Why do we do it? I bought yet another diet book! I swore I wouldn’t, I know better, but there it is sitting on my kitchen table. I read it in the morning with my coffee, probably hoping for some osmosis-like effect. Why, beyond the obvious I’m fat did I buy yet another this book?
In my 60 some years I have been on my share of diets. I wasn’t always on a diet; when I was a kid the word wasn’t even in my vocabulary unless it refered to my uncle who had gout. Certainly it wasn’t anything to do with me. As a kid I wasn’t skinny nor was I fat. I was healthy, but I did eat prodigious quantities of food. I was always active, always running around engaged in some activity that kept me moving-and burning calories. My weight was always good and as I got into my teen years the only thing I added was boobs. This lasted until my first “real” job a desk job and my own apartment. I still stayed at a reasonable weight because I did lots of walking to the bus, to my job, to the nearest laundromat.
Then husband and children entered the picture. All of a sudden my time was not my own, food issues that I had when i was a kid came to surface. Clean your plate meant don’t waste food. So if someone else wouldn’t eat it I did. Slowly the weight crept up on me; then like a ninja, wham there it was! Of course when I look back now I would love to be that weight again. But that was the start of dieting for me. If I could go back like Kyle Reese warning Sarah Connor, to warn the younger me I might never be writing this. But alas I couldnt so here I am .
So my long love/hate affair with diets began. I think I went on every diet the industry cranked out. There was the grapefruit diet, the cabbage diet, the soup diet, and of course all the variations of the Atkins diet. I tried a milk and honey diet (with some disastrous results). The diet industry, I think, plays on our eternal optimism. We always think we’re going to find the pony in the poop, the prize in the Cracker Jacks or the perfect diet to make us look 23 again. What we always fail to consider is that we are all individuals. The very thing we prize about ourselves is what makes diet books fail. While one book may work for one segment of people, it won’t work across the board.
Worse yet, I have read that our genetics also make us fat. Great! Now not only are my jeans tight, but my genes are making them that way. So, optimistic as I am, I have also finally learned acceptance. I will find some good recipes, make some healthy food, and try to walk away from the table and any other diet books that may beckon me in the future.
P.S. It seems I am not completely cured; I bought a Vitamix to make healthy smoothies. I have tried a couple but have found that it also makes killer Margaritas!
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