Food, we need to talk.

Thinking about that last post, I'm brought back to Pollan's rules, and the one I said was my favorite:

"Don't create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to help you feel in control."

I knew this was my favorite because of my disregard for dietary rules, but I don't think I explained that disregard fully in that post or this blog (realized this when Ben suggested I post my own rules and I thought "Ooo ... that's exactly what I wouldn't do.") And I think I didn't express it explicitly because I didn't wholly understand why I don't like rules in the first place. I knew they didn't work for me. That they were frustrating. But it didn't come into full view until last night, when I realized that I didn't like them because dietary rules and restrictions often put the blame on the food itself, not the way we eat the food or why we eat it the way we do. They don't recognize that people's relationship with food is deep and intimate, and by simply removing and replacing some items you are only addressing the shiny, approachable exterior of the problem.

For example, all of last year I lived under this guise of "Well I eat pretty healthy foods most of the time, so even though I'm a little overweight, I'm okay." Then sometime over the summer it hit me that my problem wasn't necessarily what I ate, it was how much. I'm an overeater, often emotional, always because of lack of self-control. And I knew it deep down the whole time, I just ignored it because I wasn't emotionally ready to address that aspect of my relationship with food.

What was my breaking point? I don't know. Living on my own. Buying my own food (you eat more, you pay more!). Growing awareness of what "wasteful" really means, and how much I waste (both in the trashcan and in an already-full belly). Gaining respect and ownership of my own body and self. A new-found sense of control, I guess.

Which is what diets are, really, an attempt at control, but all too often for external reasons. I have to lose weight to look good in that bikini, wedding dress, etc. So we do it the way we've been taught to control anything: with rules. No more chocolate. Maybe instead of targeting the individual foods we eat, it's better to look at our relationship with that food. Why do you like the foods you like? Why do you not eat certain foods? How much do you really know about what you are putting in your body? How much do you care? If it's very little, why?

So I won't give you, if you are someone who is unhappy with your relationship with food, rules on what to eat and what not to eat. That's entirely subjective and, anyway, it takes a lot of time to grow to love certain types of food, something I don't think nutritionists take into account. What I will give is advice on perspective.

• Think of "diet" in its original definition, meaning what we eat. That's it. Over time it's been morphed into this temporary quick-fix to a problem that can't be fixed quickly. Think of a change in diet as a gradual, continuous slope. 
• Your life, your happiness, should be your reasons for this change, as opposed to events or milestones. The latter is too frivolous on its own to uphold any serious changes. However, if a graduation or a wedding is merely a catalyst to ignite changes that you've been aching for deep down, this is fine, as long as you address the deeper reasons. Simply wanting to look good in pictures is not enough. 
• Go slow. If you eat a lot of fried foods and decide you're going to stop completely and only eat steamed or grilled, you will get frustrated. If you go to the gym for the first time in 10 years and say I'm going to run a mile, you will be disappointed. Listen to your body, and if you're out of breath from walking on the treadmill, great! Stick with that and gradually build up. 
• If you can't love your body yet, at least respect it. One day it will become love.

skinny jeans manifesto

About a month ago I received a voice mail from my dad: "Uhh... we're taking things to Goodwill and I'm bringing that bag of clothes you left in the basement." Panic and immediate call back: "No, Dad, those aren't Goodwill clothes, they're just clothes I don't really wear anymore but I don't want to get rid of yet, please don't take them." Pause. "What's the difference? If you don't wear them, get rid of them."

Whether my reasoning got lost in translation because of differences in gender or age, I'm not sure, but I didn't expect him to understand. (Will Smith was totally right.) Sure, that bag was filled with both too-tight jeans and old band t-shirts inscribed with angsty quotes that now make me cringe, but they had not yet sunk to the level of no return. There was still hope in some of that cotton.

And good thing, because about an hour ago, after lugging the bag back from his house, I experienced one of the greatest moments ever recognized in the history of womandom: I fit into my pre-college (and pre-weight gain) jeans, no shimmy necessary.

I've never experienced this elation. When I lost my childhood chub, it was because I grew vertically and just, well, straightened out I guess. My weight didn't actually drop. Since then, any weight losses were subtle and were countered by puberty-induced changes (I have hips now? What are these?). Because of all these other directional growths, my pant size has only gone up, not down.

