(submitted by anon)
When I was little, my sister and I were underweight because we were constantly sick, though just with a cold or strep or ear infection, since we had such large tonsils. Food tends to taste funny when you’re sick, so we didn’t eat very much, either. After we got our tonsils removed when we were 8, we struggled for a bit with recovering and people kept begging us to eat, even dessert foods. But once we got better, we started to gain weight rapidly because we could finally eat and enjoy food and we weren’t ill all the time. No one begged us to eat anymore. We both became overweight, and at our next doctor’s appointment when we were 9, they told us we needed to slow down. My sister said, “I like being able to eat now!” and the doctor responded, “Well, eating all the time isn’t a good thing”. She told us we needed to exercise more and control our intake or we’d continue to be overweight, like it was the worst possible thing. Finally we’d done what people had always asked us to, and then it was wrong? I’m against anyone trying to dictate another person’s diet, but I can still remember hearing that as a child and thinking I’d done something wrong, and it stuck with me til now.
