Help!

When you think about it, food culture is not so different from culture in general. In the culture of the United States, the individual is where it's at, and that one little idea permeates everything we do, say, and, of course, eat. The dominant American story is that all success and failure rides on what an individual does or doesn't do. If you are wealthy and happy (or thin), it's due to hard work and personal accountability. And so it follows that if you are poor and miserable, (or fat), then the opposite must be true, you must be a lazy, irresponsible loser. The rise out of such a deplorable state can only be accomplished by getting responsibility religion and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps (or in my case, sneakerstraps). If you need external support, you run the risk of being labelled a moocher, a slacker, a taker (as opposed to a maker), in the parlance of our last presidential election.

This idea persists, I believe, because it is so clearcut and simple. Some people are industrious and some are not. Work always rewards the person who toils. Anyone can make it if they are willing to put in the long hours and hard labor necessary to overcome the obstacles. No messy real life situations need apply, just right and wrong, black and white, responsible and irresponsible. Easy peasy, as they say.

Now, I am all for working towards a goal. Anyone who's ever struggled to achieve anything knows how much sweeter an accomplishment is when you've worked your butt off for it. I have no beef with personal grit leading to riches and applaud anyone who's made it after a long, hard climb in which there was much shedding of blood, sweat, and tears. Of course, the climb is higher for some and there is a glass ceiling at the top for others, two realities often given short shrift in the usual telling of the "American Dream." But to complain about the inequality of opportunity is to be a whiner. The only thing worse than being a whiner is being a whiner who expects the rest of us to help them.

Why is that? Why is asking for help incompatible with taking personal responsibility? After all, who in the 21st century truly "makes it" completely and entirely on their own? In my estimation, the last truly "self-made" American lived in the western United States in the mid-1800s -- perhaps the last time that an American had to literally make everything he or she needed from the forest or the plain or the desert. If you "made it" in a time when you could buy food in a store, mail a letter through a post office, or call the fire department when you smell smoke, then you've had some help from the rest of us. And that fact it doesn't diminish your triumphs in any way.

The same could be said of food. Yes, you, the individual, has the ultimate say on what you put in your mouth. The fact that everyone around you is enjoying gooey, crispy, sugar-coated delights does not mean you have to fall in line. And just because you choose not to eat something doesn't mean everyone else has to stop eating it. Because the perennial partner of personal responsibility is personal freedom, another sacred American idea. So, while I may choose to not eat a cookie, I'm not the boss of you.

But let's look at a telling statistic. Of people who lose a lot of weight, only about 3% keep it off long term. Why is that? Are we all slackers? Degenerate and irresponsible food junkies always on the verge of slipping back into addiction, hands shaking as we desperately try to score one more potato chip or scoop of Chunky Monkey? Could there be even a remote possibility that the food environment discourages, even actively opposes, long-term weight loss? Could I be so crazy as to state that personal responsibility and asking for support from others are not mutually exclusive ideas and could actually coexist? Peacefully?

Just wondering. What do you think?

The Things I Believed

The things I believed before I lost a lot of weight:

You can only lose weight and keep it off through a "sensible lifestyle change." 

This is what I was told, that diets don't work and the way to keep weight in check is to find a sensible lifestyle that you can stick with for the long run. This sounds very logical, except for one tiny problem: the human body. The human body is often likened to a vehicle and food the fuel for its engine. But the human metabolism differs from internal combustion in one very important way. The human metabolism has an ulterior motive that transcends mere digestion -- it is designed to keep you alive. A car engine will happily self-destruct if it does not have the right fuel or lubrication. Your metabolism, if it senses possible danger ahead, will ADJUST. So you, the hapless pudgy person who wishes to drop a little tonnage, you give up dessert and then do the calorie math, figuring you should lose about a pound each week. Hah! Your metabolism says, "Gee, fewer calories available this week, don't want to use up the reserves quite yet, just in case you know, guess we'll s-l-o-w things down." Translation: you don't lose an ounce for all of your effort. The only way to get your metabolism's attention and convince it to give up a fat cell or two is to cut way back and make it believe starvation is imminent. In other words, you must go on a diet, and a strict one at that.

The best diet is...

...the Mediterranean diet. Or the Paleo diet. Or the Ornish diet. Or the Grapefruit diet. Low-carb. High protein. Gluten-free. Vegan. There are a gazillion diets out there and each one has its devoted adherents. In actuality, though, there is no one best diet that works for everyone. The best diet is the one that works best for you. One thing I rarely hear discussed, however, it that the best diet for you to lose weight may not be the best diet for you to maintain that weight loss. How to find the best maintenance diet? No one can tell you. It is all trial and error in my experience. What makes it even more maddening is that what works best for you may change over time. I am currently dealing with a post-menopausal metabolism deceleration and I haven't found what works best for me now, only that what I was doing before no longer works. Plus, sadly, my margin of error, my ability to treat myself once in a while without weight gain, has also decreased.

You have to treat yourself occasionally, otherwise you will feel deprived, and as sure as Jerry follows Ben, feelings of deprivation will lead to massive food fails. 

First, let's define a few terms. "Treat" does not mean roasted Brussels sprouts or sautéed kale. "Treat" means something full of fat and sugar and salt. Chocolate. Ice cream. Cheese doodles. "Occasionally" does not mean at Christmas and on your birthday, it means on a somewhat regular basis, at least once a week. Except, I have found that occasionally eating, say, creamsicle soft serve, does not satisfy my desire for creamsicle soft serve. It only makes me want MORE. And that is because foods full of fat, sugar and salt are addictive substances, designed to hook you with every bite. Eating these foods "occasionally" makes me feel more deprived than never eating them. I have found that the best way to deal with cravings for creamsicle soft serve is to avoid being anywhere near it. Sometimes I imagine that maybe I can cheat at cheating, try the sugar-free frozen yogurt instead, because it's healthier.