Now, I know that I've said many times that I think it's important to focus more on over-all health than a number on the scale, and I'm sticking to that. (In fact, I have no idea what I weigh right now. I don't own a scale.) But--by this I don't mean that weight doesn't matter. It does, especially when it's in either extreme. So then what do I mean by this little credo of mine?  Well, it's sort of two-fold: what matters more than getting down to a certain weight is why you want to lose that weight and where you plan to go after you do.

For one, there is a colossal, often-overlooked distinction between wanting to lose weight to look skinny and thus more attractive (an externally-motivated desire) and wanting to lose weight to be healthier (internally-motivated). And for me, it took completely dismissing weight loss as a goal altogether to finally lose weight--counter-intuitive, I know, but this mindset worked. This seems like a difficult place to get to mentally, especially as a single twentysomething woman who would like to, you know, attract a nice potential-husband someday. But it's not, because my decision had nothing to do with the way I look: I wanted to get Healthier, and if Skinnier decided to tag along, so be it. Because of this, losing weight was even more satisfying; it was like an extra treat, the prize at the bottom of the cereal box.

But I wasn't always like this. I have countless memories of shocking glimpses in the mirror, tears streaming down my cheeks, scribbled lists of all the things I was no longer going to allow myself to eat. All such diet ventures have hitherto been failures. And perhaps rightfully so, because besides being superficial, they were punishments assigned during fits of anger toward myself, my body: "You let yourself go, now you have to suffer." All totally unrealistic. They were like those year-long grounding sentences issued by fired-up parents during high school, the ones that made you turn your head and snicker because you knew it was never gonna last.

Same with those diets, only this time it was my bad habits doing the snickering. Once my frustration toned down, so did my will to eat only salads for lunch, order from the "lite" menu at restaurants, pass on pizza with friends, etc. Everything about these "diets" was painted negatively: How many calories can I burn, how many can I cut out. These restrictions were so suffocating that when I didn't immediately see results, I gave up, thinking "Well if I'm not going to lose weight, I may as well eat what I want."

I focused on a tenuous destination, not a long-term journey. And as corny as it sounds, being healthy really is a journey, in that it is one little step after the other. Don't plunge in and expect to know how to swim; you have to toe the shore and allow your body time to accommodate. And it will. I found that the more healthy foods I tried, the more I craved them. Same with exercising. That my body loved me for it; I could feel it in my lungs and my stomach and my muscles and my heart, without a doctor telling me so.

And today, I felt it again in the empty space between my skin and the waistbands of those jeans. Without a guy's approval.

Pollan's Parameters

As Joel mentioned in a comment on an earlier post, NYT Magazine released its Food Issue this past month, and Michael Pollan has some interesting digital-image-quote doohickeys in addition to his article that I'd LOVE to post on here to stimulate all your visual receptors but I can't. Damn you Adobe flash player for not allowing me to steal things.

Well, synopsis anyway: Pollan asked readers of Well, a health blog on nytimes.com, to tell him their personal eating-well rules. He posted his favorites. Now I post my favorites of his favorites, or parts of his favorites that are my favorites, based on originality, practicality, cleverness and of course humor. Now if only I had a digital design friend to make them artistically competent; alas.

My parents are both from Italy, and one of our family rules was that you could not leave the table until you had finished your fruit: "Non si puo lasciare la tavola fino che hai finito la frutta." It was a great way to incorporate fruit into our diets and also helped satiate our sweet tooths, keeping us away from less healthful sweets.

 (Resisting urge to translate that into Spanish...)

Don't eat anything that took more energy to ship than to grow.

"Make and take your own lunch to work." My father has always done this, and so have I. It saves money, and you know what you are eating.

 The Chinese have a saying: "Eat until you are seven-tenths full and save the other three-tenths for hunger." That way, food always tastes good, and you don't eat too much.

 Avoid snack foods with the "oh" sound in their names: Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, Hostess Ho Hos, etc.

Never eat something that is pretending to be something else ... If I want something that tastes like meat or butter, I would rather have the real thing than some chemical concoction pretending to be more healthful.

