, when they’ve spent so much time telling themselves to do the opposite?
I don’t have the answer, unfortunately. I just have a hungerless year to look back on — one that always helps me look forward to my next meal.
Hunter-gatherer corner
What we’ve read and DMed each other about lately — our internet bounty is below!
What if…the Reality TV Soup Index? by Olivia Crandall - what if — This issue of Olivia Crandall’s newsletter “what if” finally gave me the language to explain why I can watch 8-10 hours of Real Housewives, Love Island, or The Hills, and why my fiancé can only tolerate The Great British Bakeoff or Alone. We have different soup tolerances!! It’s a fun (and useful!) read on the nature of the reality TV we know and love. — LM
Don’t Be Embarrassed to Commit to the Bit by Michael Waters - The Atlantic — I am always fascinated by the ways irony and performance and self-presentation ebb and flow throughout the years, and this culture piece by my good friend Michael explores the current iteration of cultural irony and persona building that has blossomed online. — MF
An Ode to Kraft Dinner, Food of Troubled Times by Ivana Rihter - Catapult — It sucks that Catapult is shuttering :/ I am very glad this piece by my mentee Ivana found a home there before it’s end. Food histories are always fun, and her personal experience with the instant dinner makes for an easy, heartwarming read. — MF
Why Not?
Why Not? is our biweekly list of recommendations. Think recipes, gift guides, podcasts, clothes, and anything we consider to be generally chic. Have a suggestion? Let us know!
Celery Root-Parsnip Latkes - NYT Cooking — It was fate when I saw this recipe right after I happened to get a few pounds of celeriac and parsnips in my farm share box. They turned out so delicious that I am looking forward to my next parsnip haul! — LM
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies - NYT Cooking — Through this recipe I found out that white granulated sugar is not vegan because animal bones (??????) are used to process it, and if I have to live with that knowledge, so do you. That being said, for bone-free cookies, look no further — this recipe is incredibly easy and the cookies are addictive. — LM
Eater Wine Club — Melinda gifted me an Eater Wine Club subscription one Christmas and I still remember it as one of my favorite gifts I’ve ever gotten. The wine was always a hit and I love a little monthly treat. — LM
Serpui Little Church Flower Top Bag - Neiman Marcus — This is a ridiculous recommendation that I need to get out of my system because for some reason my Instagram ads have decided that I can afford clothes and accessories like this? But come on, it’s beautiful! Someone else should see it! — LM
Moon padded nappa-leather bag - Prada — Speaking of bags that neither of us can afford right now, I’ve been daydreaming about better days lately (read: when Lilly and I went ham at the Prada store in Milan). I don’t care if this bag is basic, I’ve been thinking about it the way people crave chocolate, or a warm bath. — MF
If you liked this issue, send your compliments to the chef! Tell us your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter (@lillymilman | @melindafakuade), and share it with a friend!