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I need to lose weight again. It’s not that strange, maybe that’s why I can write about it, I just had my third child and this time I overcame almost ninety pans. But I’m also not the type to relax and eat what I’ve craved. There are really few. No, most of my life has consisted of several eat and not eat projects, eggs and cabbage and no bread, hours of fasting, and I can swap the chips for some dried leaves, thank you.
Leave eating disorders aside, my classmates say when I speak out loud about the Stig Bengmark Twelve Commandments or they tell me that I actually bought a scale. Broadening and broadening the bodily ideal has become the creed of our generation. No one should have to starve to get approved, they say, and all influencers are careful to label their salad tips with “size doesn’t matter.”
It’s time for me to lose weight again, but I don’t lie and gasp in anxiety on the bathroom floor, I don’t hesitate and trade lunch for cigarettes or dinner for drugs.
But it doesn’t matter if you consider yourself a feminist with your thighs rubbing each other when every step is heavy and every outdoor activity feels like a problem. That I get tired and angry when I gain a little weight, that I have inflammation in an attached muscle that comes back as soon as I don’t move and eczema on my hand that blooms if I eat sugar. The fact that T-shirts like “fries before boys” looked wonderfully punk on Instagram doesn’t help the fact that obesity has now starved in the league of cause of death as well.
When I was very pregnant, I suddenly realized all those people who had stomachs similar to mine but for other reasons. Do they always sleep as badly as I did then? Probably. A friend who is a doctor at a health center said that if patients weighed only a small percentage less, her work would not be necessary. But the statistics point in the other direction, the majority of Swedes are now overweight or obese, and the proportion, like stomachs, is slowly but still increasing. After forty, women gain an average of one kilo per year, men gain even more weight.
Victor Malm wondered in Expressen why the growing importance of society is not debated, hardly mentioned, like the problem that is in Sweden. The answer is probably that even if the reasons are many (and unfair), the solution so far is only one. And dieting, trying to lose weight, is suspicious behavior here. Considered to have arisen out of patriarchal structures and oppressive norms, not wanting to be fat is seen as a sign that an icy world has damaged self-confidence and a no thanks to Christmas candy is associated with self-destructive teenagers, unpleasant control personalities and embarrassing complexes.
It is almost as if certain dietary restrictions and, as a result, a single feeling of hunger here and there, are impossible to distinguish from the serious disease of anorexia. You could almost believe that the Smalis were not happier, healthier, or even richer than the rest. It’s almost like thinking that the figure is not one of the kindest things you can do to yourself.
It’s time for me to lose weight again, but I don’t lie and gasp in anxiety on the bathroom floor, I don’t hesitate and trade lunch for cigarettes or dinner for drugs. Neither does any new revolutionary diet save me, I have passed the romantic stage of the body project. My diet is essential, a long walk and a kilo of vegetables must go through the system every day, otherwise it will have consequences. It’s very sad, a little difficult and it should be completely normal.
Read more from Anna Björklund:
READ MORE: The pregnancy brain is no excuse
READ MORE: The myth of female rock is someone else’s fantasy
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