You can treat yourself with "healthier" versions of your favorite foods.

This is a really insidious concept because it sounds so sensible on the surface, but in reality it chains you to your old way of eating. Yes, lasagna made with vegetables is healthier for you than the gooey richness of the original meat-laden version, but it is still lasagna and still packs a calorie punch. And it reinforces the idea that "good food" is a creamy, cheesy, sloppy mess. Better to eat something completely different, like a medley of roasted vegetables. The fact is that you have to make a radical change to your eating habits to keep off the weight you lost and the more completely you embrace that new reality, the greater your chances of success. A warning though. Do not make a big splash about embracing your new food reality at a major holiday or family celebration. If you are foolish enough to attempt this, you will quickly learn that nobody wants fruits and vegetables at Thanksgiving. They want mounds of stuffing and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, green beans and crispy onions in cream of mushroom soup, and pie, lots of pie, a la mode, please. Is it any wonder that weight comes back?

The weight always comes back.

This is a tough one, because for most people the weight DOES come back. Case in point, I am working on losing a 30 pound regain right now. But, here's the thing. Saying that the weight always comes back seems to presuppose that it is inevitable, that complex and not fully understood biological or psychological factors doom us to perpetual plumpdom. But what about the social and cultural support, or lack thereof, that the intrepid weight-maintaining person receives? In my experience, trying to navigate the food environment has been the hardest part of maintaining my weight loss. Harder than cravings, harder than changing habits, harder than resisting creamsicle soft serve. You see, no matter how much weight you've lost, there is always someone who's made "something special just for you," and is insistent that you eat it because, after all, one little bite can't hurt. Or someone who wants to go out and "treat yourself to something special," because, after all, you deserve it. Of course, "something special" is never poached salmon and steamed broccoli. By definition, "something special" is " something that will make you gain weight." Like creamsicle soft serve. Or lasagna. Or pie.

One final bite: 

I always thought that weight gain and loss was about what I put in my mouth. Maybe it's time to pay more attention to the beliefs we put in our heads.

Swiss Chard Fantasies

I just returned from a three-day work conference. I like conferences. It's a chance to get away from the normal grind and learn a few new things. Usually I have my own room and I enjoy that too, mostly because I can sleep in a quiet place, away from rambunctious cats who act like four AM is the best time to run relay races. This conference was no different. The hotel was nice, the goings-on were well organized, and the presenters seemed to know their stuff.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the food sucked?

Why do I use this highly technical term, "sucked"? Perhaps because there was a conspicuous lack of an entire food group? Can you guess which? Yes, of course. Vegetables. 

The other food groups were well represented, especially the grains group. Bread abounded. Pasta was prolific. Danishes danced across the breakfast buffet. Meat and potatoes and dairy were also plentiful. The rare appearance of something vegetable in nature coincided with the copious use of mayonnaise, butter, and bacon as flavor enhancers, because everyone knows that veggies are not tasty enough on their own. In other words, it was normal eating.

What to do? I've written about this phenomenon before, I know. In the past, I often got mad, silently fuming; sometimes I got mad, non-silently protesting; other times I got mad but decided to grin and bear it. This time, I didn't get mad, silently or otherwise. This time, I just ate. To be fair, I ate less than normal to account for the extra calories (and carbs!), and I skipped the ice cream bar on the last night. In short, I made the best of a bad food situation and tried not to get all verklempt about it.

Did I feel sorry for myself, plunged into food dystopia through no fault of my own? Not really. I'm not sure how to explain my mellow response to this situation. I think some of it has to do with my recent weight gain, which has made it abundantly clear that there are two paths I can take. One is to eat "normally" and gain weight. The other is to eat "abnormally" and keep my weight where I want it. It's not a sadistic punishment visited upon me by the weight gods, it's simple biology and physiology. And -- shockingly -- the world seems disinclined to make much accommodation for my fat-prone metabolism, so I just have deal with it on my own, period.

You should know that it wasn't a complete disaster. I did speak to the conference organizer and provided constructive feedback about the meal choices, with suggestions for improvement for future conferences. And when I got home, I weighed myself and found I had gained only a half pound. Not too shabby.

Don't mistake any of this for blissful acceptance of my plight. It would be more accurate to say that I'm resigned. And I still get frustrated by the fact that there is such a laser beam focus on the failings of the overweight person and very little on the deficient nature of the food environment. Oh why oh why can't fat people eat in a sensible, healthy way, the eating experts moan, while paying no mind to the dietary minefields we weight-challenged folk traverse each day. Like a conference without vegetables.

Now that I'm home and master of my menu once more, I see lots and lots of Swiss chard in my future.

Yup. Yum.

First There Is A Donut, Then There Is No Donut, Then There Is

There’s a billboard that I pass on my way to work each morning that touts a local medical practice specializing in bariatric surgery. The ad proudly proclaims that they are responsible for 5000 smiles since 2002. Right before and after this billboard are other billboards. These other billboards advertise fast food restaurants, places like Dunkin Donuts, replete with tantalizing images of delicacies, such as Bavarian Kremes and Maple Frosted Coffee Rolls.

All of which makes me wonder. Is the problem the donut or the person who eats it?

It seems to me that, in the quest to find the “cause” for obesity, most of the attention has been focused on the eater, not the eaten. Holy crap, you say! Are you living under a maple-frosted rock? How could you have missed the onslaught of ads for Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, South Beach, ad infinitum? Do the words low-carb, paleo, Mediterranean mean nothing to you? If anything, you say, we are obsessed to the point of insanity with the eaten.

