My thumb
In 1989, I was being “so good” on my diet. I didn’t want to eat anything “bad.” Half of a bagel was “good.” An entire bagel was ‘bad.” My bagels were in the freezer and I didn’t divide them before I froze them. No worries! I would cut the bagel while it was still frozen. I put the bagel in the crook of the thumb on my left hand. I reached for a sharp knife (it was a frozen bagel, of course I needed something sharp). I used the knife to try and cut saw/cut through the frozen bagel. The knife wasn’t going anywhere. I pushed harder. I made slow cuts through the bagel. I finally got to the last bit of the bagel, pushing as hard as I could. In the end, the knife cut through the bagel. Then the knife kept going. I cut a slice right through the crook of my thumb.
Blood was gushing everywhere. My then husband had just left for work and I couldn’t ask for his help. I rushed next door and I asked my neighbor for help. She was a nurse. She came back to the house with me and had me put my hand under the faucet. I started to feel lightheaded. She recommended that I cough, a way to keep the oxygen flowing to your head to keep from fainting (A useful tip that I still use today). She said I needed stitches. She showed no interest in taking me to the hospital, so I had to call my husband’s office and have them find him so he could come home and take me to the hospital.
I ended up needing more than stitches. I had to have hand surgery, because I couldn’t move the thumb. They figured they would have to reattach the tendon. When the surgeon went into my hand, he discovered my nerves also needed to be reattached as well. I was in physical therapy for weeks, relearning how to bend my thumb, and getting the nerve endings to talk to each other again. Here I am, over 30 years later, and I still don’t have full feeling and full use of my thumb.
So why am I sharing this story? To illustrate how bad diets are for your body. As I’ve said before, when we diet, we put our bodies in starvation mode. We tell our bodies, “You’re not the boss of me! You don’t know how to choose food and it’s up to someone else to tell you what goes inside of you!” When we allow ourselves access to “forbidden foods,” we often binge on them and then flagellate ourselves for eating them.
But I did another thing that was dangerous in going on a diet; I came close to slicing my thumb off. Sure, I could have used a bagel slicer or a cutting board to slice my frozen bagel. I could have just as easily defrosted the bagel in a microwave and then it would have been easier and safer to cut. But no, I couldn’t do that! I would have had two halves of a bagel and I was only allowed to eat 1 half. How crazy is that? What would another half of a bagel have done to my body? Would I have blown up to twice my size for eating another half of a bagel? Would I have even gained an inch on my thighs for eating another half of a bagel? And what if I did? SO WHAT? I had come to a place were I was so judgmental of myself for eating an entire bagel. I was disconnected from reasoning (defrosting the entire bagel) and compassion for myself that I had to cut through my hand to allow myself to eat. By the way, I don’t think I had any bagel that morning. I was busy rushing off to the hospital.
Was this hand slicing experience the event that swore me off from diets? Hell no! In fact it was celebratory. As a result of cutting my hand, the ER physician gave me a Tetanus shot. I get a severe reaction to those. I had a high fever and I was stuck in bed for days, eating close to nothing. That week I weighed the least I had in years! I was delighted! Was it worth it?
At the time, many friends and family congratulated me on my weight loss. It was early in my weight loss cycling journey, so I didn’t have a lot of weight I wanted to lose. Still, I was smaller after this diet experience than I had been before. So true to diet culture, people praised me for my weight loss. I felt proud. I felt scared. I was worried what would happen to me when the weight loss was over and it was time to “maintain” my weight. Of course, the weight didn’t stay off. Why should it? I had been starving myself to lose weight, and now I was eating again. I probably started listening to my body. My body was hungry. Over the next year or so, I gained the weight back, and more! No one was cheering me on saying, “Oh! You’re so good! You’re listening to your body and not starving yourself!” No, I was busy feeling ashamed of my body for acting as it normally should. It took another 25+ years for me to recognize that starving my body was not the way to care for myself.
If I had it all to do over again, I would eat the entire bagel.
