Food is Awesome. Dieting is Not.

I have been thinking about something for a long time and trying to figure out how to write about it.  I haven't decided yet, but this may be the first of a couple of posts about it simply because there is no shortage of things to say.  This is hard because it is about a touchy subject - one which I have battled my entire life and one which I have seen my daughters begin to question at a very young age.  I am, of course, speaking of the bane of most women's existence: their weight and the ever-present corollary, dieting.  Dieting has everything to do with food, of course (which is why you are reading about this on my FOOD blog). 

A couple of years ago, I was going through a box of my childhood things that my mother lovingly told me to, "get out of her house or it was going in the trash".  Pack-rat that I am and always have been, I wanted to look through the things that I deemed worthy at one time of saving for all eternity.  I came across a number of filled spiral notebooks, but one in particular caught my eye.  The shabby, partially used notebook contained a food diary that I started keeping when I was twelve or thirteen.  The entries were dated (so I technically could tell you exactly how old I was, but I am not writing this at home and I am feeling a little lazy, so you will just have to take my word for it) and I had written a goal at the front: "to lose 20 pounds".  Man, that 20 pounds has dogged me FOREVER, more than half my lif, in fact, and here - well, here was written proof of it.  I looked at my girlish handwriting and thought, "Jesus.  Have I been on a diet or between diets or thinking about a diet for almost my entire life?!"  The answer was an unequivocal, somewhat depressing and highly startling, "yes",

By the time I answered that simple question for myself, I had had two beautiful baby girls and had decided a short time prior that I needed to start investing in myself and in my health (i.e. to lose 20 pounds).  I was actually on a diet at the time of the notebook discovery - one that I got results with and still stand behind as being a healthy and well-rounded alternative to fad dieting, "The Best Life Diet" by Bob Greene, who was and maybe still is Oprah's personal trainer.  I drank the crap out of that kool-aid; my mother will likely accuse me of being obsessed with it almost to the point of developing an eating disorder.  I watched my food intake in an extreme way, to be sure, and I worked out daily, but was constantly frustrated that I did not see any results on the scale.  I went to a dietitian, I talked to every friend who would listen, I cried and complained and still, the scale did not budge.  That mythical 20 pounds clung to me like a whiny toddler and it seemed, that though I was doing everything right, I would never achieve the goal that I set for myself almost half a lifetime ago. 

So, I found that notebook and I thought about the kind of life I had made for myself.  I was making what I thought were positive changes in my life, like incorporating exercise and choosing better food for my body, but I turned those changes into an obsession of epic proportions.  My 20 pounds lamentation became the focus of not only conversations with my friends, most often occurring at the gym, but also of entire relationships seemingly built upon mutual commiseration about the inability to lose weight.  I realized that by obsessing about those 20 pounds, sticking rigidly to my diet and meticulously fulfilling the exercise regimen I had created for myself, I was eliminating the joys in my life.  I was snappish with my kids (more so than usual) and I sank into a depression fueled, in part, by my inability to enjoy anything (especially while anyone else was consuming a food/drink that I really wanted) that I eventually sought professional help to pull myself out of. 

That notebook made me realize that, regardless of what the scale says, I want to enjoy my life and I want to have a healthy enjoyment of my food.  I won't say that I don't think about losing weight now, because I do (especially since I need to lose a couple of pounds to fit into some clothes that haven't fit properly since I had my son two years ago).  I won't say that calorie counts or fat grams don't occasionally come into consideration and I won't say that my exercise regimen is not intense for a specific purpose.  I will say that I eat what I want to eat and I do so without the guilt that frequently accompanied any kind of indulgence in the past.  I also exercise for stress relief and because I actually enjoy it.  I try to look at food as being the fuel my body needs to accomplish everything that I have to do in any given day.  Which is a lot.  I know that. (I had a conversation last night that made me realize that I kind of sound like a crazy person when I talk about everything that I do.)  So, it's not a perfect relationship with food and it is certainly an ever-evolving one, but I am trying to set a good example for my daughters (and eventually for my son as well).  Sometimes that works better than others, but I don't want them to experience the same epiphany that I had: realizing that so much time and energy was spent on something that sucked a lot of the fun out of my life.  Food is awesome.  Dieting is not. 

Author's (that's me!) Note: After writing all of this, I realize that this will at least be a part one of two, to come later this week.  My next post is going to be about battling all of these issues in my own life and mind, trying to set a good example for my kids and having it kind of blow up in my face.  Some conversations with my friends and with my children recently brought the issue to mind, so, if you like, look for my thoughts on that in the next couple of days.