Ahem. I am, of course, well aware of the Diet Industrial Complex, that endless blitz of diet programs and diet books and diet philosophies, which reap great profits for everyone but the desperate people who follow them. It seems to me that all this food noise is not about what is to be eaten, but rather, about seducing vulnerable people with how good they will look, how sexy they will feel, how righteous they will be if only they renounce fat/sugar/salt/wheat/meat/fill-in-the-blank and do exactly what this particular expert/author/blogger/health guru says. That our hapless eater is immersed in an ocean of donuts is of no consequence as long as they remain a true believer and change themselves.

Bariatric surgery is just the far end of the spectrum in this conviction that the answer to excess weight is to modify the person carrying it. And so, you must be a warrior against the donut, ever vigilant, forsaking conventional ways of eating in favor of that prescribed by your new food religion. The other end of this spectrum favors a more psychological approach, in which you change your psyche, making peace with “food demons” so you can practice moderation and, above all else, be sensible. Regardless of where you exist on this spectrum, when you are successful in transforming yourself, your weight will take care of itself and life will be wonderful, full of smiles even. If you can’t change yourself on your own, then you have no option but the knife. And I don’t mean the butter knife.

Let’s step back for a minute. It is a fact that the reason I lost 100 pounds is because I modified myself. Not through surgery, but in a radical way nonetheless. I changed my diet in the extreme. I changed my exercise habits in the extreme. Doesn’t this prove that the “cause” of obesity is to be found in the eater?

Before we jump on that anti-gravy train, let me relate a few more facts. First, I have not “won” my battle with obesity. I still struggle with it. Every day. And, second, it is entirely possible that I will someday regain all the weight I lost. I keep this nasty picture in the forefront of my mind, as a hedge against the abysmal odds. You see, a big part of the fight has to do with living in a world awash with donuts (and their fatty, sugary, salty co-conspirators), requiring near superhuman willpower to resist. When I fail to resist them, 100% of the blame is assigned to me. And only me. Because I made the “choice” to eat those foods, right? Don’t I know, to misquote The Matrix, that there is no donut?

Um, excuse me, but... There most certainly IS a donut.

It seems counterproductive to me that we focus on fixing, even “curing,” the currently/formerly fat while ignoring the food environment that surrounds us, though I understand why it happens. There’s a whole culture and a whole economy dedicated to donuts and their gastronomic kin. It’s ingrained in us to a point that we don’t question it. It’s just the way it is. So of course an orange costs more than a donut. And it follows naturally that given the choice of an orange or a donut, most people would choose the donut. To do otherwise would be a huge change in the status quo.

And, as any overweight person already knows, big change is hard. Really, really hard.

Food and Everything

If you pay attention to what our culture says about weight loss – articles in women’s magazines, ads for weight loss programs, or television shows like The Biggest Loser – you will hear one constant theme and it is:

What You Will Gain When You Lose.

Because everyone knows that losing weight is nothing if not a winning proposition. You will gain greater health. Increased confidence. Delight in being able to do whatever it was you couldn’t do because of your weight. Other people will admire you. And find inspiration in your accomplishment. It will be a happy-happy-joy-joy experience.

This is untrue but the idea persists, I believe, because most of us don’t spend too much time in weight maintenance. Most of us lose a lot of weight and, after a few glorious months as a thinner version of ourselves, gain it all back. And then we must start the cycle all over. This would be an accurate description of my life with weight for close to fifty years.

Somehow, in 2007, I found a way to break that cycle – I lost a lot of weight and have kept it off for over five years. Not that my weight has been completely static during that time. The actual situation is that I gain a few pounds, then I lose it, then I gain it back, then I lose it again. The key is “a few” pounds. Not one-hundred pounds.

Another way to describe my life in maintenance is that I’ve slowly been coming to grips with what I lost, in addition to the weight, that is. It took a few years for this to really sink in, which is probably why I never got here previously – I’ve never spent this much time in the maintenance phase before. When the novelty of being thinner wore off, I started noticing some things. Like the fact that many of my relationships involved going out to eat. That my ability to deal with stress was directly proportional to my ice cream consumption. That chocolate could fill any void. Without the balm of food, it’s just me and my problems, all alone in an often exasperating and disappointing world.

So this is my challenge now, to live a satisfying life, one in which food nourishes my body and soul, but is not everything. The idea that food is not everything would have been inconceivable to me for my first fifty years. Now, five years into this maintenance thing, it’s a belief that has got to go. And that’s a loss as big and as real as anything I’ve ever contemplated losing before.

Vegetables Are Where It's At!

It’s hot!

For most of my life, hot meant summer and summer meant ice cream. This summer, I’m trying something different. This year, I’m going hog-wild for fresh fruits and vegetables!

On Tuesday, I made my favorite green bean salad in herb Dijon vinaigrette. Plus, I’ve got Brussels sprouts and carrots in the fridge, waiting for roasting – and I will roast them, heat wave or no! I’m also thinking that I need to buy cauliflower (to be roasted with garlic and paprika) and kale (for a luscious kale and mango salad). We had corn on the cob on Tuesday too, and even though corn is really best considered a carb, fresh, local corn is a summer luxury for those of us who live in the Northeast. I decided I was worth it!

On the fruit front, I made an apple salad this week. When I came across this recipe, it was billed as an “autumn salad,” but it’s pretty good in the summer too. The recipe goes like this:

2 Granny Smith apples, washed but not peeled, cut into bite-size pieces

2 large celery stalks, finely chopped
2 large scallions, finely chopped
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
3 tbsp walnut oil
1-1/2 tbsp sherry vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients, toss until everything is coated, and marinate for at least a few hours. This salad tastes better the second day and even better the third day.

 

With all of this fruit and veggie goodness, who has time to obsess about creamsicles?

Creamsicle Dreams

It’s been pretty hot here and I’ve found myself fighting off cravings for soft ice cream. Not just any flavor, but one specific flavor. Creamsicle twist.

