Having been born in 1982, the 90s was my teen era. Big hair, neon colors, MTV, and fad diets dominated the scene. This was the decade during which the models became rail thin (think Skeletor) and fat was America’s public enemy #1. Eating fat makes us fat, right? It seemed like sound logic. Suddenly low-fat versions of every treat you could imagine lined the shelves. Ice cream, yogurt, potato chips, granola bars, even Spam Lite! My stepmom avidly bought all of the dieting books. Note I wrote “avidly bought”, not “avidly read”. She didn’t much have the patience for reading entire books, but I sure did! And I absorbed them all like a sponge. I’ll never forget calculating the percentage of fat my graham crackers had because author Susan Powter had told me to “Stop the Insanity!” and change the way I “look and feel – forever” all by assuring that no single food I ate was over 30% fat. (The cinnamon graham crackers clocked in well under 30% fat so I went ahead and ate the entire package.)

Like all eating disorders, mine began with a diet. I was always a healthy weight child but, having zero true sense of self esteem, I saw myself as needing to lose a few pounds. And since the authorities of my day told me that eating fat makes you fat, I cut down on the fat! At the age of 14 I began restricting my fat intake to 5 grams a day for breakfast, 5 grams at lunch, and 10 grams at dinner. I would not allow myself to eat closer than 4 hours apart, and if dinner didn’t happen before 7pm I’d simply go to bed hungry.

My dad and stepmom knew I was doing this. At an extended family gathering with my stepmom’s parents and the families of her 6 siblings my stepmom announced it to the entire room, joking about my diet. Everyone else in the room also laughed.

Not that I blame my parents or anyone else for not seeing my fat restriction as an eating disorder that would snowball with time and eventually take over my life. Everyone female I knew was on a diet in the 90s. My dislike of my body was very normal. It would have been more odd if I let myself eat with abandon and never thought twice about restricting food. As it is nowadays, trying to lose weight was the norm for girls back then. My stepmom kept a photo taped up to the fridge showing she and my dad on their honeymoon when they were each 20 to 30 pounds lighter than they were by the time I began my first diet. That photo was to be their motivation to get back to being thin. I remember gazing up at it and thinking about how trim and tanned and happy they both looked. It sat in stark contrast to the unhappily married much heavier version of themselves that they had become.

My parents never did lose the weight. My stepmom is now in the advanced stages of dementia and my father, her caregiver, carries an extra 70 pounds on his frame and is now a type 2 diabetic with high blood pressure, coronary artery disease (he’s several heart attacks in by this point), atrial fibrillation, and one leg that’s much shorter than the other thanks to an ankle fracture that continually got re-infected following surgery.

I look back at that skinny 14 year old and just want to give her a hug and tell her to be strong inside of herself, that she is worthy of love just as she is, that she has the best personality and the most amazing body, and that she deserves whole nutritious foods with tons of water so she can grow, develop her brain properly, be with her friends, and just live life to the fullest! I want to make her understand the true nuts and bolts of nutrition and convince her that “meals” consisting of jelly bellies, pasta, diet root beer floats with fat free ice cream, or pancakes made with low fat pancake batter are not meals at all!

But the past is the past. These days all I can do is encourage my friends to never talk negatively about their bodies around their daughters, to never let their daughters see them wish their bodies were different than they are. I tell my girlfriends that eating disorders are born in the home. That young girls watch the women in their household and emulate them into adulthood. Even if all the world is screaming at a teenager that she/he needs to be thinner (and we all know it is), as their mother they can directly antagonize that message and help nullify that pressure. As far as their daughters are concerned, my friends absolutely love their own bodies and have a healthy love of good, nutritious foods (even if the truth is not quite so rosy).

Ahhhh the 90s. I’m so glad that the “fat is bad” craze hasn’t come back in style along with the scrunchie.

And now, it’s time to go snack on an avocado.