Last week during my day off, in addition to writing, I sucked it up and went to a dietitian. Our local grocery store chain now has dietitians on staff, so it was a matter of a modest fee for a consultation.
My regret, perhaps a mistake that has cost me any chance at metabolism I might have had, is that I didn’t do this younger and sooner. Perhaps some readers could benefit from my example.
And mind, I’m not talking about any sort of diet that needs to be controlled by you and a physician, for example, if you have dangerously high cholesterol, or diabetes, or heart disease. My goal now is to go as healthfully into my retirement as possible.
I know, I know, I have 10-20 years before I retire. BUT I haven’t mastered the habits of health, exercise, and diet yet, so I figured I’d need a little lead time.
One area that we USians don’t know much about is nutrition. We are bombarded with contradictory messages about weight control. Pick up a woman’s magazine, and note the contradictory articles on toned buns and cheese cake orgy on the same cover (translation: lose weight by eating this cake!!!) There seems to be magical thinking that you can drop 7 pounds in a month, that weight can be removed quickly, that eating the right types of food can lead to weight loss, and that if you can’t eat the right foods or stick to a food plan, you are the problem. You all know that I recently gave up sugar. I didn’t really think about how much diet brainwashing I was showing when I decided to do that.
I’m a person who has reached an “ideal” weight about 4 times in my life. I have done this by the time-honored methods of counting calories, exercising, limiting bad foods, and in many ways convincing my body that it’s going to sooner or letter undergo famine conditions. This in turn has led to a increased difficulty in taking off weight each time I do it again.
For many of us, we follow a feast and famine pattern. Parsimony=weight loss. Restriction=binging. Short-term behavior modification=long-term return to eating problems.
It is also popular to talk about diet and to regiment food. Many of us chronic dieters become afraid of food. If I had money for every time I felt I couldn’t or shouldn’t eat a food because it was bad, or when I felt I was the problem because I couldn’t buckle down, I would be able to quit my day job and write full time. I’ve often said that I wish you could give up food cold turkey. Food is necessary, but food scares me. Sometimes I dread eating out.
YET I like food. I love to eat tasty, delicious, nummy food. I like eating. I don’t like to eat just because it’s fuel. I want my food to be exciting and nummy, not just a drill.
Every time I gain weight I’ve returned to Weight Watchers, and every time I’ve returned to Weight Watchers, I’ve had less success each time. Weight Watchers gets nutrition mostly right, but there’s still a problem. It still focuses its participants on a restrictive lifestyle. When I was keeping my weight down the best, I laid out menus for a week, calibrated carefully on the weight watchers system. And that got old. Later on in life, I would argue that that’s the way I had to manage my weight. My failure was my own.
Enter sanity.
Seeing a dietitian is about rediscovering a healthy relationship with food. It turns out that I was eating too little to enable myself to lose weight. Deprivation would usually lead to weekend binges, and you can do that, even if you’re not eating sugar, believe me.
Nicole the dietitian recommended a book called Intuitive Eating. I won’t recap the entire book, but the idea is that you spend time rediscovering what you like to eat, eating until you’re full, and then learn nutrition guidelines after you’ve stopped being afraid of food. You should also exercise, not because it helps you lose weight, but because like eating nutritiously, it’s good for you.
This approach means you discover that no food is bad, and that you can eat what you like. You should eat when you’re hungry and not eat when you’re full. Nutritious foods can also be good if you take the time to look around. A good rule of thumb is nutrition 90 percent of the time, play food 10 percent.
There is no guarantee at this point I’ll lose weight. The idea is that if I eat a balanced, nutritious diet, and I exercise, I’ll be taking care of my body for longevity. I can eat what I want when I want, but I should also keep nutritious choices in mind for their benefits. The theory is that if you eat nutritious foods and you pay attention to your hunger levels, and if you exercise, your body has a weight it wants to be at, and it’ll get there.
Apparently, dieting can be just as unhealthy as unlimited eating. Repeated dieting more so.
I’ll be checking back in with Nicole to see how I’m doing. This will be hard and slow, because we’re working on life-long habits.
But I’m beautiful at any weight. I don’t care what other people think about my eating choices either. I just want to take care of myself and be strong for as long as I can.
Your thoughts, as always, welcome.
Catherine
Interesting. I’ll have to see if the local library has that book. I’ve slowly started adding in more exercise, which is making me feel good, but I’m still not eating too heathily (is that a word? healthfully? am I inventing some English here?).
