Non-Scale Victories

Turning a little problem into a big problem.

I use this phrase at least a dozen times a week, most recently this morning as I debated whether to carry a screaming 5-year old out of the gymnasium or to let him just run out of steam on his tantrum. Kids really get this phrase--more so than any of the other behavioral jargon we throw at them in the course of the day--I think they like the symmetry of the phrase...little problem on one end, big problem on the other, and only them in the middle holding it together. It usually deescalates the situation nicely, and since the states passed those silly laws forbidding us from brutally beating your children, it's pretty much one of the best options we have left.

I realized today that over the past week I've been turning little problems into much bigger problems than they deserve. I took little tiny bits of loneliness and ennui and irritation that the scales weren't moving fast enough and I turned them into an all out celebration of sturm und drang filled with no exercise and a little overeating.

The good news is, I realized after updating my little weigh-in counter that my body calendar is ready for another periods, which means I've been busy turning into a hormonal wildebeest who cries at American Idol episodes and stares, wild-eyed at the sugar cookies in the Wal-Mart bakery because she believes her cats told her to go eat all the yellow ones with confetti sprinkles.

Anyway, since I'm in the process of trying to turn dark, twisty Erin back into bright, shiny Erin, I thought I'd list some things that have made me happy today and excited for my focus regaining in the morning.

1)No more muffin top

I pulled a pair of jeans out of the dryer today that usually require me to engage in strange, East German calisthenics to loosen around the thighs and middle. Even so, I still had stomach fat splooging over the waistband of my jeans and had to spend most of my days with strategically placed legal pads or coast in front of my midsection. I sort of looked like Debra Messing when they tried to hide her pregnancy on Will and Grace, except I couldn't have pulled off those muu-muus. Now, though, the jeans just slide right on and button and I can breathe and walk and they actually feel like JEANS and not strange, PVC bondage leggings I bought from some S&M store in downtown KC. Not that I've ever been to those stores. I thought a leather store meant handbags, I swear.

2) I'm riiiiiiich!

Okay, not rich, but I have money. Some money. More money than I had, say, in October. The Husband left me with a ginormous financial debt that I managed to pay off very quickly over the course of the summer, but when the dust finally settled I realized I was still going to live paycheck to paycheck on my current salary. When I started thinking more about my food choices in January, I realized a whole lot of my money was being sucked away by fast food, or restaurant meals, or impulse shopping at the grocery store. Making a food budget and cooking at home has been the best thing I could've done for my pocketbook, and now it leaves a little cash free for those weight loss rewards on the left of my page, or for whatever I want. I like that feeling very much.

3) I've regained perspective.

I snuck out of my lunchtime to watch a fourth grade spelling bee today, and I left after ten minutes because I couldn't stop giggling at the gravitas imposed on the situation. Three members of our school adminstration volunteered to judge for the bee, and as each kid spelled a word they flashed little green or red cards on popsicle sticks based on their answer. When there was a disagreement, hushed and spirited debates would break out at their table as the kid stood trembling at the microphone, awaiting his or her fate. I was so proud of the kids, but as I stood there observing, all I could think was "This is a frigging spelling bee. In a school gym. With the smell of fish sticks and ketchup wafting in through the air ducts." Then I realized I had been doing the same thing all week long. The week or so since my last weigh-in the scale's been a little high, and I've let that get to me. Intellectually, I know there's no way that I've gained those pounds and that it's just a result of PMS and salty foods and not moving around so much, but still the stupid numbers on the scale really bothered me. As I leaned there against the gym wall, though, I started thinking about all the other crap in the world that could be happening to me right now. Rape...violence...horrible poverty...war...death. None of those has visited my life recently, and I've forgotten that my personal struggle with weight loss doesn't define me or my life. It's just a major priority right now, and even if it's not going perfectly, it doesn't mean my life is over. I'll just have to keep trying again. And again. And again.

Someday it'll all be worth it.

No pain, no gain?

Tomorrow I'm cleared for physical exertion again, provided the snot stays clear (yes, I'm this charming in person too) and no more fever. To that I say woot. Let the games begin again.

