I love food. I love to cook it, order it, look at pictures of it, watch tv shows about it, read about it. Although, to qualify, I'm not a food snob. Alice Waters is one of my personal heroes, but then again, so is Dairy Queen. Good food, bad food, healthy food, organic food, carnival food, I don't care. You name it, if it tastes good, I'll eat it. Chocolate cake at the Ritz Carleton or funnel cakes at the fair, it's all delicious, as far as I'm concerned.
But lately, food has gotten...confusing. I've become torn - between counting points and weight watchers and whether it makes you eat when you’re not hungry and whether it’s really healthy, emotionally healthy even, to be on a diet of baby carrots and sugar free fat free jello or whether I should just count calories or whether I should just give up and eat delicious homemade healthy organic soup and cheese scones EVEN if the soup is full of peanut butter and the scone is full of, well, cheese. It reminds me of the saying "Never trust a skinny cook." Surely loving and appreciating good food doesn't automatically make you fat? Right?
I suspect that there is a balance in there, but my brain is really bad at balancing. My brain is a confused, muddley brain, where ideas float to the surface and then drift away. I would love to be a normal person who can eat healthy nutty soup even if it is filled with fat and who wouldn’t put the chemicals in fat free jello in her body but to me being a normal person means being fat. Maybe the thing that scares me is that the only thing that’s ever worked for me is either not eating at all or counting points. Or being fat. Don't forget that.
I think I’m just tired. When you first go on a diet – even though you’re not supposed to call it a diet – everyone tells you to get over the fact that it’s not fair. I’m over it. Trust me, I don’t expect things to be fair. I don’t expect to be able to eat snickers bars every day and I am very happy that I have become a runner and I do like my life more now. I am a happier person, but I would just sometimes love to not think about fat and calories and pants sizes and peanut butter and being hungry EVERY MINUTE of the day. I don’t know how to do that. And I am afraid to try.
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3 comments:
At the risk of being one of those really annoying people online who make unsolicited suggestions, i found Geneen Roth's books really helpful.
Alice waters, AND Dairy Queen? Awesome. One of the best sentences you've written.
Oy, this is exactly where I was/am/whatever. For months I suffered by watching my sister eat anythign she wanted, drink wine with dinner (etc) and stay slim, and for months I felt bitter. Like you, I knew life wasn't fair and we weren't the same person with the same metabolism, but it nevertheless ticked me off. *g* So I'm trying something new, just to see how NOT counting anything works. And I struggle with the idea that that means I might not lose weight quickly, but at this point I'd rather do that than face another day of worrying about the calories and carbs in a breakfast burrito. :P
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