I muffled my sobs with a pillow so my family couldn’t hear me from the adjacent room. I was nineteen and we were in Paris, staying on the top floor of an old six‑story walkup where every step echoed through the thin walls. I was struggling to conceal the emotional war I had entered into against my own body. Who decides to wage such a conflict on a family vacation—especially one in Europe?
I ran my tear‑stained hair from my cheeks and stood before a full‑length mirror, gripping the fat of my thighs. If only I could just – I imagined tearing off handfuls of my own body and throwing them toward strangers, sending them to the streets of France below. This was the recurring fantasy: plucking pieces of myself and disposing of them far away.
Throughout my teens and twenties, eating existed as either a shameful indulgence or a rigid strategy designed to control my form. In high school I downed thirty‑two ounces of iced green tea each morning, convinced the ritual would melt away abdominal fat as Instagram promised. Working at a deli one summer, I consumed two bagel sandwiches per shift until a coworker remarked that I was consuming the carb load equal to ten slices of bread. That habit vanished entirely. In college I forced myself to swallow a whole can of tuna before dawn weightlifting sessions, and earlier as a young adult I experimented with intermittent fasting, skipping meals from eight p.m. until noon the following day.
Then came the moment everything shifted: I killed my own dinner, and nothing remained the same.
Five years after traveling together in Paris, I sat at my dining table in Belgrade, Montana, and ate the first bite of a venison I had personally hunted—a white‑tailed deer I brought home from a hunt five years prior.
That initial taste of the meat required a lit stick of dynamite to match the complexity of emotions I would later feel toward this dinner. Regret proved the least fitting response; reducing the animal’s sacrifice to waste felt wrong, and gluttony was certainly off the table. I wanted the meat itself, in its rare scarcity, to endure forever.
My relationship with food traced back to my father, who annually hunted deer and elk to stock our freezer. At twenty‑four, holding a Master’s degree and seeking adventure in the mountains, I joined the team behind MeatEater—a hunting media brand rooted in Steven Rinella’s nationally syndicated series. After shifting to Netflix in eighteen twenty, the platform experienced a massive viewer surge during the pandemic, attracting vegans, outdoor newcomers, and overwhelmed suburban families torn between ethical choices and conventional norms.
By march four thousand twenty, a pound of ground beef jumped from three dollars to nearly seven dollars—78 percent higher than pre‑pandemic averages. Simultaneously, hunting and conservation inspired became genuinely personal. In fall two thousand twenty‑one, I took my father’s advice and guided him to Wyoming for my first deer hunt. With his tag for a white‑tailed doe already secured, I stepped onto the pasture and scored the carcass at two hundred eighty‑four yards, the bullet passing fully through both lungs in a quick, ethical kill. His breath caught as the game staggered.*
The doe was heavy with fat, wrapping her kidneys and cushioning her abdomen, and had become waxy and stiff in the cold—perfectly suited for enduring a harsh Wyoming winter. I knelt beside her, trembling, crying, and apologizing. My guide, a family friend I’d known since infancy, taught me how to field‑dress her still‑warm body. |
The paradox struck me mid‑gaping: I had spent years obsessively counting calories, tracking macro ratios, and punishing my appetite. Yet that deer had carried more literal fat than any gym regimen could provide. In that moment, the sheer ease of survival embodied in its flesh revealed how futile my human striving was compared to nature’s effortless adaptation.
The statistics reflect how bad it is to be perceived as having a deviant, or not ideal, body in today’s society
Dr. Hannah Carl, a psychologist based in Chicago who specializes in treating individuals with eating disorders, observes the psychological turmoil born from a relationship riven with food. She points to several contributors to this disorder:
“We are so disconnected from the process of procuring food,” Carl explains. “There is that particular moment at the grocery store when a cashier scans my red bell pepper—priced at three dollars— and I suddenly feel horrifying responsibility for travel, distance, and labor. That realization turns food consumption into a moral question, yet most occasions feel perfunctory.”
This tension is amplified by systemic inequality. In nations where roughly forty‑seven million people face chronic food insecurity, the notion of worrying about “cheats” appears counterintuitive. Dining out often carries hidden judgments: dishes described as “too sweet,” desserts labeled an act of “cheating,” or the dreaded phrase “can you really resist?” Each choice invites self‑condemnation disguised as virtue.