I was thinking today as I was pining for my corner treadmill in The Little Fitness Center That Could that "healthy" really means a whole lot of different things for people, and for my family in particular. If I were to drive each of you to my house to introduce you to my family members, you would instantly realized two things about us: First, that my mother has an unfortunate obsession with large, shabby chic-ified pieces of wood with droll sayings stenciled on them (i.e. "The Queen Will Now Receive an Audience" above the door of the glassed-in porch that used to be her smoking room but now hosts at least 90% of the world's Christian romance novels organized alphabetically by author on white plastic Rubbermaid bookshelves), and that my father, brother, and I have not yet mustered the courage to ask her to please, for our dignity's sake, to take them down.

And second, that we are a family of hobbits.

My father is the tallest, measuring in at a whopping 5'8", followed by my brother at 5'7" (although when he chooses to faux-hawk his hair, he's a little taller), my mother is 5'4", and I, at 5'1", serve as the family armrest for everyone except my cousin who is 4'11". My mother and father also comingled his stocky German genetic makeup with her stumpy, large-assed Scottish heritage and created a family of tiny people whose males have scrawny legs and a poochy stomach, and whose females have the frail upper body of an Audrey Hepburn coupled with a lower half more closely aligned with, say, Camryn Manheim's.

My father had a health scare a couple years ago, and was warned by his doctor to drop some weight and get his blood sugar in check or risk diabetes and other terribly unpleasant diseases, so he did. And by "did" I mean I think he woke up one morning, brushed his teeth, and thought to himself "Today I need to clean the garage, go to Home Depot, and I guess lose 50 pounds." He accomplished this by replacing his triple scooped bowls of ice cream at night with bowls of cut vegetables. He also walked two miles a day on his treadmill every day for three months. I swear to you, that was all he did differently and he lost every bit of those 50 lbs. Granted, a year later he's gained it all back, but sometimes I see him sitting in his armchair with a serene look on his face, and I know that he's all Zenned out knowing that if he decided to lose 50 lbs. again, it'd be off by next Sunday and he'd barely have to lift a finger. My dad is hardcore. He's not a big thinker, and while he plans for things like hunting trips and car washing opportunities meticulously, he's not one to obsess over WHY he's doing those things. He just puts one foot in front of the other and chooses to do whatever it is. I find this amazing.

My little brother, while not thin, is the one in our family blessed with the good genes. Good hair, good bone structure, and not a whole lot of extra weight to carry around. I don't know if I'd like to see him extremely thin, and I think he feels comfortable as a medium to large size guy, so he exercises in spurts, and mainly as a conversation starter for later. He'll run a couple of miles twice a month, or take up rowing for a few weeks, and then there'll be no talk of fitness for awhile. Regardless, his body stays pretty much the same and I don't think he worries so long as he can squeeze into his seven layers of Old Navy couture every day he goes out in public without looking like the Stay Puft Man.

That leaves my mother and me. Ohhhhhh, my. What neuroses to uncover in the next two paragraphs. If my lifelong attempts to lose weight are an Odyssean epic of bouncing round and round until I have to just stop bouncing and finally make it home to who I am and what I'm supposed to be doing to be happy, hers is an veritable Ulysses, in that by the time she's done explaining it, you're just tired and confused and everything sort of hurts.

My mom, seriously and sadly, has a rotten self-image...perhaps the worst I've ever seen. She self-loathes to the point that I have heard her call herself ugly in front of friends and family. She hides behind tent-sized shirts and baggy Aladdin pants because she's so ashamed of her body. I find this so odd, because my mother is a beautiful woman...overweight but beautiful. When I see pictures of her as a young mother, she looks exactly like a Raphaelite beauty, with exquisite features and beautiful skin. But she doesn't see that, and so in remaking herself as a tough, shrewd woman instead, she's lost her ability to see the true beauty and strength that I used to remember.

My mother relies on two things to influence her life: Jesus and Madison Avenue. She once prayed every hour for two days after doctors found a spot on her lung, and since it never showed up again in X-rays she believes Christ can take away her fat as well. So she prays, which I cannot criticize, but sometimes praying is the only healthy thing she does for herself all day. She also reads and watches, almost obsessively, about the latest diet foods or books or trends and usually has them in our cupboards the week they're released to the public. She'll have a Slimfast for breakfast, a Lean Cuisine for lunch, and then goes out for Mexican with her girlfriends and wonders why she's so hungry and unable to withstand the temptation of Chili con Queso or an extra daiquiri. I suppose this approach is better than when we were children...she used to starve herself all day, living on cigarettes and sugared coffee until she turned into a ravenous snarling wildebeest at night, especially when she stepped on the scale and never saw it moving downward. She's almost quit smoking now, which is pretty amazing after 36 years, and she's even biking a few miles every day. I'm proud of her for at least mediating her own behavior enough that it's no longer harmful, if not incredibly productive in the long run.

