24. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter 24
Leslie
B y the time I pulled into Dot’s driveway, I was near bursting to get in front of the camera. Alone in the car, I’d recited my video content ten times through, refining it slightly with each retelling to focus the message just right. Anyone who thought the videos they saw online were done in one take were sadly mistaken.
Looking natural and polished took practice. Knowing your stuff cold took time, and I was nowhere near the expert Dot, Tasha, or Dr. Wheaton were. But I was getting to be a knowledgeable amateur.
Dot sat in the living room as I traipsed by lugging video gear. “Don’t mind me…”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Live stream. Mind if I set up in the breakfast nook? I scheduled an episode for this afternoon. Viraj wants to be sure the team at The Kaelen Reed Show remembers why they hired me.”
“If he’s as much of a fraud as you say, why do you want to be associated with him?” Dot asked.
I heaved my camera bag onto the table while composing my thoughts. “The Saturday job keeps me on-air but away from Reed. I won’t need to be on-set with him, since I’ll be on every Saturday. We’ll cross paths during production meetings, but I’m hoping for less alone time with him than we’ve had lately.”
Funny how I went from swooning over Reed to avoiding the narcissistic anchor. We hadn’t spoken since our last exchange after his show, and I was glad for it. I’d face him eventually, and he’d give me an earful for being away so long. He might view it as disloyal and find some way to wiggle out of my contract. While a powerful force at the network, Reed didn’t have complete control over my hiring. The network ran all kinds of viewer surveys before offering me the job. I scored well enough with both men and women to secure my spot.
“Mind if I sit and watch?” Not waiting for an answer, Dot slid out a chair on the far end of the table from where I was setting up. I didn’t love her sitting so close, but it was her house. I’d had scores of crew members around me at the network, so I could survive one pair of eyes. Albeit these were knowing, wise ones, and I feared she’d pipe in to correct me if I misspoke.
“Sure, but… remember I’m new to all this eating disorder and Healthy Bodies stuff. If I say something wrong, file it away and tell me after?”
Dot pulsed a brow and buried her face in her oversized tea mug. I’d seen that expression before. Usually it came right before she throttled someone. A wisecracking teenager she encountered at the supermarket, or one of Gabby’s high school boyfriends, who had the nerve to say her daughter wasn’t smart enough to learn Japanese within earshot of her mom.
People like them didn’t stand a chance.
The ache in my bones told me I was about to be on the receiving end of something fierce, but I had no time to address it now.
I assembled my umbrella lighting and slipped on the diffusing screen before standing it on the floor next to the table. The tabletop camera tripod sat behind my laptop, then I plugged all the equipment into the wall jack nearby. Luckily, Dot’s ground-floor outlets all had USB ports, and I used one for my phone. Sometimes people I knew sent helpful text messages, and it was easier to manage chat questions on a separate device. Notes handy, I settled down with a glass of water in case I had a coughing fit or my mouth went dry.
The kitchen clock ticked down until it was time for me to launch the live session. I blew out a cleansing breath and began.
“Hello, hello! Leslie Allen here. It’s been a minute, but I wanted to give you an insider view of my new investigation. Thanks for all the love with my streetwalker series. Your support meant so much and helped bring attention to a group of women whose stories deserved a spotlight. They were thrilled by the exposure and the City is looking to tighten the noose on those who would take advantage of these vulnerable people. Next up is the diet industry.”
I took in the space, remembering the women who had sat not 20 feet away during Aunt Dot’s meeting, baring their souls. Together, they struggled against the stigmas of weight and the fervent societal dictates to live one way: thin or bust.
Their fight was now mine.
I focused my attention straight at the lens. “I’m here at my aunt’s house for a while, and her work introduced me to the lies behind the diet industry. I’ve been interviewing experts and reading reputable research, and my mind is melting. This work helped me recognize my own disordered eating. I’ve seen doctors, had some medical tests, and have begun a journey to recover my health. It’s a battle too many people face because of a society hell-bent on keeping us afraid of being fat. Here are a few facts you might’ve never heard before.
“Dieting is a waste of time because we are hardwired to fight attempts to shift our weight too far away from our set point. That’s the natural weight our bodies want to be, and it’s different for everyone. Dieting changes our metabolism, since our systems think we’re going into starvation mode. To counteract what it views as a threat to our health, our bodies crank up powerful hunger drives. Rather than a sign of a weak mind, food cravings while dieting are actually our body’s way of screaming for the food we need to survive.”
This all made so much sense. Yet I’d ignored my internal messages for so long that they no longer registered. A lump formed in my throat, but I pressed on.
“When we repeatedly diet, our bodies chemically change and make us more resistant to future attempts to lose weight. After each diet, our system fights back, which only leaves us heavier at the end. But the tragedy of it all is that being heavy was never the problem. The act of dieting is what makes people less healthy.”
I covered all the data about BMI and the farce behind thinner being better and healthier. The longer I spoke, the higher the attendee ticker climbed. First past 100, then 1,000, then nearly 20,000. My heart pounded to the point of distraction, but I kept going. I knew a lot of media industry professionals followed my channel and could almost hear their dismissive whispers about my content. They were like me, before I learned the truth.
Keeping my audience in mind, I covered the studies sponsored by food manufacturers and diet companies reinforcing the need to lose weight—and consume their products.
Next came the medical establishment’s disgraceful suppression of large-scale studies, showing overweight and obese people lived longer than underweight and normal weight people. Then I dropped in the Minnesota study, which starved soldiers at a calorie count nearly equal to what the USDA recommended as the ideal diet. The evidence was so overwhelming, my anger boiled over.
