When I was a teenager, I would look at the articles in Seventeen magazine and do the exercises and makeup that were written about there and wonder why I didn’t look like the models. That’s because I was trying to imitate women who I could not possibly resemble. I am not Whitney Houston and I never can be. Only Whitney Houston can be Whitney Houston.
The same thing happens today. Here is an example from OK! magazine called, What I Ate Today, featuring Jayma Mays.
If I ate what she ate, will I look like her? Never. If I ate what the expert says I should eat, would I look like her? Nope. No one can be Jayma Mays but Jayma Mays. Once I realized this, all those women’s magazines lost a lot of their appeal to me. I used to read them avidly, hoping for the magic answer.
Here’s the magic answer: You can never be that, and that’s okay because you can be YOU and that’s even better.
Once I realized that, so much of the absurdity in my life evaporated and was replaced by sanity and productive activity. Don’t waste your time trying to imitate those you cannot resemble, and you will can have that sanity as well.
Getting a healthy body can take a long time. Just like a plant takes time to grow, so does a body need time to recover. You can give a plant water, sunshine and fertilizer, but it will only grow as fast as its biology allows it. You can give your body water, exercise and healthy food and it will only grow strong as fast as your biology will allow it.
So, you must stay positive, patient and persistent.
If you become negative, you might lose your patience with the length of time it takes and stop giving your body the healthy things it needs like water, exercise and healthy food. Just like the plant that withers if you stop giving it water, sunshine and fertilizer, your body will wither.
Four years ago, a nutrition professor at the University of Kansas, Mark Haub, went on what was called The Twinkie Diet. He ate most of his calories from processed foods like Twinkies and Doritos for 10 weeks and lost 27 pounds. Here is a news clip from that time.
At that time, nutritionist, Paleo enthusiasts and everyone else lost their minds. This little article from a magazine shows the mindset.
The experts weighed in and said,
This diet – if you want to call it that – sends a dangerous message. I am particularly worried about still-growing teens who might try it because it sound “cool.” Losing weight is not just about calories. It is about choosing healthy foods which are rich in nutrients including fiber, vitamins and minerals.
Twinkies contain sugar and unhealthy fat, as do other junk foods. So if that’s all you eat, you’re sending your body into shock. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you have to learn how to eat healthy. This kind of short-term fad isn’t the answer.
You want to know what else isn’t the answer, Dr. Lisa Young? Vilifying food. It is four years later and we are no closer to solving the obesity epidemic than we were back then. Making junk food the bad guys just makes people want to eat them more. It’s called “Forbidden Fruit” for a reason. Putting it off limits makes it MORE desirable, not less.
I was a big proponent of low carb and high fat eating. The only problem with that concept is that an entire set of foods become forbidden. It would work for a while, but in the end, I always wanted to go back to what I couldn’t eat.
Tell me I can’t eat broccoli and I will obsess about eating broccoli all day. It’s how humans work.
So, what DOES work?
For the last year, I have given myself permission to eat whatever I want as long as it fits within my daily caloric intake. That includes my former binge foods, like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I am allowed to eat them whenever I want.
Ironically, I haven’t had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for over a year and a half. I can have one any time I want. They are in almost EVERY store I step into, even Home Depot and the bookstore. If I ever want one, they are right there and I can get one. But I don’t need one right now, and I haven’t felt like I needed one for a long time.
In fact, the last time I felt like I needed one, I really needed to do some meditation and have a good talk with a my sponsor. Then I didn’t feel like I needed one anymore.
It’s NEVER about the food. It’s ALWAYS about why you want to eat the food.
So, what about the Twinkie Diet? The Twinkie Diet PROVED that it doesn’t matter what kind of calories you eat. As long as you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Stop beating yourself up if you eat a Twinkie. Just count the calories and adjust your day accordingly.
It’s the guilt and the forbiddance of the Twinkie that makes you fat, not the Twinkie. Without the guilt, there is no “Oh I’ve Blown It” Binge. Without the forbidden aspect, there is no “I’m Never Going To Eat These Again, So I’m Going To Eat A Whole Box” Binge. Without the guilt and forbiddance, it’s just a Twinkie. It’s merely a simple 135-calorie snack in the middle of your day. You log it and continue with the rest of your day. Once you can stop vilifying food, it’s as simple as that.
