I Once Did What Rachel Did
This book has something similar to what I once did. I know the context is pretty different between my experience with calorie counting and Rachel’s — the protagonist — experience. But the overall obsession, the guilt, and the shame feel pretty similar.
It was when my daughter started eating solid that I began to obsess over calorie counting. It sounded like a crazy idea to me at first. But as our doctor suggested it, I couldn’t stop myself and began absorbed in this idea and made it as our daily routine. To be frankly, it was tiring and almost made me lose my mind. Like really I cannot tell you enough how it was mentally draining. Not to mention that it was also damaging our mother-daughter bond. Also I started to hate my daughter, like it maybe was a self-defense mechanism kind of — as I was depleted, depressed and had no life beside being a crazy calorie counter mom.
Long story short, I stopped my calorie counting rituals. Instead, I learned how to teach my daughter to love food, enjoy it, and to listen to what her body needs. She’s now a 19-month-year old healthy and happy eater. Hopefully she carries this until she grows up so that she has a healthy relationship with food — eats whenever hungry and stops when full.
Along with my daughter’s learning process with eating and enjoying food, I learned tons! Furthermore, these issues have been grabbing my attention since then. And often I turned to books with related topics to learn more about this stuff.
Milk Fed: Dull and Cringy
And I chose Milk Fed because it offers me something to know more about eating disorder and how it’s caused. The story follows Rachel, a 24 year old Jewish girl, who made calorie restrictions. Her mother is what makes this regime a family tradition. And the part where Rachel recounts her binge-eating rituals in her childhood days points out that her mother is the reason why she has eating disorder.
She even believes she cannot be happy unless skinny. As she grows up, she becomes attached to her rituals: the less she eats the happier, always calorie counts before eating, she has scale on the go to check her weight, and she feels guilty whenever she has more than her daily regime would suggest.
Rachel goes to therapist hoping that her suffering would be at ease at some point. And when her therapist suggests Rachel to take a break from her mother, she does this accordingly. She cuts any form of communications with her. As the consequences, this makes her crave for affection and connection — and sure food more. She later finds herself directing this craving towards a form of sexual desire. She becomes attracted to an older woman — her boss. She fantasized her to be her sexual partner and such. But, when she meets Miriam, a younger Orthodox Jewish girl who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop, something deeper stirs Rachel’s soul.
Despite its claim to be funny, I found this quite the opposite. It’s cringy and dull and some lines seem to aim for philosophical purposes but just didn’t work. The writing style however makes the book is very easy to read, not to mention the short chapters that enables readers to hop on to the next faster– from 1 to 5 pages only. But, I still found it lacking elaborations between the issues it carries. Additionally, it’s full of sex scenes which in some parts unnecessary.
I know that maybe Broder wants this book to be a light reading carrying heavy themes: eating disorder & self-discovery. But I think she needs to explore more to engage these topics and not to focus mainly on the sex scenes.
Also, one more to add, why is this book called Milk Fed anyway?
3/5★
