Rebellion

Diets make me rebellious. Admittedly, most diets I tried were when I was a teenager; rebellion and questioning authority went with the territory. But even as an adult, I’ve maintained a high degree of skepticism for someone telling me what to do or eat.

Diets, being nothing but a list of rules and restrictions, rubbed me the wrong way. Even if they offered some rationale for their program, my heels set stubbornly. I still wonder how they can claim anything so categorically, that what they offer will work for everyone, all the time.

It wasn’t just diets. If anyone, no matter how well-meaning, tried to give me advice on losing weight, I feigned listening, all the while anger boiling up inside me. Who were they to tell me how my body should be, what I should eat?

The end result? I would go off at some point to eat the exact opposite of what they said. I knew it wasn’t good for me - after all, I don’t think anyone can claim that pre-packaged snack cakes are health foods - but I didn’t care. No one was going to control me, thank you very much.

While on the surface this seemed straightforward (I wanted what was forbidden), it went a bit deeper than that. It wasn’t just about wanting the food. It was about the judgement that went with it.

I was rebelling against the idea that I wasn’t good enough.

Every time someone told me that I shouldn’t eat certain foods, I felt it as judgment, that because I did eat them, something was wrong with me. Only if I kept the faith, stayed on the right path, could I be saved from myself and considered acceptable.

I wasn’t having any of that. I ate the candy and cookies and ice cream and cakes to prove that nothing was wrong with me. Unfortunately, since no one else understood this, I went into a downward (or in a way upward) spiral. The heavier I got, the more people tried to get me to lose weight, and the more I felt like rebelling, which meant I gained more.

I was only able to move out of this cycle when I stopped letting other people’s judgments influence me. Even then, I had my own self-judgment to get past (and sometimes rebel against), but eventually I was able to do that, too.

And while it can sometimes feel fun to be defiant, I have plenty of other options for that. I’m just as glad to no longer have the need to rebel based on my food choices.

Boredom

Note: For information about the Am I Hungry?® program, please visit www.AmIHungry.com or go to my website.

Does this sound familiar? You’re at loose ends, not feeling very motivated, with nothing particular to do, so you wander into the kitchen. And while you’re waiting for inspiration to strike, you start opening cupboards and the refrigerator, and before you even quite know it, you’re munching on something. It may not even be something you want or would normally eat, or maybe it’s what you’ve been valiantly trying to resist. Either way, you may suddenly notice that whatever it is is gone, and you can’t even remember what it tasted like, and you still don’t know what you want to do. Only now, you feel not only uninspired but maybe guilty and perhaps a little uncomfortable.

Many of us occasionally eat out of boredom. It’s a way to pass the time, after all, doing something that provides comfort and some degree of pleasure. The problem is that it’s temporary, it’s not conducive to weight management, and it doesn’t address what’s behind the boredom.

For instance, what if what you really want is to do something creative, but you don’t give yourself an opportunity to find that out because you’re too busy eating? Or perhaps you want something mentally challenging, or to get out in nature, or do something playful?

If you’ve gotten accustomed to turning to food in those moments, it can be hard to think of other things to do. That’s why in the Am I Hungry? class we talk about making a list ahead of time, and even to have a distraction kit with some things on-hand that you can turn to. A deck of cards, knitting, a magazine or book, a game of some sort, Legoes, a slinky, a kaleidoscope, whatever tickles your fancy.

My fallback is always writing; it doesn’t take much preparation and I can do it anywhere. Other things I enjoy are going for a short walk, using the laser pointer to play with my cats, or sometimes just cleaning, where I can see immediate, tangible results, which I don’t get when working on software.

If you know whatever works for you, then perhaps the next time you find yourself grazing out of boredom, you could look at your list or kit to think about ways to fill the time other than eating.

Mom and Food and Weight

Mother’s Day is always a little tough for me. Not only because it’s now been over 12 years since I lost my mom, but because remembering her inevitably reminds me of food and weight issues.

Mom was terrified of being heavy. I’m sure that at least some of it was vanity, since I also know she didn’t want to weigh too little, because it would reduce her modest curves to a straighter figure, something she didn’t want. But it was also because both of her grandmothers had diabetes. After seeing what it did to them, she didn’t want to go through that herself. 

