Fitness, food, & family

Recently a friend (with no ill intentions) teasingly said to me,

“Oh, you can’t eat this. You’re on a diet.”

First off, I had already lost all of the weight I wanted to lose, so I definitely wasn’t “on a diet.” Strangely, though, despite having spent the last two years working on weight loss, I had never once regarded myself as being on a diet.

Sure, I was a member of Weight Watchers. Of course I was eating healthier food, and often less food overall. But I still made each and every choice about what I put into my mouth, and whether that food was something I wanted to eat. I occasionally stopped tracking my food for a few hours or a day, but disliked feeling a lack of awareness and control, so I’d quickly and voluntarily return to logging my meals.

But oh, how I inwardly revolted against that statement. It invaded my subconscious–and it was somehow personal. In the hours and days that followed, I found myself rebelliously reaching for cookies I didn’t even want, just to prove to myself that I could eat whatever I darned well wanted (and didn’t want, apparently).

It was a rather surreal experience. It made me realize just how destructive the on-or-off-the-wagon “diet mentality” can be. So what made Weight Watchers different?

There’s no wagon. I’ve simply changed the way I eat, permanently. I can make a choice to stop tracking my food, either by using the Simply Filling technique (which is basically eating very healthy foods most of the time) or even just stopping altogether and seeing what happens. But either way, I know if I’m eating three big pancakes and a side of pork sausage for breakfast one day, that’s a special occasion. If I’m eating it two days in a row, I’m overindulging. Hopefully on a Carnival cruise.

It’s no different, really, than how we conduct ourselves in many other areas of life. We’re not “cold turkey” creatures–we live moderately.

Most of us who have office jobs spend a little time surfing the web during our workdays. We don’t cut off all socializing just because we’re on the clock. We know that if we’re spending hours of the workweek indulging in an Internet surfing wave or stepping out for several mid-day lunches with a friendly colleague, we’re either going to make up for it by working late, pick up some extra hours on the weekend, make it a rare fun-filled week, or run the risk of getting fired. If we begin to spend week after week doing very little work and playing the days away, we get increasingly anxious about the fallout.

Likewise, if I’ve gone two days without exercising, I get an uncomfortable gnawing feeling that I’m slacking. Three or four days, and it’s the same “I’m going to get fired if I don’t pull it together” sensation. If I have missed more than one Weight Watchers meeting, or I’m worried about stepping on the scale, I know that I need to resume making better choices if I want to get rid of that uneasy feeling.

So no, I am not on a diet. I never was. I’ve just found a more moderate way of living.