You may recall my run-in with creamsicle fudge at the holidays last December. I don’t know what it is that makes this taste combination so tempting for me. Maybe it’s the nostalgia, the memories of sticky, muggy summer days when I was a kid, running under the sprinkler and licking those cool and creamy orange and white bars.

The other day, I was dreaming of creamsicle again and a question hit me. Why am I still struggling with these cravings? WHY? I’m over five years into weight maintenance and this stupid stuff is still a problem for me. Shouldn’t I have it all handled by now?

Ah, yes.

You can see it in the ads for the popular weight loss programs, and it doesn’t matter which program we’re talking about. Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem. What they all have in common are the jubilant pictures of their success stories, the people who have lost a bazillion pounds and have their weight “handled.” Folks who proudly proclaim that they will never be fat again.

Yeah, right.

Anyway, back to creamsicles. I think I might be going through the five stages of creamsicle grief:

• Denial: I have evolved beyond such non-food as creamsicles.
• Anger: Damn you Evil Food Industry, why do you even make this addictive crap?
• Bargaining: If I run a couple extra miles this week, can I have a creamsicle cone as a reward?
• Depression: I. Can. Never. Have. Creamsicles. Again.
• Acceptance: Let’s see, acceptance means… um… uh… hmmm.

It seems I haven’t completed my mourning for creamsicles yet.

Twinkies Are Back! (And so am I!)

Hey, I’m back. I was afraid for a while that I didn’t have anything else to say on the topic of weight, but it turns out I was just really tired. A combination of work stress and being too darned busy in general left me kind of burned out this spring. I’ve been working on carving out more time for rest and reflection recently and it seems that my thoughts are starting to flow again.

While I was on my mini-hiatus, the American Medical Association announced that they had decided to classify obesity as a disease. There was a lot of buzz about this, with some seeing it as a good step and others not so sure. My reaction was pretty ho-hum. I suppose anything that gets doctors and insurance companies to pay more attention to weight and health is a good thing, but it seemed a bit beside the point. This might sound like an odd thing for me to say, but it’s really not. To understand, let’s compare obesity to something else. Say, lung cancer.

Lung cancer is a disease. We all agree on that, right? Well, what if medical science developed a whole range of highly effective treatments for lung cancer, yet we ignored the issue of smoking. People would continue to get lung cancer, by hey, never fear, we can treat it! You don’t mind spending a few months (or years) as a prisoner of the medical system, do you?

This is what obesity-as-a-disease, without a serious attempt to address our hyper-saturated food culture, seems like to me. The drug companies will still make big bucks on each new “breakthrough” diet drug. Hospitals will still market (and profit from) new “breakthrough” bariatric surgeries. And many people, most likely an ever-increasing number of people, will still struggle with the painful consequences of excess weight. Unless, I believe, we start looking seriously at rational public policies, similar to the types of public policies we implemented regarding smoking, that address the harm created by treating food as a mere consumer choice, divorced from any moral responsibility for the long-term health of the people who eat it.

Oh dear, I’m not proposing to take away your freedom to drink a big soda, am I? Or to eat Twinkies to your heart’s content once they come back on the market? Of course not. Eat and drink whatever you like. What I am proposing is that you have all the facts on the substances you’re taking into your body and what they might do to you. And let’s go one step further. What if Hostess took a small percentage of the enormous profits they will reap from sale of Twinkies and used it to do something good, say fund programs for childhood nutrition education?

Now, that I could get excited about.

I Get Tired

I am sometimes accused of being too rigid in my weight maintenance habits. I never know quite how to respond to that. The fact is, I AM pretty regimented in the way I eat and exercise. As I’ve noted before, I tend to eat the same things every day and generally plan meals, even meals out, ahead of time. Same with exercise. I do best when I stick to a pre-determined schedule – certain days walking and other days running, following routes I’ve developed based on time or distance goals. If you’re wondering why I do this it’s because for most of my life I was quite laid back about my health habits; the result of that laissez-faire approach was that I weighed a whopping 250 pounds by my late forties!

Every now and then (as in the recent past) I let go of this rigidity. That’s not because I magically attain super-weight-maintainer powers, allowing me to relax around food and exercise with impunity – it’s because I get tired. Of all the non-stop explaining. Why I’m not eating the pasta (because it causes immediate weight gain). Why I’m not available on Saturday morning (because it interferes with my weekly long run). Why whatever it is that everyone else wants to do doesn’t work for me (because I’m too set in my ways). Eventually I get to the point where I say, OK, I give up, cut me a slice of the cake, and then a very predictable thing happens. I gain weight. I’m dealing with ten pounds of “I give up weight” right now.

When I wax poetic about the kind of environment needed to support me in maintaining my weight loss, this is what I mean. I’m not shunning personal responsibility for my diet and lifestyle, not merely kvetching about the daily assault of mega-calorie, high-fat, sugar-laden foods. I’m making a plea for more understanding, for the simple recognition that there are things I need to do to manage my weight and the odds I will do those things go up exponentially when I follow a regular, even rigid, routine. The odds also improve when I don’t have to constantly defend my choices.

What I’ve learned over the last several years is that if I’m to be successful in keeping off the weight I lost, I need to be as unyielding as the reality of obesity. Other people may have flexibility; I don’t. Other people might be able to enjoy a measure of spontaneity; I can’t. Unless I want to risk weighing 250 pounds again, which I don’t.

And that’s just the way it is.

Go Fish!

Picture a fish lying on the shore, its gills flaring, its mouth gasping, while well-intentioned onlookers shake their heads and wonder why the poor creature can’t seem to breathe. Someone recommends putting the animal in an oxygen tent. Others wonder what previous trauma prompted it to jump out of the lake. It is suggested that perhaps surgery to modify its gills is in order.

If you have any wits about you at all, you will ignore these morons and toss the fish back into the water.