What's really strange about my mom's relationship with weight, though, is that for her it's a major competition...me, my brother, the other administrative assistants in her office...it doesn't matter, and she's ready to fight dirty. She called me today to ask how I was feeling, and I mentioned I had one more day of rest before I could go back to the gym. "Ha!" she said, "I'm already beating you this week because I biked Monday AND Tuesday."

I really didn't know what to say to that. She asked me how much weight I had lost, and I told her my current total, and I heard the "Ha!" again. She told me she still weighed less than I did, and if I wasn't careful I'd be borrowing HER fat pants in a few months. I was silent, trying to think of a diplomatic response that didn't end with some variation of "suck it". I opted for nothing, because trying to explain to her that muscle weighs more than pure fat, and that riding four miles on what basically amounts to a La-Z-Boy recliner with pedals is slightly less taxing than running on a treadmill and lifting weights didn't seem like it would help the situation much. So I just congratulated her and hung up the phone.

But it got me to wonder...maybe I'm not doing enough, too. Maybe what I consider good enough for my own health goals would be laughable to the ones who've really succeeded. I mean, Poppi Kramer worked out TWO hours a day, with no excuses. Should I be running more? Lifting heavier weights? Am I doing enough? Eating the right things?

So after my conversation with my mom, and considering how different each of our bodies are and how incredibly disparate our methods for keeping them under control seem to be, I've realized that the more I learn about being healthy, the more I realized I have absolutely no real clue how to do it.

Ever have that feeling too?

Happy Anniversary to me..

I am writing this while sitting in the corner booth of a dimly lit Chinese restaurant in the southern suburbs of Kansas City. "The rich part," I reply when asked where, specifically. I am a weekly regular here, forced by urban sprawl and the fact the the only other nearby restaurant is overpriced and "run by rampant misogynists", as my music store manager warned me the first time I ventured out for food. So I sit alone here, a legal pad or a book at my side so I don't have to stare around the restaurant while I eat. I've decided I really enjoy taking my meals alone--it's an hour long meditation of sorts, as I sip tea slowly and concentrate on the bamboo shoots hiding like buried treasure at the bottom of my soup cup. It makes me feel content to have a quiet moment during my thirteen-hour workday, although this newfound affinity for solitude probably won't do much to improve my practically nonexistent social life.

It's amazing what sleep and several hundred milligrams of antibiotics did to lift my spirits from yesterday, even though today should've technically been categorized as shitty. In the middle of teaching lessons, I received a phone call from The Husband. During the past six months of our official separation in July, my husband has become convinced I'm not only freely dating, but also wallowing in sybaritic excess and having extraordinary amounts of sex with every guy I date (possibly all at the same time, and in a champagne glass shaped hot tub I'm sure he believes I installed the moment his feet hit pavement). So when he calls my phone, he does so with the intent of breaking up one of my sweaty, passionate, carnal rendevous with whomever I may have seduced for the afternoon. You know...the mail carrier. Or the pizza boy. Or the Orkin Man. Whatever.

The point is, he doesn't just call to leave a message, he calls and calls and CALLS until I break down and pick up the phone. Tonight he called twice in the middle of a piano lesson with Kiersten, a 6-year old sugar addict who has a penchant for throwing tantrums when it's time to leave my studio. Tonight when I realized The Husband was serious about wearing me down until I answered the phone, I cut Kiersten's histrionics short by putting her parka on myself and booting her out of the studio into the arms of her mother, who had a package of Twizzlers and a Sprite ready to soothe her savage little beast for the ride home. I slammed my door shut and answered the phone mid-ring with a curt "What?"

"I hope you're observing today", he said.

Christ, was it Lent already? Should I have been fasting? I shot a furtive glance around the store for people with ashes on their foreheads and realized mid-peek that it was actually just Monday. I'm sort of flaky that way.

"Observing what, exactly?"

"It's been one year since...you know."

