Also: mini rant
Jun. 21st, 2007 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lykomancerI realize: it's all my mother's fault.
No, really. It is.
It's my mother's fault because she was obsessed with her weight whilst I was in the mad, mad impressionable midst of my formative years.
Yes.
That, and the fact that I lived amongst free-love hippies, body-type accepting liberals, and too-thin vegetarians and vegans for five years, then lived in a half-way house apartment full of college friends for three more.
But every time I hear someone seriously state, "I'm on a diet" (or variations thereof) or "There's XYZ calories in that!" (ditto), I'm torn amused exasperation at their weird food hangups, frustration on their behalf that they're obsessed with something so petty, and flat-out disbelief that anyone actually still cares about all that.
My mother ruined me on the idea of dieting, as she tried them all and failed at them all.
Or maybe she didn't fail, but she always acted like she did, no matter how much weight she lost.
And since she lacked the internal drive to lose weight, she quickly lost focus and gained it all back within a year or two anyway.
And then I went off to Northland, where NO ONE CARED.
Pretty much ever.
Hell, it was college. We were just happy to have food. Any food, but preferably delicious food.
After a steady diet of greasy cafe food and Little Sleazer's pizza, who the hell in their right mind would say 'no' to a dish of duck in peanut sauce, rich yellow whipped potatoes, mushroom and leek quesadillas, and slice of Deep Water tiramisu when you can only afford it once every three months, if that?
(Then wash it all down with Tim's White Russians, so tasty and so creamy and so full of excess calories, then stumble off home while moaning about how much you ate. Wake up and have a pint of Ben and Jerry's for brekkie while half-dozing through sociology.
Say it with me now: MMMMMMMMM...DELICIOUS.)
Really, though, I find that I only have two major beefs with the concept of dieting...well, ok, three:
1) Fad diets, unbalanced diets, and "quick-fixes."
HELLO, PEOPLE. DON'T BE STUPID. Humans are omnivorous; we need variety in our diet. Carbs (or fat, or salt, or meat, or whatever) is NOT the antichrist. Cutting one thing out of your diet-- or cutting your diet down to one thing-- is not (NOTNOTNOT) a healthy, permanent solution.
2) The culture of denial.
This is why most diets fail atrociously. It's not about what you can't have; it needs to be about what you can. Ok! So you can't have the decadent French silk pie covered in cream and chocolate curls, but you can have a slice of cherry pie, right? Maybe cut back on the steak and increase the sushi. Non cream-based soups are generally pretty healthy and tasty.
Drink more water-- studies show that Americans (on average) actually confuse the sensations of hunger and thirst; they eat more because they're actually thirsty but don't interpret the sensation correctly. Also: water keeps you feeling full, keeps you hydrated, and hey, burns calories ('cause you have to warm it up to body temperature).
Jesus, even if I heard more, "Oo! I can have a little of this!" instead of "I can't have any 'cause I'm on a diet," I'd be less annoyed.
Life sucks enough as it is, so why make your life seem harder than it is?
3) This is the big one--
I hate the word "diet".
Normal, healthy, balanced intake of food =|= being "on a DIET".
All that means is that you are eating NORMALLY. I don't think "I'm trying to stick roughly to something like the food pyramid" should be considered "dieting".
It's not.
...God, sometimes I think I still can't handle the world outside of college, where people are obsessed with idiocy like clothing and makeup and movie stars, how they look and how people perceive them.
No, really. It is.
It's my mother's fault because she was obsessed with her weight whilst I was in the mad, mad impressionable midst of my formative years.
Yes.
That, and the fact that I lived amongst free-love hippies, body-type accepting liberals, and too-thin vegetarians and vegans for five years, then lived in a half-way house apartment full of college friends for three more.
But every time I hear someone seriously state, "I'm on a diet" (or variations thereof) or "There's XYZ calories in that!" (ditto), I'm torn amused exasperation at their weird food hangups, frustration on their behalf that they're obsessed with something so petty, and flat-out disbelief that anyone actually still cares about all that.
My mother ruined me on the idea of dieting, as she tried them all and failed at them all.