Good luck with the journey!
Makes sense. I count myself as very lucky on two fronts when it comes to weight: Genetics (both of my parents are slim and neither has ever been overweight) and a family obsession with food. The latter may seem bad, but I grew up in Oregon, and our obsession was expressed at the farmer’s market, oohing and aahing over the first artichokes of the season or a gorgeous bunch of beets. We didn’t eat processed food when I was a kid; my mom baked our bread and cookies until a few good bakeries opened up in town. And the only food limit we ever had was a “treat of the day” policy for things like fruit snacks or granola bars. (Oh, and if you didn’t like what she cooked for dinner, tough. Toast a roll or something, after tasting at least one bite. Not forcing anyone to eat what was served, but no making different dinners for everyone, either.) My dad always had a bowl of ice cream after dinner, and so we could too if we felt like it, but food was something we all faced (and face) with joy and excitement, not for comfort or with guilt.
I happen to think portion control and avoiding processed foods except on rare occasions are two fail-safe ways to live healthier. But when I say “portion control” I don’t mean calorie counting, I mean common sense. Moving red meat from the center of the plate into the little space previously reserved for vegetables, and filling the center with great local produce, that kind of thing. There is a terrific simple little book Michael Pollan published recently, “Food Rules,” where he elaborates on his theory that we should Eat Food, Mostly Vegetables, Not too Much. Worth checking out:
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
BTW, for those who claim local and organic are too expensive, I save a TON of money over the conventional grocery store by participating in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. I pay up front for 20 weeks of produce from a local farm, and it’s wonderful.
Thanks for the recommendation for Food Rules.
A lot of this seems like common sense, but since I’ve been overweight all my life, I’ve always been directed toward diets. I’m pretty excited to look forward to all the bounty I can have now that I’m actually looking.
Oh, and that pea/edamame salad on your blog looks wonderful!
Catherine
I read an article last week that said that eating five fruits and vegetables a day won’t actually reduce much chance of cancer.
And the advice about butter vs. margarine has totally flip-flopped at least once.
Plus, I know for a fact there are people in this world who never eat any meat, fruit, vegetables, fish, or bread, subsisting entirely on junk food.
The only thing that reliably seems to help people put on weight is dieting and exercise. I’ve never dieted, and never plan to. I looked at weight watchers, and all the fussy counting and planning and weighing and had a visceral revulsion. Ew! 4 oz of this and 2 oz of that and four almonds and five slices of ham and Ew! just Ew! People take MEDICATION to help them NOT be that anal retentive. That’s like counting your breaths, or steps.
It’s hard to live in this world, where we are each held up to this unattainable standard of barely-legal girl-shaped bodies. I feel the pressure too, every day, just as you do. But I say, if you’re going to be damned, at least get some pleasure out of it.
I like Michael Pollan’s advice: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
If you haven’t read his book in Defense of Food, you really should. It’s an eye-opener. So is Dr. David Kessler’s The End of Overeating, which describes how modern foods have been mad hyperpalatable to the detriment of our waistlines and our health.
It turns out that I was eating too little to enable myself to lose weight.
A lot of people do that. Even more flat-out refuse to accept that it’s possible to do that! But it makes sense; when you eat too little, your metabolism shifts into starvation mode and becomes VERY efficient, which is the precise opposite of what needs to happen to lose weight.
There is no guarantee at this point I’ll lose weight.
You probably won’t lose a significant amount. Most people don’t. But you’ll feel better and be a lot healthier, and isn’t that what’s important?
(Honestly, I think our society is so weight-obsessed, as opposed to fitness-obsessed, that I’m almost surprised some chemical company hasn’t used the carcinogenicity of their product as a successful marketing strategy. “Use our new Toxic Goop, get cancer and LOSE WEIGHT EFFORTLESSLY!”)
I could see the cancer thing happening, and it sort of did with the whole smoke to make yourself thinner campaign.
Catherine
Whatever we can do to make ourselves healthier and feel good, whether it be food choices or a philosophy to create a mind/body shift to better health, or, a choice to just not to do anything about it, is good if it creates a sense of sanity and contentment within ourselves. I get sick of thinking about it, since you know I’m in the same boat with you of struggling with weight my whole life.
I’ve had talks with people about diet and health. It can get to the point of sounding like religion and political nitpicking. No fun.
I say here’s to health, and raise my glass to another’s. It’s their choice, Cola or carrot juice.