Ahhh, yes. 'You know' meant the day I discovered the cache of emails he had written to women within driving distance of our house, packed my possessions into a Rubbermaid container, and began the most humiliating month of my life living in the basement of my parents' house. With a curfew. And chores. After realizing what he was referring to, I think I said something really lame like, "Oh, right. Thanks for letting me know" and hung up, fighting a chuckle that threatened to bubble up in the back of my throat. I was sort of bemused that he had called at all, and totally mystified as to how he expected me to observe the practical dissolution of our marriage. Hair shirts? Self-flagellation? Noisy sex in the champagne tub with all my supposed paramours? I was completely flummoxed.

So really, the only way I can see to observe such a huge upheaval in my life is to simply stop observing it at all. (At least until I finish saving up for the divorce lawyer). I should stop living life as some sort of demi-widow, hiding behind drab clothing and a plain face and spending my nights at home with Bravo TV and my cats. If the past year has been a process of revealing fresh wound after wound as I faced the incredibly unsavory truths about my life and marriage, maybe the next twelve months will bring subsequent healing and recuperation. I truly hope so, at least.

I promise legitimate weight loss posts, rife with all kinds of discussion about calories and good carbs and Hydroxybetalean-5 product criticisms tomorrow, because whining about my life is tedious even to me, so I can only imagine the torture you must be going through to read this. In the meantime, remember to gather with your families to observe National Erin's Separation Anniversary. Fireworks and hot dogs at midnight!

Weigh-In Edition: Week 4

No weigh-in today, just for the record.

I've been sick during this weekend, a kind of sickness that started with discomfort on Friday afternoon and ended up in bargaining-with-God types of pain and nausea from a sinus infection that took up residence in my body back in September and hasn't bothered to move out yet. Highlights of my weekend included crying in the corner of the Walgreen's walk-in clinic because the wait time was 90 minutes and for at least 80% of that time the world would not stop spinning, puking in the Wal-Mart parking lot after I hit my head getting into my car, and running through a brand new box of Kleenex in three days as I blew out gallons of fluorescent green snot in my sick bed. I get to go on 30 days of antibiotics and if that doesn't work my doctor has decided she must wash her hands of me and send me on to an allergist or ENT. I can only hope those possible visits result in costly and intrusive surgeries that my insurance won't cover and will make me look like the Elephant Man for most of next summer.

The weekend hasn't been all bad, though, because once I ran out of exhaustion during my bed rest I got to indulge in a lot of thinking, phone talking, emailing, and feeding my Sex and the City addiction with episodes I hadn't seen in awhile. I spun nonsense with my little brother, read letters from old friends and mentors, and thought about my life in comparison to theirs.

My little brother is a Local Boy Makes Good...a freshman at Yale, an accomplished musician, and generally the most ambitious and driven person I have ever encountered in my life. My mother describes him as a "walking miracle", an accidental pregnancy from a trip my parents took to get over the death of another brother who was born with an umbilical cord around his neck and died a day later. It's an odd situation, the elder sibling living in the shadow of a younger one, but it's our dynamic and until recently I've been comfortable with it. We shared bits of our lives...his involving planned trips to China and Yemen and Mauritania to do some political science work with his classmates, and mine focusing mainly around what reality television I had been watching and the new toaster oven I splurged on last week. My brother and I are phenomenally close, but the more his horizons expand the greater the divide between us comes.

Emails from friends are full of those same types of accomplishments--a new boyfriend in Switzerland, music gigs that involve summer tours of Tuscany and Provence, competitions with cash prizes and opportunities to perform on the great stages of the world. I read each of them, rejoicing to myself in the hopefulness of their tones, the bright futures they will have. But when I close the windows and move on to consider my quiet house with my quiet cats in my quiet, quiet life, I always end up wondering "what happened to me?"

I feel weird saying that at one point in my life I used to be accomplished, too. It just sounds conceited. But I guess I was, or at least that's what people told me. An Ivy League future...most likely to succeed...something along those lines. They really thought I was going to end up someplace important, doing something meaningful, and maybe being remembered for who I was.

But the difference between me and them is that I never thought that to be true. For every award I won, I obsessed over what elseI could've done to be better, as test scores came back and colleges started taking notice of me I convinced myself that I had had a lucky day, and if I ever actually went to those schools I'd fail miserably. I started deferring decisions about my life to my parents, and later in college to my future husband. I didn't pursue great schools because I didn't want my parents to be stressed out about funding my college degrees. I stayed at the same university for grad school because I didn't want my boyfriend to have to be alone while I was gone in another state. I stopped practicing--didn't want to be a musician anymore--because it wasn't a viable living and I would just be a burden on anyone else. Besides, the world didn't need another mediocre starving artist, you know?