It’s not so different for those of us who struggle with weight. We agonize over how to best motivate ourselves to eat less and exercise more. We scrutinize our screwed up psyches in the quest for a healthy weight through emotional healing. We dream of a magic pill or surgery that will provide the answer that has eluded us. And will continue to elude us because…

We are like fish out of water.

In other words, we live in a fat-and-sugar-drenched environment that is the antithesis of what would support us in maintaining a healthy weight. Yet rather than confront an eco-system so poisonous to the weight-challenged, we blame ourselves for our inability to adapt to it. Is it any wonder that so many of us fail in our battle with obesity?

The world tells us that the reason people become overweight is because they’re broken and need to be fixed. In that scenario, it’s our own fault we’re fat. But what if it’s the other way around? That people become overweight because the world is broken and needs to be fixed? That the problem is not that you ate the Baconater, but that the Baconater exists at all?

I know. Nothing but a big fish story.

Chocolate Heals All Wounds

Hey, I’m not dead yet!

I’m shocked to see it has been a month since the last time I posted. Nothing was wrong during that time, just my life got very busy for a while. I’ve noticed that the busier I am, the less I exercise. That bothers me. I’ve also noticed that the busier I am, the more I want to snack at night. That bothers me too. You certainly know this equation: less exercise + more snacking = snug pants.

The usual explanation for this turn of events is that when you get busy, you don’t exercise because you don’t think you have enough time, you get more stressed because you’re not exercising enough, and – viola! – you start eating for emotional reasons. There’s some truth to this. It’s harder to resist the siren call of certain foods (chocolate!) when you’re worn out trying to compete in the Multi-tasking Olympics that is our modern lifestyle. Besides, who wouldn’t enjoy a tasty treat at the end of a long, frustrating day?

Yet, I have to confess that I find this whole concept of emotional eating a bit disturbing. I know I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. It’s not that I don’t think emotions play a role, but that the role of emotions gets disproportional coverage whenever the subject of obesity comes up. If you believe the mainstream media, especially magazines and talk shows aimed at women, it often seems that our national weight problem is mainly due to the inability of overweight people to get a grip. If only the weight-challenged could “heal” the emotional wounds that cause them to overeat, they would effortlessly lose the extra pounds and life would be just peachy.

This seems so simplistic to me. It’s also a case of blame the victim that ignores the contribution of the environment. How the food culture in this country promotes fatty, sugary, salty eating as normal. The way the food industry routinely churns out new products that are expressly designed to be irresistible to human taste buds. The tremendous social pressure to overeat in certain ways at certain times. Think mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. Barbeque and ice cream in the summer. Christmas cookies. Endless Christmas cookies.

The focus on emotions also allows the inadequate response of the medical and insurance community to be quietly ignored. I often wonder why my health insurance will not cover nutritional counseling for a person (like me) who has struggled with morbid obesity for most of her life. But if it’s my fault because I’m “too emotional,” well then, better to rearrange my digestive system than try to reconstruct the fragile mess in my head. This focus on my individual failing also keeps me from asking why the American Medical Association doesn’t condemn US farm subsidy policy that favors the production of corn (for high-fructose corn syrup) and sugarcane over fresh fruits and vegetables.

So yes, I’ve been eating more because I’m under stress right now. And yes, it’s an emotional reaction. I could delve deep into my psyche and figure out what wounds I’m trying to heal with chocolate, but I prefer a more direct approach: I don’t keep foods I can’t resist in the house. It works every time and it don’t cost a dime.

I’m getting teary-eyed just thinking about it.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

This post continues my series on all the surprising things I’ve learned in my quest to maintain a 100-pound weight loss. Today I want to take on something I have struggled with my entire life and that is my relationship with food. If you are overweight, you know what I mean. I’m talking about all those nutty things that go on in your head, making you feel powerless around the foods that keep you fat. And, like I did, you might harbor the conviction that once you straighten out your relationship with food, you will suddenly and magically find all of the excess weight melting away. Your new food sanity will bring you to a rarified state where maintaining a healthy weight will be easy, effortless even. What I’ve learned in the last five years about this belief is this:

Unexpected Nugget #4: My relationship with food is not the problem.

How can I possibly say this? Wasn’t I the master of the midnight pasta binge? An ice cream extremist? The girl who could never eat just one cookie when the whole box beckoned? Isn’t that proof positive that my relationship with food was all screwed up? That I was all screwed up? After all, those things cannot possibly be called normal behavior.

Well, that’s one way to look at it. Here’s another. Maybe my brain was perfectly sane. Except that I was addicted. To sugar. What if I did not have a dark, twisted relationship with food at all, but instead had a physical addiction to sugar – and its kissing cousin, high-fructose corn syrup – that drove me to crave sweets? Or other foods, like pasta, that turn into sugar when you digest them?

The idea that it’s all in our plump little heads, that our relationship with food is profoundly messed up, keeps the blame for obesity on the overweight person and off of a food industry that makes fat profits by designing products full of sugar that we are unable to resist because we have become addicted to them. When someone points out this fact and takes aim at the problem, like Michael Bloomberg and his ban on oversized servings of sweetened soft drinks, that person is mocked and condemned as an agent of the ever-growing Nanny State, trying to take away our Big Gulp freedom. The irony of all of this is beyond comprehension, because once sugar gets its crystalline claws into you, you are anything but free.

So, here’s the deal. My relationship with food is and has always been just fine, thank you. What messed me up was my love affair with sugar, which is why sugar and I are no longer a couple. As any ex-addict will tell you, once you get liberated from your drug, it’s best to keep it as far away as possible, though that’s easier done with things like nicotine or cocaine, since you don’t need those substances to survive and it’s unlikely anyone will insist you have just one little Christmas Cigarette or Holiday Hit.

My estrangement from sugar is a bit trickier. Sometimes he tries to woo me back, as abusive boyfriends are wont to do. It’s not a perfect situation, and sometimes I slip up. But I’m not crazy either. And neither are you.

