Peach Friedman
author, educator & trainer
intuitive fitness for women

Do you ever spy on people in line at the grocery store? I do this all the time, maybe some leftover fascination with food, but I’m always curious about what other people are buying.

My husband and I have just started taking our darling little premie (now nearly 15 weeks old!) out and about in the world, and she went on her first big adventure to Costco the other night so that we could stock up on diapers, paper products, and cheese (yes, we go to Costco for cheese).

I’ve been going through so much transformation lately with adjusting to being a mom. Some days I feel tired, old, haggard, even. It’s a lot of work to care for a new baby around the clock! So standing there in line with my little family, I spaced out admiring the young, fresh looking girl in line ahead of us.

She’s so cute!, I said to my husband. Sort of reminds me of my life before you and Victoria. Look, she’s in her workout clothes…she went to the gym after work and is shopping now, probably gonna go home and have tuna fish and cookies for dinner, talk on the phone and be asleep by 11.

And then I drifted down memory lane, reminiscing about when I lived in Palo Alto in my little studio apartment the year I dated my husband. I had finished grad school, was personal training full-time, and ate almost all my meals alone. My kitchen was always full of random snacks and ingredients–my favorite things–not necessarily geared toward meal prep or feeding anyone’s but my own particular desires. I remember eating late dinners that year, after training my last client, sitting on the floor, propped up against my bed, munching on chicken nuggets and broccoli for dinner. Or cereal with a side of crackers and cheese. Or grapes and a sandwich. Whatever was in the house, whatever I felt like eating.

So there I was in Costco, fantasizing about my past and how simple it used to be. Admiring this young woman in front of us and thinking that dangerous thought, She’s got it all–the energetic, mid-twenties single life. I bet she’s so happy. And then I looked closer at her grocery cart, past the kitty litter and the soymilk, past the granola, apples, and tub of yogurt. And saw it: the jumbo sized box of diet pills.

So easy it is to romanticize other people’s lives. For me, a tired new mom, to look at the single girl in front of me and think she’s happy. But just looking a little bit closer, I felt suddenly so sad. She isn’t any happier than anyone else. She is trapped and tricked by the same messages of inadequacy that most American women fall prey to. She wishes she was thinner.