Or maybe she didn't fail, but she always acted like she did, no matter how much weight she lost.
And since she lacked the internal drive to lose weight, she quickly lost focus and gained it all back within a year or two anyway.
And then I went off to Northland, where NO ONE CARED.
Pretty much ever.
Hell, it was college. We were just happy to have food. Any food, but preferably delicious food.
After a steady diet of greasy cafe food and Little Sleazer's pizza, who the hell in their right mind would say 'no' to a dish of duck in peanut sauce, rich yellow whipped potatoes, mushroom and leek quesadillas, and slice of Deep Water tiramisu when you can only afford it once every three months, if that?
(Then wash it all down with Tim's White Russians, so tasty and so creamy and so full of excess calories, then stumble off home while moaning about how much you ate. Wake up and have a pint of Ben and Jerry's for brekkie while half-dozing through sociology.
Say it with me now: MMMMMMMMM...DELICIOUS.)
Really, though, I find that I only have two major beefs with the concept of dieting...well, ok, three:
1) Fad diets, unbalanced diets, and "quick-fixes."
HELLO, PEOPLE. DON'T BE STUPID. Humans are omnivorous; we need variety in our diet. Carbs (or fat, or salt, or meat, or whatever) is NOT the antichrist. Cutting one thing out of your diet-- or cutting your diet down to one thing-- is not (NOTNOTNOT) a healthy, permanent solution.
2) The culture of denial.
This is why most diets fail atrociously. It's not about what you can't have; it needs to be about what you can. Ok! So you can't have the decadent French silk pie covered in cream and chocolate curls, but you can have a slice of cherry pie, right? Maybe cut back on the steak and increase the sushi. Non cream-based soups are generally pretty healthy and tasty.
Drink more water-- studies show that Americans (on average) actually confuse the sensations of hunger and thirst; they eat more because they're actually thirsty but don't interpret the sensation correctly. Also: water keeps you feeling full, keeps you hydrated, and hey, burns calories ('cause you have to warm it up to body temperature).
Jesus, even if I heard more, "Oo! I can have a little of this!" instead of "I can't have any 'cause I'm on a diet," I'd be less annoyed.
Life sucks enough as it is, so why make your life seem harder than it is?
3) This is the big one--
I hate the word "diet".
Normal, healthy, balanced intake of food =|= being "on a DIET".
All that means is that you are eating NORMALLY. I don't think "I'm trying to stick roughly to something like the food pyramid" should be considered "dieting".
It's not.
...God, sometimes I think I still can't handle the world outside of college, where people are obsessed with idiocy like clothing and makeup and movie stars, how they look and how people perceive them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 04:56 pm (UTC)That's an option.
For me-- and this is individualistic, I know-- I find it harder to have a small potion than to simply find something else I want that's cheaper/less fattening/whatever.
Five oz of steak just whets my appetite and I want more; it's hard to say, "Ok, that was enough".
On the other hand, it's way, way easier for me to say that the steak and the grilled salmon both sound delicious, and then pick the salmon just because that way I can eat my fill of it.
I guess that it's harder for me to control quantity than quality, in short. I'd rather have a mixing bowl full of salad than two bites of cheesecake.
Part of my problem, too, and one I am fully aware of, is that I don't eat often enough to eat small portions. I've locked my body into starvation mode, so I eat infrequent huge meals, and can't lose weight no matter what those meals consist of because my body hoards all the fat and calories it can.
I am aware of that.
...but if I balanced out my eating, I'd feel hungry nearly all the time.
Or so it would seem to me. Now I can go a day or two without feeling particularly hungry, so changing things so that I feel that way ever few hours is fucking annoying.
Preparing, finding, and eating food takes time. Time I'd rather be sleeping or reading or hanging out with people or during which I have to be working. I hate feeling like all I'm ever doing is getting food, preparing food, eating food, and then finding food again. I get that this is our ancestor's lives in a nutshell, but really, I hate it.
In short, I'd rather be fat, lazy, distracted, and doing other things than thin, healthy, energetic, and constantly eating.
LAME.
OH, SO LAME.