I let door after door after door slam behind me until I found myself in a horrible marriage, working in a career I have no real passion for, and less than an hour away from the town I wanted so desperately to leave behind. And now, a year later and alone and ridiculous as I sniffle through piles of Kleenex, I've realized I used my family and marriage as an excuse not to move on, because I was terrified I wouldn't be good enough. That I couldn't do it, or worse...if I DID do it, I'd be absolutely unremarkable. I went from being a fearless, perfectionist girl to an absolutely crippled woman by my own self-doubt and left so far behind compared to the respective paths of my friends and brother that we almost don't have anything in common anymore. I have no idea when or why it happened, but it did and realizing this is shocking right now.

I know two things about my current life: 1) I can change it for the better whenever I'm ready, and 2) I'm not ready yet. Not ready to move towns, change houses, date, find a new career, go back to school...whatever, because every single day I'm awake I face the fact that just getting out of bed and doing the things I have to do to be functional is overwhelming and exhausting. My exuberance over getting a few loads of laundry done on a Sunday afternoon is tantamount to someone else's pride over completing medical school, because I know that just a few months ago I was too depressed to do it.

And to be completely honest, as I was lying in bed and feeling lonely because I was too sick to sit up and check my blog and all of yours', I realized that my attitude towards getting healthy was no different. Every time I weighed in over the last month I told myself I wouldn't believe I was really making progress until I dipped below 210, no matter how much thinner I felt than the week before. 210-230 is my up and down zone, and I've gained and lost those pounds countless times in the last four years. And the truth is, I don't really believe I can lose the pounds, and even if I did shape up no one would notice or find it remarkable. So over this past week I let some calories slide back in, some fat, a lot of salt. A couple of unplanned Cheat Days to comfort me for feeling so puny. And now on weigh day I sort of have to pay the price, because the scales didn't move in the right direction.

Beyond the aesthetic and physical benefits of being healthier, more than anything I want to believe in my ability to do something...anything at all. I want to know that I finished. That I conquered my terror and self-loathing to do something real. I can't go back to school right now, and I can't revive a long dormant music career without a lot of money and time I don't have just yet. Pretty much, considering what my life is right now, weight loss is it unless I want to train my cats to perform stupid pet tricks for money or something. I need to be able to believe in myself. I just don't know how quite yet.

Maybe it's the same things as tackling the laundry, or getting out of the house to go for a walk, or even just being able to smile at a co-worker in the hall...the small accomplishments will have to bring me joy for now. Non-scale victories and personals bests and all that. I never really believed in any of it, but being left spiritually and emotionally bankrupt is making me more open to ideas I would've blown off a year ago. Hopefully this week I'll be able to get back to business and I'll have a more cheerful weigh in post for you next Sunday. Until then, thank you as always for listening. I feel lighter already for having confessed that.

Linky Goodness

Renee, the webmistress of Fatfighter Blogs, was very generous with her bandwidth and stuck my little review of the Lifetime movie of the week To Be Fat Like Me up on the front page. You can check it, and a ton of other really cool stuff, out here.

I was reading the newspaper from my old 'hood and came across a very interesting series about a 40-something man and his experiences with gastric bypass. It definitely makes you stop and consider whether a one-fix like that is worth the pain and money investment.

Part 1--Hungry for a Change

Part 2--Going Under

Part 3--Keeping it Down

Part 4--A Different Life

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Sorry for the vulgarity, but...fuck.

Yesterday evening I drove to the gym feeling not so hot. It was a combination of a mildly upset stomach, fatigue, and wearing a pair of workout pants that were plastered tight enough across my ass that a keen-eyed observer would have been able to make out the slightly raised polka dots on my underwear, even though the pants themselves were not actually of the stretch variety (and at one point circa 2003, did not fit as such).

I walked in, sucked in my stomach and flashed a (hopefully) winning smile at Nerdy But Cute Gym Desk Attendant as I beeped in to the fitness center. Usually while I'm checking in I do a quick scan of the gym to ensure that the same evening exercisers are in their usual posts on the cardio equipment. There's generally five of us...The Misogynist Who Drives the Iroc-Z Without a Hint of Irony, The Preschool Teacher with the Lisa Loeb Glasses, The Guy Who Could Be In Rascal Flatts, Flatass, and me. They're my peeps...my posse...my comforting group of separated or divorced individuals who have absolutely nothing better to do on weekdays (and most weekends) than watch close captioned Fox News and trudge silently forward in our attempts to look good naked. We do not converse, so our only communication comes in curt nods as we pass one another by the water fountain or the towel dispenser. Our bond is one of restraint and respect...none of us look that good, but we're all here to get better and to at least pretend that hanging out at the gym until closing time is tantamount to maintaining a proper social life.

