Outside Looking In

It’s been my experience that if you’re a person who has a tendency to put on weight easily, for whatever reason, and you lose a lot of weight, by whatever method, you really don’t have a creamsicles’s chance in hell of keeping it off unless you get outside of the food culture. Oh sure, there are other hurdles to overcome, such as dealing with your body’s sensitivity to certain kinds of foods, or understanding the destructive eating habits you’ve developed over a lifetime, but the kicker for me has been food culture. Getting outside of that culture involves many challenges. I’ve had to confront the force of habit and belief, at a micro-scale that is excruciating, as I decide, meal by meal, bite by bite, what I will and will not eat every single day. But at its heart, getting outside of the food culture is about much more than what you decide to consume. At its most elemental, it’s about relationships.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of times when my family sat around a table and shared a meal, at big holiday celebrations, but also on typical nights, talking about what happened at school that day over my mother’s famous creations, Swedish meatballs over egg noodles, sauerbraten and red cabbage, or ground beef and potato casserole. There were also times with my friends, when we went out for soft ice cream cones and Cokes, or later, pizza and beer. Those foods are forever linked in my mind with feeling connected to people I care about. Now that I stand outside of the food culture, I often feel adrift and alone. It’s a lot like looking in a window, watching a group of people having a big party, and I can’t find a way to get in. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a tragedy, it’s just disconcerting.

The medical establishment seems to be working hard at developing treatments for obesity, but there’s a defect in their method. They keep focusing on the individual out of the cultural context. In my opinion, no weight-loss drug, no diet, no “healthy living” program will solve the obesity puzzle until we address the disruption in kinship that a person experiences when they lose a lot of weight. The urge to be part of a caring community is so strong that if being slender means losing connectedness, it should be no surprise if regaining the weight seems the lesser evil. How I’ve managed to cope with this, I’m not really sure, but then I have been a bit of a loner for most of my life. I’ve always thought of that as a personal flaw – who knew it might have an advantage!

Simply put, we don’t eat in a vacuum, we eat in community. I believe that until we fully accept the role of culture in our struggles with weight, we will continue to struggle to find a solution that most people can live with.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

A friend said to me yesterday that he was looking for the shortcut to losing weight. I could have laughed and said, aren’t we all? But I didn’t. What I said was: There isn’t a shortcut and that sucks, but too bad, that’s the way it is. Maybe that sounds harsh. I suppose, but that’s really how I feel.

Losing a lot of weight and keeping it off for a long period of time is a difficult enterprise and it takes a toll. Every day I have to pay attention to what I eat, morsel by morsel. Every day I have to find time to exercise, preferably for an hour if I can manage it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday, or a birthday, or a long day at work, I still have to do these things. If I don’t, if on a particular day I say oh to heck with it, I pay the price, which generally means gaining back a few pounds. There is no vacation from this and that fact has done a number on my sense of humor. It’s had an even bigger effect on my ability to conform to the social etiquette, which dictates that you don’t speak the blunt truth about things like weight.

So I guess you could say that long-term weight maintenance takes a toll on your relationships too. I was never the most outgoing person in the world, but I could go to a party, make small talk and generally enjoy myself. Now, social gatherings feel like a minefield. First, there will be all kinds of things to eat that I should not eat. Then, people will offer those things to me and I’ll have to find a way to say no without offending anyone. Or say yes and beat myself up later. Inevitably, someone will make a funny comment about how all the calories in the munchies will be cancelled out as long as we don’t sit down; since I know from bitter experience that this is not true, at least not for me, my choice will be to laugh politely and feel like a schmuck, or be the jerk who can’t take a joke. Or just stay home.

We all want to fit in. When I was fat, I dreamed that if I could ever lose the weight and be slender for good, I would finally be a normal person and fit in. But sometimes I think the opposite has happened. Many days, I feel more like the odd woman out than I ever did when I was obese. It’s not quite what I expected, yet as someone once said, that sucks, but too bad, that’s the way it is.

Why do I persist with this then? Well, I feel pretty damn good physically, better than I ever felt when I was heavy. I also think keeping my weight low will make getting older easier, and I’ve realized that I don’t fear dying nearly as much as I fear being disabled in my golden years. I guess I also still have a tiny bit of optimism left inside me, a mini-hope that someday this will all get easier.

Keep your fingers crossed.