Ironically, despite widespread focus on caloric awareness, decades of research have repeatedly disproven the simplest assumption: “eat until you are thinner equals losing weight on the scale.” When counselors explain this to women, responses are typically mockery.
Wild populations demonstrate what humans have ignored for too long: seasonal mass variation is not a flaw but a survival mechanism. Animals such as deer consume calorie‑dense forage throughout spring, summer, and autumn, hoarding energy reserves that sustain them through lean winter months when few plants remain edible. Meanwhile, humanity imposes artificial expectations that weight must remain uniformly low, weaponizing body size as a proxy for worth.
These dynamics produce severe public harm. A study featured in the article reports that forty‑three hundred eighty‑three surveyed participants—predominantly women—would forgo a single year of life to avoid being classified as obese, and an additional fifteen percent would trade a decade for the same outcome. The findings underscore the toxic toll of stigmatizing differing bodies, Loehnen writes, adding that parental grief finds solace elsewhere because facing such perceptions feels intolerably difficult.
Beyond the documented stigma, newer prohibitions now arise: when weight loss becomes palpably severe, relatives sometimes learn to suppress comments out of social obligation. We grapple with the dilemma of honoring autonomy while avoiding accusations of insensitivity or fear of alienation. Is the well‑meaning silence of friends a protective gesture, or does it inadvertently silence a cry for help?
Perhaps the answer lies in reshaping how societies view physical forms altogether. What if we examined biological tissue through the same lens as my first deer carcass—seeing adipose as evidence of vitality rather than excess? If weight were interpreted as marking physiological health and seasonal transition instead of personal failure, the distinction between hazardous overeating and benign underweight would sharpen dramatically.
For me, this reframing arrived through hunting itself. The successful slaughter of game reminded me that mortality is universal, regardless of silhouette or number on a scale. Later that evening, recalling the deer’s lean muscle—a stark reminder of fragility—I wondered whether the boundary between a healthy, happy marriage and the preservation of muscular tissue matters at all—only insofar as it reflects how we choose to exist.
Our mortality is inevitable; the brief span of consciousness forces us to confront our priorities. No matter how intensely I strive to appear sculpted or achieve prescribed measures of slimness, no future era will allow me to remain untouched—the same biological aggregate of protein, fat, calcium, and water as the creature I once pursued. In that final moment, if someone were to remove my skin and examine what I composed, I would wish they recognized that my demise would never have gone unnoticed.
I muffled my sobs with a pillow so my family couldn’t hear me from the adjacent room. I was nineteen and we were in Paris, staying on the top floor of an old six‑story walkup where every step echoed through the thin walls. I was struggling to conceal the emotional war I had entered into against my own body. Who decides to wage such a conflict on a family vacation—especially one in Europe?
Gripping my thighs in front of a mirror, I imagined ripping off handfuls of my own flesh and tossing them toward strangers in the city beneath. That fantasy haunted me often—a vision of spilling fragments far from comfort.
Over my formative years, nourishment oscillated between reckless indulgence and calculated restriction. During high school I gulped a twelve‑ounce cup of cold green tea each morning, believing it would incinerate belly fat according to online promises. At a local deli, my friend joked that I was chewing the equivalent of ten slices of bread per shift. Those bagels disappeared instantly. College demanded I swallow a whole can of tuna before sunrise weightlifting sessions, and in youthful years I tried intermittent fasting—skipping all calories from eight p.m. onward until noon the next day.
When I finally pushed past self‑image, I turned to honest labor. Five years after that Paris getaway, I reclined at my kitchen table in Belgrade, Montana, savoring the first mouthful of venison from the white‑tailed deer I had freshly slain.
Every bite felt like a conversation with gravity, a reminder that sustenance can be earned rather than merely purchased. Reducing that animal’s sacrifice to waste seemed monstrous; greed was obviously unacceptable. I wanted the meat as a durable treasure, alive in its thinning flesh.
My relationship with nourishment sprang from my father, who each winter trekked afar to bring back venison and elk for our pantry. At twenty‑four, equipped with a graduate degree and eager for mountain adventures, I partnered with MeatEater—a hunting media collective anchored by Stephen Rinella’s long‑run series on the Sportsman network. When streaming moved online in eighteen twenty, the brand seized renewed audiences during a period when ethicists and anxious parents alike grappled with spiraling meat prices.
