Balancing Acts

The Atlantic ran article this week discussing how successful women are once again re-examining the question of work-life balance, in other words, whether a woman can really have it all. This is not an issue for me. Somehow, in my early twenties, I came to the realization that “having it all” might be more difficult than it sounded and I decided that I would focus on my career. While I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like had I had children, I do not regret choosing to be childless. In fact, the older I get, the more I marvel at my wisdom in choosing architecture over motherhood, for as sure as day leads to night and night leads to noshing, I was not cut out for parenthood.

Yet, when it comes to food, I think I still believe that somehow I can have it all. A large part of the agony of my post-fat life is that I haven’t found the balance, that place where healthy eating co-exists in perfect harmony with food culture and custom. I suppose you could say that I want to have my cake and eat it too!

Isn’t that the Promised Land we all hunger for? That once you are slender, you need only adopt a simple “lifestyle change” and all will be well forevermore. This is the great lie. It often seems that I’ve merely made a trade, an exchange of the problems of obesity for the problems of staying thin in a food-obsessed world, not the least of which is the constant dilemma. Do I eat this piece of cake and then gird myself for the number on the scale the next morning? Or do I resist this piece of cake and risk making a fuss? It’s maddening that there is no right answer ever, just a weighing of which choice has the most undesirable consequences.

The cruelest moments are when I realize that I have created the dilemma myself! My husband has a birthday coming up and I heard myself asking him if he wanted me to bake him a cake. Not just any cake, but a cake covered in shredded coconut, his favorite. If you know anything about food, you know that shredded coconut is a particularly delicious – and evil – substance. One cup of shredded coconut equates to over 450 calories, nearly 150% of the recommended maximum daily allowance of saturated fat and 10 teaspoons of sugar – and I will need way more than one cup. Yet, I’ll make the cake for him and inevitably I will feel compelled to eat some of it. Why on earth do I do that?

Well, remember, food is love. I suppose that sounds like I’m justifying my irrational behavior. Um, yes, I am. For food is not rational. Maybe this is the real challenge, to find a way of living that respects the head, with its hard-earned knowledge of nutrition and health, yet also the heart, full of longing and memory, where the simple act of eating is inextricably linked with people we love and times we cherish.

I’ve spent the last four years searching for an equilibrium that always seems just beyond reach. What if there is no perfect balance between health and food culture, no place where having it all is anything other than another fairy tale? What if having it all is not the point after all, but rather making sure you have what is most dear? Health is dear to me. So are my family and friends.

I was afraid I was going to say something like that.