This meant that she was careful about what she ate and tracked her weight daily in her diary, as well as making sure she exercised almost every day, be it walking, swimming, skiing, biking, hiking, using our trampoline, lifting weights, or something else. We always had vegetables with our meals, often from our own garden, fresh in the summer, canned or frozen in the winter.

From that description, looking back, I suspect some people would scratch their heads and wonder how I ended up gaining so much weight. After all, I had good food options available, a good model for healthy eating and exercise, and a mother who was supportive of me trying to lose weight, finding ways to pay for things like Weight Watchers and nutrition counseling despite a tight budget.

What we didn’t talk much about when I was gaining weight, though, is that it didn’t feel “supportive” to me. It felt suffocating. I was convinced that my weight was the only thing that mattered, because she put so much emphasis on it. (To be fair, so did other family members, including her mother, and society as a whole.) It meant that I snuck food, especially sweets, so while I ate the way she wanted in front of her, in secret I was cramming candy bars, cake, brownies, cookies, ice cream, and anything else I could.

Eventually, after one disastrous visit with the nutritionist, Mom realized that she had perhaps gone too far. A note in her diary indicates that she decided she wouldn’t say anything about my weight again, unless I brought it up. By then, though, I was already over 200 pounds, so while it helped our relationship, it was a little late on the weight gain. (Plus, it didn’t address the other reasons why I gained weight.)

Which makes the irony all the sharper when I wonder whether or not I would have lost weight if Mom hadn’t died. If I hadn’t had that impetus, that fear for my own health, that regret that we never climbed Katahdin together again, would I be where I am today? Would I be working to help others with their own food and weight issues? 

I have no answer to those questions, and on days like today, they’re hard to consider. So instead, I try to remember this. That Mom did give me a good model to follow, once I was willing to do that. That she would be proud of what I have accomplished, and what I am doing with my life. That even though she was afraid of what being overweight would mean for me in the long run, she loved me and was overall a wonderful mother. And that she will always be in my heart, nourishing me in ways that have nothing to do with food.

Defeated

Have any of who’ve struggled with weight felt defeated? That you’ve tried everything and it doesn’t work? That you might as well give up because you’re going to be heavy for the rest of your life?

I’d forgotten that feeling until recently when I asked another woman what emotion came to mind when she thought of losing weight. “Defeated,” she said without hesitation. My heart went out to her as she went on, “I just can’t stand to think that I have to do this again.”

Like so many, she’s lost weight before and gained some back. We hear the phrase yo-you dieting, but a yo-yo is a toy, an object of play. What it really feels like is a war. The world is enemy territory, attacking us on all sides: holidays, weddings, birthdays, the snacks in the checkout line, beaming Girl Scouts and their boxes of cookies, the ease of the elevator and cars to transport us. People who go on diets talk about having to maintain constant watch and vigilance, never letting down their guard.

And like a battlefield, it’s exhausting. You make progress, only to lose it. In the constant give and take, you find yourself giving more than you ever wanted. Giving in to the doughnuts at work, the chips in the vending machine, the bucket of popcorn at the movies. You make compromises, telling yourself it’s for the greater good, even if that good never materializes.

Is it any wonder that, when entering the fray again, you might feel defeated?

I know I did when I was younger. Even thinking about losing weight was overwhelming. Especially after a certain point, where you’ve put on more than you ever expected, and the amount that you need to lose is beyond daunting. How do you even start? If you’ve tried all the strategies, what’s left?

But I wonder what would happen if we reframed this. To think of it not as a war, with victory and defeat. After all, if we’re demoralized, if those polar opposites are the only options, it’s far too easy to lean towards defeat, and as we know, that becomes self-fulfilling. Even if you win at losing, if you think of yourself as the victor, you’re setting yourself up as superior, someone who’s better and more virtuous. That leaves you wide open to later attack.

What if instead of engaging in that long, drawn-out fight to lose weight, you simply walk away from it? Maybe, if you refuse to engage and simply live as a healthy person, you will start to become that person without ever going to war at all, and without even presenting the option of defeat. Perhaps that, too, will become self-fulfilling.