Hi, sorry for the wait. Okay! Alison! Good to see you again. I see you’re due for a flu shot and your teen meningitis vaccine. We’ll do those at the end because the bulk of this appointment will be dedicated to instilling a lifelong hatred of your body. Sound good?
So, Alison, I see that your BMI is—oh, you don’t want to know? Okay, that’s fine. Yes, so BMI is tricky because it doesn’t so much tell us how healthy you are, but a higher BMI is very strongly correlated with not being a hottie in the traditional sense. You know, a hardbody. Like if you wore a bikini and sat down, what would happen? No bueno, right? So let’s fix this head on, because there are going to be a lot of social events in the next fifteen years of your life, and I’d really like for you to feel anxious and shitty getting dressed for each and every one of them. Better yet, maybe you just get stoned and fall asleep.
Sure, you are in good physical health, but let’s be real now: you have the BMI of someone who is on the squishier end of things, which can lead to a whole host of complications later in life. For example, feeling so bad about yourself that you give literally any guy who talks to you the time of day. Or dreading your own wedding because you think people will be picking apart your appearance. Well, actually, pretty much all of that will happen no matter what, due in part to the conversation we are having right now.
Now, here’s the good news: You still have an inch or two to grow, so what I want you to do is simply stop gaining weight. Just stop! That’s all you have to do. You’re actually pretty lucky. Some kids come in here and just don’t have a prayer of ever being a hardbody. You’re in that sweet spot where it’s not attainable through any healthy means, but we can keep you on a dieting hamster wheel for the rest of your life.
Now, what I don’t want for you to do is get an eating disorder. You know about Karen Carpenter? A tragedy. What I do want you to do is eat like a person with an eating disorder for as long as it takes to have a sweet little protruding clavicle, then stop. After that, I want you to eat like someone with disordered eating for the rest of your life. Can you do that? I know, it’s going to be hard. I bet you have friends who can just down a whole pizza and still have snatched waists, but it all just comes down to genetics, you know? And it’s my job to help you beat genetics and look shredded at the pool.
So what I have for you here are some handouts. Yes, they’re copies of copies of copies, and that’s why they’re so hard to read. You see here? It’s called the glycemic index. So here’s a meal that would be bad: roast chicken with carrots and potatoes. The chicken’s not so bad, but a lot of people don’t realize that carrots have more sugar than a lot of other vegetables. That’s right! I’m going to make you fixate on carrots. Shoot for carrots only once a month and potatoes only on leap day. A good swap would be this Lean Cuisine over here. Not the one with pasta! Say it with me: brown rice. Just a bit! Here’s a good trick for dessert: you take reduced-fat ricotta and mix in cocoa powder and as much Splenda as you want. Delicious!
The thing I really want you to take away is this, Alison: you only get one body. If it happens not to conform to a rigid set of aesthetic sensibilities that prize jutting hip bones above all else, it’s your responsibility to spend the rest of your life believing you are fundamentally unworthy of nourishment.
Okay, any questions for me? No? See you next year!