I was reading HuffPo, as I do from time to time, when I came across a title that struck my fancy: It’s Cool To Be Healthy Again. The title pretty much sums up what the articles says, so you can read it or not read it, but you’ll basically come to the same conclusion.
I wonder, however, was it ever “uncool” to be healthy? Was there a time in life when I looked at someone eating a turkey sandwich and said to myself “puh-leez, I would never be caught dead eating roast turkey breast on whole wheat with mustard.” I’m thinking no, actually I have caught myself on occasion being jealous of friends embarking on diets. Why is that?
It must have something to do with the hope and promise each new diet holds within it’s grasps before the guilt sets in and the choice between the gym and happy hour starts weighing heavily on our minds. Or perhaps it’s the seeming self-control of the dieter in question who so brazenly passes on the bread basket.
Diets, are something I have given up on. I eat less sometimes, more sometimes, exercise an hour or two more when my weight starts creeping up again (as I’m currently trying to counter), but no more do I feel any particular need to find the diet that will fix me. I am not broken, I just like food.
At the end of the day, a milkshake is just a milkshake and a carrot is just a carrot. Neither mean you any harm, neither have a vendetta against your thighs, they’re just things…they’re just food. I may hate Rachael Ray, but I do like one thing that she says “I don’t associate food with guilt.”
All of this is completely true, yet when a friend utters those four little words to me, I get this twinge of jealousy, of comparison. When did a diet become something to aspire to? When did dieting become something that gets a gold star? Deep down inside I sort of believe that diets make people fatter than they were to start out with, it’s not the food, it’s the guilt. I was recently comparing dieting and budgeting to a friend who had spent a lot of money in one night, “budgeting is like dieting, you can only deprive yourself for so long, until you just can’t anymore.”
Depriving ourselves is not normal, and deep down in my soul the word diet, makes me panic. All of a sudden foods I had previously no interest in eating pop into mind (all. the. time.), “What if I never get the chance to eat an entire salami again.” Why in gods name would I want to eat an entire salami, I wouldn’t, but just the word diet makes me feel like I do. So, why do I randomly have pangs of longing for this prescribed insanity?
Who knows, but as things stand now, I’m still not dieting, I’m just eating food, because that’s all it is…food. It has always been cool to be healthy, but let’s remember that healthy includes more than the number on our pants.
Filed under: Body Love, DIET is a 4-letter word | Tagged: Diet, Fitness, Health
After moving to the US I gained a lot of weight back, which I had lost 2 years ago – by eating healthy and working out a whole lot (I have to add that when I initially lost a lot of weight, I still was far from my goal).
Anyway, I tried a lot of different “diets” to lose the weight again. I tried out the no carbs, I tried the “eat healthy 4 days a week and eat what you want the other three”, I tried having slim fast shakes for breakfast (which makes me hungry again two hours later, how do people live on those things?) I tried to cut out dairy and meat and everything processed, …
And none of those things worked for me. Now these “diets” work for a lot of people – especially cutting out carbs but for me, the only thing that works is making sure (almost) everything I eat is nutritionally valuable, that I track everything I eat, calculate my calories and do some kind of exercise almost every day.
I feel like I have two different people living inside of me – the one who totally doesn’t care what she eats and wants to try every food which looks interesting and the other one who is obsessed with healthy food, nutritional value, getting my “5 of the day” in and working out. The big challenge is keeping the second person to stay.
I agree, about the two sides. I have to say sometimes it’s refreshing when my food connoisseur takes over and I don’t think about calories or fat or working out and just enjoy food with abandon, it’s kind of nice-I just don’t want her to move in and take over permanently. I think we need both sides or we go overboard in either direction.
This book seriously rocks my face off. The idea of Health At Every Size is a godsend – the idea that you can be healthy and not have to worry about being an effin’ size 2 is so liberating. I mean, for some of us, you can eat as healthy as every stupid women’s magazine says you should, exercise an hour a day, and STILL not ever be a size 2. Or a 4. Or even a 10! And it’s like, cool. Whatever.
At the same time, it’s also good to remember that “health” is totally relative; someone who is capable of running 10 miles a day and has enough money to eat “healthfully” has a very different concept of health than someone who is physically incapable of doing any sort of strenuous exercise, or has limited access to fresh produce and healthier foods, etc. It’s all relative. This is why diets piss me off so much.
Amy-thanks for the recommendation! I haven’t read Kate Harding’s book yet, but I do have her blog on my feed and try to keep up with her writing there.
In other book recommendatiosns-I totally recommend Rethinking thin. It really brings home the point that much of our weight is genetic and that there’s usually a 10 lb difference in either direction that our bodies can exist happily in, but any lower or higher and our bodies will fight like mad to get back to their set point. Of course Gina Kolata says it much better than I-it’s an amazing read.
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