 (Except I don't know if I'm as gung-ho as this lady... she says "no 'low fat' sour cream", so does that mean no skim milk? What is low fat sour cream pretending to be?)

 "When drinking tea, just drink tea." I find this Zen teaching useful .... Perhaps a bit of mindfulness goes a long way first thing in the morning.

 "It's better to pay the grocer than the doctor."

(Or farmer!)


And my favorite, for its realism:

After spending some time working with people with eating disorders, I came up with this rule: "Don't create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to help you feel in control." I try to eat healthfully, but if there's a choice between eating ice cream and spending all day obsessing about eating ice cream, I'm going to eat the ice cream!

This Laura Usher and I have this in common. These rules are all great for principles and theories but I'd rather refer to them as "guidelines" than "rules". As I've stated before, I think it's the restrictive nature of diets (and their rules) that actually frustrates and inhibits healthy eating.


But to each their own; I'd rather see people talking about healthy eating, even in the context of restrictions, than not talking at all.


Which, by the way--Pollan is still taking suggestions. Have one you want to add? Go to Tara Parker-Pope's blog and post it in a comment. Think another one of Pollan's faves should have made it on here? Let me know. Democracy is fun.

it started with eggs.

So there's this site I often use to find out the nutritional content of food. (I have no idea where they get their information from but it's very legit looking and has everything so I'll take it.)

I went on there earlier this morning as I made breakfast to find out just how bad egg yolks v. egg whites are, and they are very bad, if you are looking to raise your cholesterol just start drinking egg yolks. But I saw a link to an article about the "Paleo diet" and the graphics included two crossed spears and I thought "oh hey! somebody's talking about eating naturally!" so I clicked on it and very quickly became confused. The nutritionist talked about paleo diet vs. Mediterranean diet and what you can and cannot eat on one or the other and my eyes began to cross and I smelled something, perhaps my eggs, burning.

This is a good example of why I hate Diets. I'd say my hate affair started in the first half of this decade, when my dad and stepmom did the whole Atkins bullshit, trading their fruits for pounds of steak and bacon, then wondered why they weren't losing any weight.

Now there are aspects of the Atkins I agree with, and probably most diets for that matter. Protein will keep you fuller than carbs, especially refined ones, and I think that everyone should place sugar and white flour on the same nutritional battlefield as fat. Fat is not alone in this party.

My qualm is with the restriction aspect. The fact that this old guy's telling people you can't eat certain foods-- in an apparently very convincing way, because my parents treated him like a golden all-knowing god-- really grinds my gears. (Is it too early for a Family Guy reference? Probably.)

I believe that it's this restriction, these bans and rules that make people feel confined and unfulfilled while on a diet, and that's why they never work. Scenario: Woman hates body, tells self to stop eating sweets, does it for about a week, then caves in over tiramisu, hates self, feels like a failure, gives up, goes back to unhealthy ways. Convinced that she doesn't have it in her.

Have it in her to do what? Deprive herself in a completely unrealistic way? It takes a superhuman to only eat vegetables, fruits, lean meat, whole grains, and nuts... which is what "the paleo diet" apparently is-- no oils, no dairy. Or it takes someone with buckets of cash to throw away on personal (food conscience) trainers.

So to hell with these diets. America has been diet obsessed for decades and, guess what, we're still fat. I think it's time for every American to start thinking for themselves regarding their health, instead of putting it in the hands of people that I honestly don't trust, because their job is to get you to follow their diets. Stop thinking you aren't "qualified" to make your own decisions about what you eat; we're not dummies, but the Diet industry seems to think we are. It's just common sense, actually thinking about the food before you shove it down your gob. Like, say you crave chocolate. Ho-ho? Hmm... you are high in calories, could probably survive a nuclear holocaust what with all your preservatives, but you are deliciously chocolatey. Dark chocolate bar? You are even MORE chocolatey yet don't have all the crazy gunk ho-ho has! I choose you. But I also know you are high in fat, so I will not eat you everyday, because you are a treat and should stay that way.

But no seriously, try it out! And if you're not sure if something is or isn't good for you, do some research, just make sure Atkins isn't your only source.