Cake Walk

In recognition of my five-year weight-maintenance anniversary last month, this week’s post continues my series on all the things I’ve learned (and didn’t expect to learn) in my quest to maintain a 100-pound weight loss. This week’s surprising revelation has to do with a cherished concept in the culture of dieting and weight loss, namely, low-calorie versions of your favorite guilty pleasures. In other words…

Unexpected Nugget #3: “Lite” food is not the answer.

Is that booing that I hear in the background? Of course it is. We love and depend on “lite” food. There is an entire industry devoted to telling us that we can have chocolate cake, not only have it but eat it, and stay lithe and slender at the same time. That’s possible because the chocolate cake is not the bad old version of our childhood, full of sugar and butter, eggs (yolks included!) and full-fat chocolate. No, it is “lite” chocolate cake, made with calorie-free sweeteners and other ingredients with hard-to-pronounce names, simulating the chocolate cake we crave at a mere 100 calories per serving!

Now, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it’s comforting to know there’s an alternative that doesn’t break the calorie bank for those times when all resolve fails and nothing but chocolate will do. On the other hand, I can never seem to eat just one 100-calorie serving of anything. I also have to wonder about the healthiness of all those ingredients with names right out of chemistry class, methyl-ethyl-this-will-give-you-cancer-or-at-least-gas. My main concern, however, is a philosophical one:

Does eating “lite” versions of the foods that made me fat keep me stuck in a mind rut that makes it harder for me to keep from getting fat again?

It’s this simple: eating a sweet and juicy orange, or a crisp and crunchy carrot, will never be satisfying as long as the ghost of chocolate cake haunts me. Though “lite” chocolate cake may be an improvement, calorie-wise at least, over authentic chocolate cake, it keeps the idea firmly planted in my mind that the way I am eating now is inferior to the way I used to eat. It is a poor second, a grim and unfortunate accommodation that I’ve had to make out of biological necessity. Since I can no longer eat “real” chocolate cake, I find myself stuck with “lite” (read “fake”) chocolate cake. This frame of mind leaves me vulnerable to feelings of self-pity. It is a psychological state in which I can wallow in the unfairness of my genetics. It’s the place where it’s easy to say: F*ck it. Where’s that cake?

Here’s what I say. Desensitize your taste buds to all of your guilty pleasures. Do it until chocolate cake, real or fake, is such a distant memory that the sweetness of an orange makes you woozy and a carrot seems the cat’s meow. This might seem like a harsh prescription, but once you’ve exorcised your food demons, it’s much easier than you think. You think it’s hard because the Food Powers That Be have brainwashed you into believing that a life without cake is so onerous that even “lite” cake is better than no cake at all.

The truth of the matter is that life without cake can be pretty darned delicious.

Indulge Me, Indulge Me Not

In my last post, I talked about confidence, specifically the common belief that achieving a large weight loss will lead to confidence that you’ve got this weight thing handled. Those of you who have actually been there/done that know how ridiculous this idea is, yet it persists.

This is not the only false concept out there about weight loss and weight maintenance. In recognition of my five-year weight-maintenance anniversary, I’ve decided to share all the things I learned (and didn’t expect to learn) in my quest to maintain a 100-pound weight loss. This week’s unexpected nugget is…

Unexpected Nugget #2: The occasional indulgence hurts more than it helps.

You’ve probably been told that one of the secrets to maintaining a healthy diet is to allow yourself an occasional indulgence. It goes like this: If you completely cut out of your diet that special food that you absolutely love, what will happen? You will feel deprived of course, that’s what. These feelings of deprivation will build day in and day out until you finally explode, blowing your carefully constructed healthy eating plan to smithereens. The only way to avoid this horrific fate is to include an occasional small indulgence in your eating plan. This could mean that you allow yourself a cookie or two once a week. Or pancakes on Sunday morning. Perhaps a square of dark chocolate after dinner. These little extravagances will satisfy your cravings and keep you on the straight and narrow.

So, why does the occasional treat have the exact opposite effect on me? For me, one cookie leads to two cookies and then three and then I stop counting. Who eats one cookie anyway? If I go for a few weeks without eating cookies, here’s what happens:

The first week is torture – all I can think about are cookies.

The second week is a state of meh – something is missing and I can’t quite put my finger on it.

The third week is neutral – not happy but not sad either.

The fourth week is serene – what was the problem we were talking about?

To put it bluntly, the occasional indulgence only reawakens the craving beast. You would not tell an ex-smoker to have an occasional cigarette or a recovering alcoholic to have an occasional drink. It is not all that different for us recovering foodies. Our addiction is to sugar. Or salt. Or creamy, greasy stuff. Or all of the above.

You may recall a previous post about my “no-sweet” experiment. I eliminated most sweetness from my diet, eating sweet foods only if they were naturally sweet, such as fresh fruit. The result of that experiment was that my cravings decreased significantly and I felt more at peace with a low-fat, low-sugar way of eating. Recently, I’ve begun allowing a few sweet foods back in my diet and guess what? My cravings are increasing, along with a growing sense of struggle with food.

You may be thinking that if being thin means giving up cookies or pancakes or chocolate, forever, well to heck with it, you’ll just hold onto those extra pounds. Sometimes I think that too. And sometimes I don’t. It’s all part of the journey.

The Myth of Confidence

You might think that I would feel a sense of accomplishment about maintaining a hundred-pound weight loss for five years. Given the grim statistics, the fact that the vast majority of people who lose a lot of weight gain it all back within a year or two, it is indeed a big deal that I’ve pulled this off for this long. Yet somehow, I’m having a hard time patting myself on the back. I think I’m too mired in the weeds of what it takes, day to day, for Outer Thin Girl to ward off Inner Fat Girl, and that makes it hard to see the larger (or should I say smaller?) picture.

