All products featured on Self are independently selected by our editors.
However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Content note: This story contains potentially triggering details about diet culture and body image.
Adobe Stock
I feasted on paella, beef cheeks, and delectable hams and cheeses, and enjoyed Spanish tortilla.
I quenched my thirst with more glasses of wine and sangria than I can count.
The most amazing part of it all?
I didnt spend even one minute of time feeling any shame about how much I consumed.
There were no quips about how vacation calories dont count.
I never felt bad about overindulging.
I was so fully present and enjoying the memories being created.
It was pure bliss.
It felt like freedomfreedom to really experience life and not be obsessing about my body or weight gain.
If Id taken this trip even five or six years earlier, things would have been drastically different.
My relationship with food was much more complicated back then.
I was deeply entrenched in diet culture and obsessed with maintaining a smaller body at all costs.
My life felt really small and constricted at that time.
Diet culturehas in many ways robbed us of the experience of food.
Food is an experience.
Food is a way to share love with one another.
I dont think people fail at diets.
I think that diets and diet culture have failed us.
I grew up extremely sheltered.
Sometimes I would sneak around and watchBaywatch.
I remember the first time I saw Pamela Anderson running down the beach in that infamous red one-piece.
She was skinny, had legs for days, and had huge breasts.
How was a Black girl with kinky, curly hair supposed to be able to achieve Pamela Anderson-like beauty?
I spent a lot of time chasing thinness.
The truth is, this body is fleeting.
It could all change in an instant.
The way it looks, the way it moves, the way it feelsthats all going to change.
We cant predict when or how these changes are going to occur.
They were designed to do that.
When Im on my deathbed, the memories I cultivated along the way are the things I will relish.
Glasses of wine on the patio keekeeing with my homegirls.
Weekend getaways to new cities just for the hell of it.
On my deathbed, Ill reminisce on the experiences this body allowed me to have.
Copyright (c)2023by Chrissy King.
