Letting myself go

Somehow a thread about nutrition turned into a thread about calories and then someone said, “I just don’t want to let myself go.” 

I exited the app with those words in my head. “Letting myself go.” 

For some reason, I only hear this phrase from or about women, and it always has to do with whether or not they’ve gained weight. Obviously it's full of problematic assumptions: thin is better (not automatically), fat equals unhealthy (so not true), fat equals lazy (almost never), and that it’s somehow part of the job description that you automatically have if you are a woman in this world. It’s not even unspoken. We’re supposed to not “let ourselves go.” 

And instead of walking through this world and enjoying the bounty of it, we’re not supposed to let ourselves go to the dessert counter. We’re not supposed to let ourselves go exploring who we are and what we really want to do. We’re not supposed to let ourselves go above a certain calorie count, never mind that research shows that restricted…