Chapter 2

I know me enough to know that when my manager said something off-the-cuff, the statement would continue to stick with me. I was now into my fourth week working as a barista and I was assigned to what would become my most triggering, yes, but most favorite position – “warming” – placing baked goods and café sandwiches in the oven. When there were no orders in the queue, I busied myself with restocking the food cart and fridge beneath the oven with items from the back stock. I would walk all of a yard through the swinging doors to the backroom, carrying in my hands as much as I could carry before making another inevitable trip. “You could just roll the entire cart out instead of carrying them, “ my manager said before adding, “unless of course you’re trying to get more steps in.” The thought had not occurred to me. But at that moment, it seared my soul. I knew that I was not intentionally doing enough to get my steps in, alluding to the belief that 10,000 steps a day is equivalent to eating an apple, and as the saying goes, keeping a doctor away. I didn’t own a fitness tracker wristband like so many did.

The simple act of a walk jogged too many memories of me almost collapsing. Too many memories of hours spent on foot, intentionally and checking the phone’s health app only to see that I had clocked at least 17,000 steps. Born in New York City and raised in the humble borough of Queens, walking was my primary means of transportation. I walked with ease to a department store geographically situated in Long Island. I walked to the pizzeria on the corner, the pharmacy a few blocks down, and the post office not far after it. I walked to temple and the bus stop that would ferry me further into the heart of Queens where I attended school. Growing up in the boroughs meant attending not the school that was closest, and instead going to the one you were academically admitted to, which could be miles and a small body of water away.

I never thought about the concept of steps or the Generation Z-bestowed “hot girl walk,” which transformed a form of mobility for leisure and practical function into a workout. I never believed that my own mother would consider walking from my car and into a grocery store, a form of valid formal movement equivalent to exercise. I never believed that I would even own a car until I moved to Long Island and it was all but mandated. A trip to the supermarket would make a 5-minute car ride an almost hour-long walk. Walking had become taboo in my household because it was the primary means by which I lost 10 pounds, then 20, 30, 40, and 50 before my body began shutting down.

Certainly, walking was not the sole form of my rapid deterioration. I had also stopped eating. I wrote a list of foods to eliminate from my diet that I would add to daily until I no longer needed the list. It was no longer cutting out my favorite foods that largely were made up of the Puerto Rican and Punjabi delicacies from my parents’ heritages. It was I cutting out most everything. Furthermore, my restricting food predated the list’s conception, which occurred in graduate school. Not eating and walking were my two primary forms of coping with stressful situations, I would later learn.  

When I was 16 years old, I was admitted to Harvard University’s summer school for high school students who could enroll in college courses for credit. I still remember opening my email on a Compaq computer. My face was an inch away from the screen so that the letters seemed to quiver. It read:

“Dear Ms. Reshmi Oberoi:

Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to the Harvard Summer School Secondary School Program.” The letters started to dance, no doubt due to the tears that welled up. I was shaking. I was gushing. I was Rory Gilmore and well on my way to making an Ivy League degree a real possibility. With my parents’ modest educational backgrounds, this admittance seemed to be the pinnacle of success. My first day there, I was welcomed with a denim cap emblazoned with “Harvard” and a sweatshirt blanket embroidered with the university’s emblematic crest. The hospitality did nothing to quell my anxiety at staying with roommates who seemed a good deal worldlier than I. My heart sunk into the pit of my stomach upon my parent’s departure. I was homesick at sixteen, and it was my first taste of not freedom, but instead, imprisonment in my body and mind. I was depressed. I cried everyday from morning till evening but refused to leave the ivy covered iron wrought gates of the Ivy League. So I busied myself instead. I busied myself so much so that I stopped eating. My Limited Too brand khaki pants that had once fit snugly on my hips when I had left home had begun to cling sheepishly around my shrunken waist.

I did not intentionally neglect to eat. In contrast, I sought out food that my youthful self associated with comfort. Harvard crest-emblazoned waffles with crimson strawberry syrup from the dining hall were a favorite of mine. I also made sure to take the psychology students’ surveys to snag a bag of berry-flavored purple packaged Skittles as compensation. I also distinctly remember eating a thick parmesan-filled wrap from the campus Au Bon Pain, crying hysterically between chews, riddled with a blend of homesickness and hunger finally being sated. My parents were so concerned that I had nonchalantly not eaten meal after meal, day after day, that they called the resident advisor who took me out the very next day to an Indian restaurant to give me a taste of home. While I appreciated the gesture, I was further reminded at my distance from home, naïve at 16 years old, I had ordered the incorrect item and not only had lost my appetite even more, but did not enjoy the eating experience either. My parents then visited with a couple of weeks left to spare in the program and brought along a box of pignoli nut cookies, my favorite, from over a century-old east village bakery, Veniero’s. I consumed the contents of that box in its entirety that very same night.