What’s more interesting to me at this point is to start understanding what I’ve learned in these last five years. It’s funny, because what I thought I would learn and what I’ve actually learned have turned out to be radically different things. So I’d like to take a little time in the next few posts to talk about what I’ve discovered, to share with you some of the unexpected nuggets I’ve unearthed along the way, starting with…

Unexpected Nugget #1: Confidence has nothing to do with it.

You’ve surely seen the Jennifer Hudson ad for Weight Watchers that has been airing since the beginning of the year. Jennifer is the picture of confidence, flaunting her new, slender body with a supreme conviction that she has this weight thing handled. And, yes, you can get it handled too. It’s not just this one ad, though. You’ve seen a parade of celebrities strike this pose: Marie Osmond, Jessica Simpson, Kirstie Alley, Valerie Bertinelli, Oprah Winfrey. In the Dogma of Diet Programs, it is canon law that sure as spring follows winter, confidence follows weight loss.

Um, yeah.

This is the biggest lie. That when you finally achieve your “perfect” weight, you will gain an enormous confidence that will carry you for the rest of your (thin) life. For me, the opposite has been true. It’s my lack of confidence that I “have this weight thing handled” that has been key to keeping the pounds off. I never assume that I can eat anything with abandon. I always worry and strategize when I know I’ll be in a situation that involves cookies. I don’t trust myself to have certain foods in the house. Jennifer Hudson says that Weight Watchers works for her because it lets her eat “real food.” But I know that “real food” is just code for “food that makes me fat,” so I try to eat “real food” (i.e. bread, pasta, potatoes, even <gasp> chocolate) as infrequently as possible. All because I have no confidence whatsoever that I will ever have any of this even close to “handled.”

You don’t need one iota of confidence to maintain a large weight loss. What you do need is a strong motivation. My motivation comes from an experience I had in which my excess weight hampered my recovery from a relatively minor surgery. For about a week, I was a complete invalid and it scared the crap out of me. I just didn’t want to go there ever again and in that moment I resolved that I would lose weight. Every time my resolve starts to waver, I think of how it felt to be an invalid and that sets me straight. Your motivation might be something different and it doesn’t matter what it is – what matters is that you have it.

Here’s the real truth of the matter: the smug complacency of confidence is one of Inner Fat Girl’s best weapons in her quest to defeat Outer Thin Girl. So forget confidence. Your best defense against her sneak attacks is to outsmart her with a measured dose of fretting over food.

‘Cause a little worry goes a long way.

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

Five years ago today, February 11, 2008, I ended a year of dieting and reached my goal weight of 145 pounds; I’ve been maintaining a 100-plus-pound weight loss, give or take, ever since.

Sometimes, in the day-to-day slog that is maintenance, I forget how ecstatic I felt that day. Life seemed unreal and magical. Everything I’d always wanted was in my grasp. I remember it as a time of enormous energy and enthusiasm.

A lot has changed since then. I suppose it had to. Maintenance is hard, folks, really hard. It’s not easy to sustain that initial rush of euphoria when everything around you appears hell-bent on enticing you to eat all of the foods that made you fat. The basic message has seemed to be this: if you want to stay at this new and lower weight, YOU must make whatever accommodations are needed; asking for changes in the environment, well, that’s just downright unreasonable. After all, it’s only one little cookie, right?

But I’ve decided that five years of struggle is enough. My goal for the next five years is to find a new paradigm for weight maintenance, something more peaceful and uplifting. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but the thought is pretty intriguing. And invigorating. I’ve also come to see that the last five years have taught me something and I don’t think I could have learned it any other way:

Being healthy is a journey, not a destination.

Beyond Maintenance

Next month I will celebrate my five-year anniversary of maintaining a 100-pound weight loss. It seems like it was just yesterday and yet a lifetime ago. I honestly expected that maintenance would be hard, but I had no idea just how difficult the road beyond would be when the scale hit that magic number, my “goal weight.” For to lose 100 pounds and maintain that loss is not a grand victory in an epic battle, as the world would have you believe. Instead, it is thousands upon thousands of infinitesimal skirmishes, fought and won second by second every day. Or fought and lost second by second every day. The experience of staying lean, it seems, is not unlike being pecked to death by ducks.

I think it’s also a particularly female experience. I’m sure men worry about their weight too, but I don’t think they reach the level of crazy that women do – and I have certainly known crazy when it comes to my weight, both at times when I was lighter and at times when I was heavier. I remember that when my husband first started developing a paunch in his forties, rather than seeing it as a tragedy (as I saw the unwanted flabbiness on my own physique), he joked that his newfound belly was his “power source.” I do not believe that any woman would ever be so self-accepting. The women I know (including me) agonize over every tiny imperfection in our appearance. We berate ourselves for having real, lived-in bodies. We obsess over every small indulgence (chocolate!) and mostly have resigned ourselves to a perpetual state of defectiveness.

Lately though, a little voice in my head has been nagging me, posing a question that I would prefer not to confront. It asks: what could I do in the world, what could I have done already in fact, if weight were not the overriding narrative in my life? What would my life be like if I were not trapped in this endless do loop of diet success and diet failure, defining and judging myself by the size of my dress rather than the size of my impact on the world? Why have I accepted a lifelong preoccupation with a number on a scale when I could have been preoccupied with learning and doing and making the world a better place?

Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic. But then this is what goes on in my head. The last five years have been an emotional rollercoaster and I’m ready now for some solid ground. I’ve decided that the task for the next five years is to figure out how to live a healthy life (which includes a healthy weight), while also living a life that is about so much more than obsessing over health and weight.

I’m not sure exactly what this means, but I think living in the question is often better than finding the answer anyway.