By spring four thousand twenty, a pound of ground beef leapt from three dollars to almost seven dollars—eighty‑eight percent above pre‑pandemic price levels. Simultaneously, enthusiasm for hunting, grounded in growing ecological awareness about overhunting and conservation was becoming personally relevant. Last October‑and‑November, I accompanied my father to Wyoming to take my first guiding excursion, hunting my first white‑tailed doe with her parent. Armed with a valid harvest tag, I stepped off the trail and struck the animal at two hundred eighty‑four meters, a shot that penetrated cleanly through both lung organs, delivering an efficient kill that preserved the game’s integrity.
Her physique was opulent, covered in a thick layer of fat that encrusted her kidneys and padded her belly. In the cold air, that adipose slowly crystallized like crumbled bar soap—ready to weather a long Wyoming winter.
In that instant of tenderness, I understood the impossibility of my relentless pursuit. The deer moved gracefully forward; I was driven by compulsion and cultural conditioning. And yet the creature lived a life defined by abundant calories and seasonal shedding, not by static symmetry.
That revelation clarified why my relentless cardio regimens and dietary vigilance had proven futile—or perhaps, ironically, insufficient—when measured against the primal rhythms of nature.
The tragedy of self‑imposed starvation became stark when I sliced open my own dinner. Regrettingly, I failed to see the connection between the animal’s vitality and my own body discord.
Dr. Hannah Carl, a Chicago‑based psychologist specializing in eating disturbances, shares insights about the mechanisms behind such cycles. She locates roots in fragmented ties to food’s origins:
“Connection breaks when procurement turns abstract. Consider that moment at the market when a scanner flashes over a red pepper priced at three dollars—suddenly, far‑traveled agricultural labor and transportation weight with each purchase, prompting a gut‑crawling sense of guilt.”
This estrangement is disproportionately felt in communities where food insecurity affects about forty‑seven million people. For them, worry over sugar versus starch reads as absurdity; choosing a dish laced with gluten invites judgment about discipline and morality even when the intention is purely sensory pleasure.
Paradoxically, Western beauty paradigms demand perpetual refinement, even as societies publicly condemn extremes of size. High‑earning professionals accustomed to curating perfect frames now navigate complex pressures: they are urged to “be mindful” of occasional treats, yet simultaneously restrained from acknowledging deficits that invite pity.
Decades of nutritional discourse have repeatedly undermined core assumptions. Clinical experts affirm that the simple arithmetic—calories in equalling calories out—is neither actionable nor supported by empirical evidence. When educators try to persuade women that metabolic balance translates directly into scale readings, responses consistently dismiss such claims as unscientific folly.
Consider wild fauna: deer and similar species rely on seasonal feast tables to build reserves for winter scarcity. Their masses swell and recede naturally, governed by environmental cues rather than arbitrary aesthetic metrics. Human attempts to flatten these ebb and flow patterns reveal deeper ingrained beliefs—too late, too shallow understandings of endurance.
While scientific literature documents the deleterious effects of weight stigma, emerging taboos now target observations of pronounced weight decline. Even when loss appears extreme, family members may receive counsel to keep silent, paralyzed by fears of causing offense or imposing judgment. We wrestle with the ethics of honoring autonomy without enabling harmful silence—however noble the intent.
A radical alternative emerges: imagine approaching inhabited bodies like I viewed my first deer, seeing fat as tangible proof of existence and prosperity. If society acknowledged shifting body condition as markers of thriving rather than brokenness, what would become clearer about the boundary between healthful flexibility and pathological rigidity?
Hunting has continually reinforced this perspective, extending beyond culinary rewards to force introspection on our ultimate finitude. Life remains transient; regardless of daily battles with diet or aesthetics, our eventual dismantling resembles nothing more than the careful butchering of game—remarkable that it doesn’t lead to starvation.
Should that day arrive, I would hope any observer who removed my skin would recognize not just the components of muscle and organ, but the acknowledgment of a soul that once resisted its own limits. My brief existence offered a humbling lesson: all creatures—whether standing tall before a meal or prowling open fields—inherit vulnerability awaiting its end.