“Shit, people! Don’t you see? Dieting is all such fucking bullshit! All of it. We’ve been lied to for decades; some lies go back longer. It’s left us feeling like crap and chasing an impossible standard most of us were never meant to attain.” My chest heaved, so I leaned on the table in front of me to steady myself. I’d completely forgotten that Dot was there, and when I looked at her, she was crying. Tension knotted my throat, so I sipped water while trying to compose myself.
“Sorry, folks. It’s just… I’ve struggled with my weight for a really long time. Since childhood, and it was all such a fucking waste. All the holidays and dinner parties I missed because I was afraid to be near food. All the nights I worked myself to the bone to avoid being overwhelmed by hunger at mealtimes. The room would spin, I was so dizzy, yet I pretended I didn’t know the cause was starvation. I’m constantly cold and I haven’t had a regular period, I don’t think ever. This lie, this obsession we have with thinness, is putting people’s lives at risk.”
Tears streamed down my face, and I let them. All the pain I’d kept locked away like a shameful secret flooded out of me. The deceit, including my own, was too much to bear. How had I become someone who cried live on YouTube? Yet here I was with the viewer count ticking up past a number too big to fathom through my watery vision. Numb, I sat, a blubbering mess, wondering what to tell these people next. I couldn’t be further from the polished expert I was supposed to be.
“So what do we do now?” Dot asked.
“Huh?” I said, wiping my tears away with my wrists.
“What do we do now? Now that we know the truth?”
Only one thing popped to mind, and it filled me with such joy that I could barely contain my excitement. “We eat.”
By the time I wrapped an hour and a half later, I’d answered as many of the 12,000 questions as I could and promised to answer more on Dear Diary —and on my next live stream. Some comments were fantastic, pointing me to new experts worth consulting. Maybe even on-air. Others were loving, supportive, and thankful. There were angry crackpots in the mix too, but love won the day.
I slumped in my chair, exhausted, as Dot broke her silence.
“That, my dear, was something special. Thank you. I never thought you would take my work seriously, given your history…” Her voice trailed off.
“Oh, you mean because I’ve had undiagnosed anorexia? That little thing?” I joked.
“But now you know there’s a path back. You can get healthier, and I’m so grateful you never collapsed in a dangerous place.”
My mind flew right to Risto. Had that caused his anxiety about my work? The prospect of me running myself so ragged I’d die? Or collapse on a foolhardy mission and end up dumped in the Hudson River, never to be heard from again?
He’d never said as much.
He’d never once asked me if I had an eating disorder.
Nobody did.
Actually, that’s not right.
Everyone had, in their own way, except my mom.
They encouraged me to eat more, take care of myself, go for a checkup. Plan a vacation, rest. Refuel. Recharge. Gain my strength. Hell, Barbara admitted to over-ordering takeout just to fill my fridge. Weren’t those all coded ways to suggest I needed help?
Yes. But I resisted.
I reveled in praise from people about my lean appearance. I fooled myself that those positive moments proved I was okay, using them to offset the concern from those who knew and loved me.
My answer was always the same: “I’m fine.” Somehow I ate just enough to keep from collapsing, then planned regular dinners with girlfriends as sustenance hits that’d last for days.
Shit.
Almost every time I had a big undercover gig, I met the girls for dinner beforehand. Was that my way of eating without acknowledging how much I craved it in between? God, I was sick. But less sick than before. Step by step, I slowly moved in the right direction.
Opening up to family and friends.
Seeing the therapist.
Following my meal plan and eating multiple times a day.
The pit I’d dug for myself grew shallower and the sunshine got brighter, its warmth dancing on my skin.
Pans clinked in the kitchen as Dot set about preparing dinner. I meandered over, resting my head on her shoulder.
She kissed my cheek. “Everything will be all right.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. You’re on a long and difficult journey. What you did today will help a lot of people. Beginning with yourself.”
Across the room, my cell lit up with an incoming call. It felt so cozy and safe here in Dot’s kitchen that I forgot my show live streamed to a shit-ton of viewers. My caller was probably among them.
I jogged over to grab it before the call went to voicemail.
“Leslie! That was amazing. Scary, but amazing. Are you okay?” Rebecca asked, breathless.
“Yeah. I feel like I’ve been run over by a semi, but other than that, I’m ducky.” I chuckled, dropping into the chair Dot had abandoned to start dinner.
“We linked to your stream from the homepage of Dear Diary , so it got a lot of traction. We also blasted it out on our social channels. How many people watched?”
I hadn’t even looked. At some point, I’d gone from doing a live show to sitting in a confessional. I usually viewed my videos afterward to critique them, looking for ways to improve. But this was different. I would never watch that episode again.
“Hold on. Viraj is here grabbing for the phone.” Rebecca passed her cell to Viraj.
“I said to go live,” he said. “But you detonated a weapon.”
I couldn’t tell if he was mad. “I’m sorry if I—”
“No, don’t be sorry! It worked. The network is calling, as are nine other outlets. They want you on. Texts are arriving every millisecond. I usually handle all the bookings for you, but we’ll get one of the interns in to manage it. It’s going to be a lot. That is, if you’re interested.”
Did I want to interrupt my treatment to become the story? No. Diet culture and the pain it caused should be the focus, not me.
“Let’s keep them hungry. If I don’t do press interviews, they’ll come back to our channels for updates. Less is more?”
Viraj, Rebecca, and I decided to turn down all media requests. Instead, I planned a series of live streams and articles.
Dot’s waving arms drew my attention. As did the places set at the kitchen counter.
“Sorry, folks. I’ve got to go. It’s time to eat.”