An Ode to Slow Food

My resolution for the new year is to slow things down a bit. That may sound a strange thing for an American to say. After all, don’t we love to compete with each other for who is the busiest and most stressed out? Isn’t “24/7” a badge of honor (even though very few of us actually work anything even close to “24/7”)? And aren’t resolutions supposed to be about doing more, better? Be that as it may, I am determined to decelerate.

One area I’m going to focus on is meal time. There are far too many days when I cram food down my throat as fast as I can so I can get to the next item on the To-Do list. My average breakfast lasts about three minutes, gulped as quickly as possible so I can get out the door to work. Lunch is an all-too-short hour packed with exercise and errands in addition to eating – that is when I’m able to take a lunch break. By the time dinner comes around, I’m often too tired to cook, not because I’ve been worked to the bone, but because my job is hectic and disjointed. So I mindlessly microwave something and eat in front of the tube, before starting the end-of-the-day ritual of getting ready for the next day, preparing the next breakfast and lunch that I will very nearly inhale. It’s an incredibly unsatisfying way to eat. Is it any wonder that I find myself struggling with chocolate cravings in the evening?

We are told that a calorie is a calorie and that weight maintenance is nothing more than the management of calories in/calories out. If you buy this, then a Lean Cuisine lunch at your desk is no different than soup and a sandwich with a friend at a sidewalk café. But they are worlds apart. The first is a matter of utility; the second is enjoying life.

I find myself longing for the experience of a leisurely meal, sitting across a table from another person, nibbling between breaks in the conversation. I fantasize about hours spent gabbing, having friendly arguments over politics, listening to tales of everyday triumph and tragedy, all the while crunching on a salad between sips of iced tea, or savoring a biscotti with a cup of coffee. In this way of being, large quantities of food are not required. What is required is quality, and not so much the quality of the food as the quality of the experience and the relationship. This seems a more civilized way to eat, something far removed from mere nutrition.

We often talk about our bodies as if they were machines and food the fuel, to be monitored and measured and optimized. In that paradigm, you get lectured by your doctor for eating the “wrong” things, right before he gives you a prescription for the latest appetite suppressant. But what if the body is not a machine at all? What if it is a gift to be lovingly nurtured? In that paradigm, you eat foods that bring health and energy, in an enjoyable atmosphere with people you care about. In that scenario, the only prescription you need is permission to take your time.

Happy New Year from Inner Fat Girl!

Tis the season for resolutions and you know what one of the most popular of those is, don’t you? To lose weight of course! This is the cue for all of those ads for popular weight-loss programs, like Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig and the like. The specifics of each system may be slightly different, but there is a sameness to the ads that is striking. Always we see a jubilant, newly slender person, vowing that they will never be that old, fat self ever again. New Year, New You! Right?

Hah!

This is the big lie of weight loss, that once you lose a lot of weight, you become a “new” person. In American-speak, “new” generally means “better.” So, we who have managed to drop some tonnage are encouraged to think of ourselves as improved versions our former selves. We are changed in some fundamental way that makes weight regain impossible. Yet, the statistics show the exact opposite outcome. The vast majority of people who lose a large amount of weight regain all of it (and maybe more) within a year or two. And then the cycle starts all over again, with a new resolution.

Here is what I’ve experienced since reaching my goal weight five years ago:

Your old, fat self never goes away. Never. It is said that there is nothing certain in life but death and taxes. Whoever said this never met my Inner Fat Girl. Inner Fat Girl is indestructible, much like the way roaches are immune to nuclear radiation. Even if She has been kept at bay for five years, She is always in ready position, poised to strike. The only way to defeat Inner Fat Girl is through eternal vigilance.

I know what you’re going to say. Eternal vigilance? Are you nuts? That sounds too hard. Well, you know what? It is hard. And ironically, admitting that it’s hard makes it easier. Another reason it’s easier than you think is because you don’t have to confront Inner Fat Girl head on. You see, Inner Fat Girl is quite sure of Herself, which makes Her vulnerable to attack from the side. You can change one small habit to be healthier, maybe have an apple with lunch instead of chips. Or decide to start taking a ten minute walk every day. Over time, the small things add up and Inner Fat Girl will be too busy to notice, focused as She is with admiring Her own image in the mirror.

The key is to never allow yourself to be lulled into false complacency. Or worse, false pride. The moment you begin to think of yourself as a permanently thin person is the moment you are most vulnerable to regain. Inner Fat Girl will be a permanent companion for the rest of your life and you should be glad of that because She will keep you honest in your efforts to be as healthy as you can be.

There is also something else that disturbs me about this idea of becoming a “new” (read: “better”) person when you lose weight. It implies that there is something wrong with the heavier person you are now. In my view, what is really wrong is our food culture, one that glorifies and celebrates excess consumption, then turns around and blames those who suffer the health consequences.

Here’s a resolution for the New Year: Learn to love your “old,” “unimproved” self and vow to do one new and healthier thing every day. Inner Fat Girl won’t thank you, but She’s like that.

Happy New Year!

The Cookie Monster

Another holiday season draws to a close and I breathe a sigh of relief. No more holiday dinners to navigate. No more holiday parties to agonize over. No more Christmas cookies. Let me repeat that last one.

No. More. Christmas. Cookies.

I encountered a new nemesis this holiday season. As if the sugar cookies and chocolate kiss mice and coconut snowmen were not enough, a new and more powerful foe emerged. An enemy strong enough to bring even the most resolute to their knees. What could this scourge be, you ask?

Creamsicle fudge.  <Shudder>

I am sad to say that I was completely powerless in the face of creamsicle fudge.

Well, so be it. Now, thank goodness, it’s back to my regular eating routine. Yes, yes, New Year’s Eve is still on the horizon, but I will celebrate at home and keep the calories to a minimum. Thankfully, the dreaded Christmas Cookie Monster is now settling his head for a long winter’s nap. Whew!

What did you say? We're having a Second Christmas?

Oh no.