(I think yes, and not the way you think)

I’ll get straight to the point. None of us know, honestly, exactly how our nutrition impacts our bodies. Not to any detailed extent. We know some things, but there is so much disagreement out there that “know” is still a pretty strong term.

Many women have spent their lives since puberty trying to lose weight, and either succeeding only temporarily or failing altogether. I am one of those women. A history of failure, of perceived negative outcomes, reinforces itself over and over again. So when debt has piled up, it doesn’t feel all that much different than weight gain – it feels hopeless. It feels too late. And once it’s too late, what’s this piece of chocolate cake going to hurt?

The truth is, being better with our money takes work, just like treating our bodies better. I think this makes it harder for women who are already carrying the mental and emotional load for their household (see Fair Play by Eve Rodsky for all the dish on mental labor). Women like me are as responsible for earning money in their household as men. They’re also often the default parent, who gets all the calls from the school to leave early and pick up the kids when they’re sick, and gets them to doctors appointments – often causing us to dip out of work when our schedule for the day was already truncated. The fear of not making progress at work for all these reasons is so real for us.

On top of all that, guess what else impacts our income, possibly as much as those shortened hours or the need for “flexibility?” I’ll give you two guesses, but you’ll only need one. It’s weight. It’s how much we freaking weigh on a scale. Thin women are perceived as more ambitious and more in control. Don’t we all think that, even though it’s absolutely wrong, doesn’t it still pop up from your subconscious? They can control themselves, their diet, their drinking – as far as we can see. They must be better, more of a presence, more able to command a room. They must have more confidence.

So here we are, in bodies that haven’t felt like ours since the kids came (even if you didn’t have kids – Perimenopause comes for us all). You can bet that many, many women, whether perceived as thin, fat or in between, are incredibly conscious of every food and drink they consume. Every snack that’s not a vegetable brings a twinge of guilt. Many women are tracking their diets and nutrition – either tracking calories, carbs, macros or microbiome changes. All this leads to even more decision fatigue. What do we do when we have decision fatigue? Things like overeat and overspend. It’s a vicious cycle.

Yes, it’s a vicious cycle. Yes, it sucks and it isn’t fair. And – we have to take ownership of it. No one is coming to fix this – but every single one of us can fix it for our damn selves.

I love to talk to women about their money. If you do too, I’m right here.