Last night, things seemed to be very different and not in a good way. I glanced around the room, not seeing any of the other regulars and made my way to the locker room to hang up my coat. When I came back out to the cardio room, I stopped short; almost every piece of equipment was occupied, and not by anyone I even vaguely recognized at all. Instead, there was the oddest assortment of individuals I had ever seen in the rec center...a group of three young women pedaling furiously on recumbent bikes while wearing jeans and sweaters...a huge man, shaped like a caricature of a superhero running on the elliptical while having a heated discussion on his Bluetooth headset...teenage boys recreating that OK Go video on two treadmills in the corner...a superfit woman in her late forties wearing almost no clothing and sprinting so hard her feet beat a rhythmic tattoo twice as fast as mine while she never broke a sweat. I was so uncomfortable around these people, and for no good reason at all. I was grateful when my warm-up was over and I could get upstairs to my sweaty weights sanctuary.

I walked up the stairs, enjoying the rubbery weak sensation of my warmed-up legs and stopped short again. My precious, quiet, slightly smelly weight room was jam packed with men. Six, seven, maybe ten guys were slinging weights around and raucous laughter and baritone voices spilled down into the stairwell like some sort of college fraternity reunion party. Not another woman in sight, and I couldn't bear the idea of asking this many men to re-rack their weights so I could use the bench and the squat machines after them. I lost my nerve, did an about face at the top of the steps, and didn't stop walking until I reached my car.

I was SO mad at myself, not only because I got scared of nothing except unfamiliarity, but because I looked like such an idiot in front of all the people who saw me walk in and then leave ten minutes later. I'm not a huge fan of psycho-babble buzzwords like "comfort zone", but last night I was indeed pushed out of mine, and I couldn't handle it. Those first few nights of going into the gym and obsessing over whether my ass was disgusting as I walked on the treadmills, or whether someone would make fun of me for using the upstairs weights instead of the downstairs Nautilus machines resurfaced with a vengeance and I was just too tired and scared to deal with it right then.

Tonight I couldn't work out again because of meetings and a surprise family drop-in so now it's been three days--since Sunday--that I've had a proper workout and my body is screaming for some activity. I can feel the yearning in my muscles even as the rest of me is in protest because I'm so tired and still not 100% healthy. I hope these rest-up days will ultimately do some good for my overall physical condition, but for some reason I feel like I've mentally taken a step backwards in all of this. I really, really hope not.

So Over It

I’m putting the phrase “Are you on something?” on my list of utterances that should never, ever be spoken in my presence by another adult member of the human race for at least the rest of my life, if not longer. It joins “Where are you at?”, the egregious overuse of the word “actually” by college students who reek of patchouli and self-importance, and “amazing” as used by celebrities who describe their close friend the Dali Lama as an “amazing person” in the same breath as they recount their “amazing pedicure” at Sephora last Wednesday.

I was in the teacher’s lounge yesterday, heating up a Boca Burger and 2% cheese single in the microwave when a colleague walked up next to me to nuke her own Healthy Lean Choice somethingorother. I pulled out my juicy little soypuck and prepared to retreat to the solitude of my office when she asked me, “Are you on something?” At this point I had already foraged for utensils, a napkin, a paper plate and a reasonably frigid Diet Coke so I awkwardly pressed my lunch tools against my boobs to keep from dropping them as I turned to clarify her sentence.

“It’s just that I don’t see very many people eating those veggie patty things.”

I explained that I wasn’t a big fan of red meat, and these were very easy to prepare and healthy so they were good all around.

“Oh,” she responded, “I just know that I had a friend who lost 25 pounds by only eating veggie burgers for three months so I wondered if you were on some sort of soyburger diet. That’s what I meant.”

As I walked down the hall back to my room my inner monologue grew increasingly heated, and I ended up muttering to myself like the crazy cat lady I’m destined to one day become. I was just so dismayed, struck with the realization that for pretty much anyone who has ever struggled with body-image, eating healthfully isn’t so much a matter of personal choice or habit, but a byproduct of being “on something", and if you're not on something then your other alternative is to eat shit and act sheepish about it. That's all there is in Diet Land.