While I had lost a little over ten pounds in the two months that I was away from home, I quickly recuperated and happily ate a meal from a fast food place on a rest stop driving back home to New York from Cambridge. That same summer, I restored the weight effortlessly, eating my favorites once again. It wasn’t even two years later before I started losing weight from not eating again. This time, I was 17 years old and it was the fall semester of my senior year in high school. I was overcome with anxiety about the college admissions process to such a degree that I was convinced I couldn’t swallow or breathe. Every time I ingested anything, even liquids, I felt there was a blockage in my throat. I went to the nurse’s office for the first time in my senior year where I sat and nibbled on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich my mother packed for me, to make sure I did not choke unsupervised. Little did anyone know that before this episode, I threw away my packed lunch daily for fear of weight gain. I also went to the Emergency Room where imaging of my esophagus yielded no blockages. Physicians suggested that it was all a figment of my imagination due to high levels of stress. They were correct. Once I had been admitted early decision to an Ivy League in early December, I celebrated by eating one of my favorite foods – bhel chaat – an Indian street food delicacy made up of cubed potatoes, fried pieces of dough, tangy mint and sweet tamarind chutneys, onions, and masala spices.

The next instance of starvation was rather deliberate and occurred the very next year, my first year of college at the University of Pennsylvania. Homesickness struck again. At first, I did not eat out of the absence of an appetite similar to the one I experienced while in Harvard. This absence of appetite did not negate the necessity of eating for survival and so I went to the dining hall with every intention of eating. What happened next was that I naively believed I could take food from only one station after I heard a dining hall cook tell some other freshmen that they took over their fair share of pasta. I found it horrifying to be told that I was glutton, dabbling in sin, so I took a sad amount of food in comparison to my peers and made due. Surviving on that amount, my reason for not eating evolved into one of anxiety and fear around gaining weight. Perhaps the restricted eating had aroused me some and starvation became euphoric in quality – almost ascetic-like – as if I achieved a high. I then systemically cut out all food, sometimes allowing myself half of a plain bagel with butter the entire day or a sleeve of butter crackers. Back then I did not discount food based on quality and nutritional information, but instead, the quantity.

As a barista in a weight restored body, ten years later after receiving my undergraduate degree, I heat up and dole out items I would never ingest, although I admittedly imagined ingesting them. Flaky butter croissants, crumbly scones, granulated sugar-strewn muffins, and chocolate brownies and cookies were all included. I soon found out that I was not the only employee who did not take advantage of the discounted food and beverage. My manager who was already intermittently fasting was also attempting a crash diet that was strongly leaning towards liquid-only. She proudly announced on the headset that she had lost 10 pounds. The weight loss – the number –reverberated in my ear. I had gained 5 times as much weight, and this fact stings more with each passing day. Everyone except I, clapped. One person noticed and called me out. I pretended not to be paying attention.

Whenever I mention the deep-rooted pain I feel at having gain weight, there follows scorn. I’m given a dose of tough love and coldly told that I could always go back – that I had the power of bringing into motion history repeating itself and that I could always starve myself again. The truth is, I cannot ever go back to walking over 20,000 steps a day and not eating a morsel of food. The tough love is more than that – its haunting.  

The truth is, even while in recovery – taking medication to manage compulsive behavior and systematically trading exercise for regular day-to-day movement for a sedentary lifestyle  - I’m still depriving myself. Unbeknownst to me, I had been practicing an Anna Wintour-like diet of two soft-boiled eggs and spinach for lunch everyday. The spinach wasn’t sautéed, and now, I have eliminated the spinach altogether.  Every morning I have my low-calorie high protein, high fiber cereal in a cup of flax milk fortified with more protein. For dinner, I have two eggs and chia seed flax crackers or an egg and two cauliflower-based low carb sandwich thins. I rely mostly on fruit to keep from going hungry, which I consumer after lunch and dinner. I portion and measure out everything I eat. There is a kitchen drawer I have set aside for myself, the contents of which include two sets of measuring spoons. I have a food scale in the pantry that I religiously turn off as soon as I use it so as to preserve the battery life for as long as possible.  

Ever since I began working as a barista a month ago, I have resorted to eating a single string cheese before my noon shift. I plan on systemically peeling the string cheese to elongate the eating experience while sitting in my car a few minutes before my shift today as well. The truth is, I want to change. I want to be able to bake banana bread and eat it too. I want to be freed from the numbers; however, there is no escaping my blouses and pants no longer fitting. I don’t need to know my weight to know that I gained again.