Milkshake Diet
If you've met me, the first thing you probably noticed was what a professional, capable, referable(!) chiropractor I looked like. Or maybe you cued in on my swell personality and sunny disposition. But if you got past these, you'd be forgiven for recognizing a certain long-limbed lankiness characteristic of, say, the college high jumper I once was. More ungainly forever-foal than runway-candidate, I've been called out for sleeves that don't reach my wrists and jeans cuffed to mid-calf. A picture of sheepishness, I'm forced to allow that no, these are not capris by design, this is just the best option I've come up with given the constraints of my body type and shopping off the rack.
Alas, such creative solutions have been a long time coming... by the end of middle school I reached 5'7" while my weight plateaued in the mid 90s. This confluence of numbers set off a flurry of anxiety among my parents and pediatricians. I remember the pediatrician walking my parents through the CDC's stature-weight curve, her finger tracing out the slopes of charted percentages. And then gesturing clear off the page, in search of me, beyond the scope of government recognized demographics. Clearly, all agreed, action would be taken.
And so it was, that in the spring of my 13th year I received my first official prescription for a diet of milkshakes. One milkshake every two days for two weeks. Preferably vanilla. Continue as needed. I have it still. Written out in the same cheery scrawl my pediatrician used for all her scripts.
It's a riot, I know, but only because I've been told so many times. To be honest, it took a long time to understand the joke... how my trip to a doctor garnered not sympathy, but winks, nods and declarations of I wish I had your "problem". (This was back around the high water mark for air quotes). But for me, this was (is) a serious thing. The merits of this particular antidote aside, I was a 13 year old (about that time when confidence peaks in most women's lives) and my doctor was declaring that I was unhealthy and that I needed to change things to become healthy. At the same time, I was surrounded by comments about how lucky I was to be so thin and how beautiful I'd be upon growing into my long legs. This was confusing at the time, and, in retrospect, could have easily derailed my path to a more sustainable weight.
In the end, doctor-knows-best, and I did drink the silly milk shakes. They didn't help my weight, but before I'm grossly misinterpreted (Local chiropractor denies link between milkshakes and weight gain), I should caution that my father, ever one for solidarity, gained 10 pounds through this same dietary modification.
Today, some 20 years later, my weight maintenance battle wages on. And while I've gotten used to the comments about how lucky I am, how I must be able to eat just anything, how I might grow into my legs any day now, they still feel insensitive. As we enter the season of New Year’s Resolutions, remember that healthy lifestyle decisions are made by each of us every day and that one person's milkshake is another person's breakfast-kale. We are all much more complicated than a simple number on a scale and, when in doubt, talking about the weather isn't the worst way to show we care.
Story edited and embellished by Brandon Redding