Whatever you are thinking about mostly will be what happens. If you are thinking about how fat you are, then you will be fat. If you are thinking about helping other people and working to make the world a better place, then you will find yourself doing that. Focusing on helping others is one of the best ways to get your mind off food. Keep your thoughts on helping others and you will be happier and thinner as a result.
I don’t know who the two girls are. Neither one is her or any of her sisters. I know what they looked like. So they must be friends of my grandma.
But maybe they’re not. Maybe they are the rich girls in town and have a bike that is cooler than she has ever seen. They might have a really cool bike, but she had a brownie camera and she got a picture of them.
Friendship or envy, it doesn’t matter so many years after the fact. It is almost certain that everyone in this photograph and even the photographer is dead.
Sometimes that’s how I feel about all the things that used to bother me enough to make me eat. It’s like that quote from Fight Club:
When I used to use food as a drug, I would eat when someone was mean or difficult. If there was tension or if my feelings got hurt, I would turn to the food. Now, (thanks to Overeater’s Anonymous), I have other tools to use when those feelings show up. Instead of eating, I can use one of the many tools in my toolbox to figure out how to deal with the problem instead of just covering it up with food.
So, in the end, it doesn’t matter if that photo was taken in friendship or envy. All I can see are my grandma’s friends on a bike.
Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.
I immediately thought of the words that I thought should be on that list. The words they chose, however, weren’t anywhere near to what I was thinking: Detox, Cleanse, Skinny, Never and Perfect. While I might agree with “Never” and “Perfect,” they didn’t come up on my list.
Here are the REAL five words we should stop using when talking about food: (more…)
When I was a teenager, I loved Mrs. Field’s Cookies. The walnut milk chocolate chip cookies were my favorite. I loved going to Valley Fair Mall in West Valley to eat them with my binge-buddy.
Lately, though, the cookies haven’t tasted the same. They just don’t taste as good as they did when I was a teenager. I kept eating them, trying to get that same flavor. I blamed the frozen cookie dough, so I tried making them on my own with the recipes I found that said they tasted “just like” Mrs. Fields, but they didn’t taste right either.
What I was looking for is that first high.
We addicts will NEVER again experience that first high from food that we used to feel when we ate. It just takes more and more food or richer food to get even close to how it used to make us feel. Just like heroine addicts, we are searching for a high that we can NEVER get again. Unlike heroine addicts, it’s very difficult to OD on food. We just end up getting fatter and fatter and eating ALL day long.
Knowing that food will never again make me feel like it used to make me feel really depressed me, but it has also helped me to prevent binges. My binge foods don’t have as much attraction to me because I know that my brain is broken. I know they won’t taste as good as they used to. I’m sad about that, but at the same time, accepting it is my only option if I don’t want to eat myself into oblivion.
Two months ago, when we went to Cottonwood, AZ to camp, we passed through the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. There was a little shop there that sold cookies (and had gas and a bathroom). Mike asked if I wanted a bite of his cookie and I said yes. It tasted just like a Mrs. Fields Cookie used to taste and I KNEW that I couldn’t eat any more or I’d have a binge. Ironically, it was some insane “loaded” cookie with a THICK layer of chocolate in the middle. Probably THREE times the sugar and fat that was in those original Mrs. Fields Cookies.
THAT’S what it now takes to get me to that first high: a diabetic coma in a cookie.
The only thing that ever helped me was Overeater’s Anonymous. If it is taking more and more food to feel the same as you did when you were younger, you might have the same problem as I do. Get yourself to an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting, tell the truth, get a sponsor and DO WHAT THEY SAY. There IS hope. It’s just not in the form of a diet, workout or pill.
Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.
I love these advertisements from Nike. They encourage me to be strong, to let myself shine and to become fit. Sometimes I need encouragement like this and these are the perfect ads to tear out of a magazine and put on my wall right in front of the treadmill.
I found another Nike ad from that collection, but I don’t quite like it as much as the other ones.
It says:
Make yourself proud
I have written about humility and how it has affected my weight loss journey MANY times. You can read some of the articles here.
Time and time again, I have learned that when I’m humble, I lose weight. When I start to get proud, the weight comes back on. Humility is not about thinking I’m not as good as everyone else. It’s about thinking that we are all of the same value. You are not more important than me. I am not more important than you. We are BOTH important. There is room for BOTH of us to be great.
So, do I want to Make Myself Proud?
Strangely, no. I do not. I want to make myself humble.
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