Soyburgers EVERY DAY? I cannot even imagine. They’re fine for me once or twice a week during lunch, because I only get about twenty minutes and I don’t really pay attention to the taste of the food as I’m simultaneously eating, emailing, and picking kindergarten paste off the crotch of my dress pants (that sounded less prurient in my head), but to actively sit down to two meals of soy protein every day for three months…dude, that’s just masochistic.

But then I realized I’ve been guilty of the very same thing several times in my life. 6” subs twice a day, cabbage soup, lemonade spiked with cayenne pepper and maple syrup. Ridiculous foods I subjected myself to for nearly every meal for weeks and weeks, or months even until I couldn’t stand it anymore. And then of course as soon as the food asceticism stopped, the ass fat just packed right back on, because I had absolutely no clue how to control my eating outside the parameters of the latest fad diet book Barnes and Noble had propped up on the impulse buy kiosk.

The whole idea is really starting to infuriate me the more I think about this, and I have to wonder…have adults become so helpless that we are unable to trust ourselves to make responsible choices about our bodies? The weight loss industry is making billions of dollars every year because they tell us that in order to lose weight, the absolute only method is to follow their plan. Don’t eat carbs. Eat more carbs. Eat like the Greeks. No, no...eat like the French. Have two shakes and a sensible dinner. Eat six times a day. Don’t eat at all unless it involves our Fedexed foods in a box. Take this pill with dinner and this pill at night. Eat at least one of these seven mystic foods a day and watch the weight melt off. Don’t eat leftovers. Respect your food’s chi. Never drink lukewarm water. Sacrifice a virgin goat on the 23rd of October and sprinkle all your food with flakes of its dried blood.

The reason why there are sixteen million diet books and diet gurus and diet cookbooks on the market is because there is simply NO divinely anointed weight loss solution. I find it completely absurd that adults who have no qualms about spending hours online researching cars and mortgages and ideal cleaning solutions for their Corinthian leather couches would ever consider blindly trusting someone else with their bodies, and usually with no more premeditation than a cursory glance at a dusk jacket requires. I suppose the result of this is that many of us bounce from diet to diet to diet without ever really being invested in what we’re eating and ultimately feel like failures for not sticking with it each time. I know I certainly did, and when I reached rock bottom during Christmas and found myself eating my already substantial body weight in cheddar popcorn and nachos and those delightful cylinders of smoked sausage nearly every night of Advent, I did so with the knowledge that I had absolutely no idea how to eat any other way.

I used to buy those fitness magazines with glowing, sinewy D-list celebrities doing yoga on the covers and I would retreat to my bedroom with them, mindlessly chewing some sort of chocolate product and poring through the articles for the ones that featured the women who had lost half their body weight, or who went from “flab to fab” in just a few months. I thought those were the ones who had somehow found the Holy Grail of dieting…the perfect plan or pill or shake that helped them slim down and become demi-goddesses in their new, cellulite-free world. I was always immensely disappointed when they said they ate sensibly, moved around a little more, learned to enjoy food again. I thought that was a horrible copout, because being miserable and following some sort of strict regimen HAD to be part of dieting. It would never work otherwise.

I don’t intend to preach at all, because if I actually had everything about being healthy figured out by now, I wouldn’t be skulking around shopping malls with my Lane Bryant purchases hidden inside a Target sack (as if the world couldn’t tell on sight that my thighs are bigger than some of our nationally preserved Sequoias). I’m just approaching this with a measure of indignation because I realize I’ve been snowed for many, many years into believing I’m not equipped to make good choices for my own body, and that I abdicated responsibility for my own health in favor of a complete stranger’s control and influence.

Maybe what I’m really irritated about is the idea that since the foods I eat don’t come from a weight loss corporation or aren’t strictly defined by a book or a magazine, that somehow my efforts to be healthy aren’t worth consideration by other people. That my entitlement to eat food can only come if I am “on something.”

And I think the next time I’m preparing lunch and a co-worker asks me that question, I’m going to tell them I’m “on” several varieties of high-grade cocaine and if they’d like to join me after school I have extra razor blades and rolled up dollar bills inside my piano bench. Bring your own 8-ball, of course.