Jun 13 2008
Feeling Deprived on a Diet? Good!
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about diets and being fat and all that jazz. Readers have been privy to it. I think no one will be surprised when I say that I am offended by folks on both sides of the fence - folks who simplify the relationship with food and folks who look for excuses. If being fat makes you unhappy, nothing should stand in your way of changing it. That doesn’t mean it won’t be a struggle.
Michael mentioned that people who overeat may have to give up certain foods entirely, much as an alcoholic can never take a drink again. I disagreed at first. I think he may be right, now.
There are certain situations where I can eat one of something. These situations are when only one of something exists, or where Michael is watching me and pulling me away. For example, I go to a restaurant and order a piece of cake. One piece of cake for me. Or Michael makes me one strawberry shortcake. That means one strawberry shortcake for me. In any other situation, I will blow my diet. I will say to myself, here is a box of donuts. I will have one. Oh, one more half can’t hurt. And before I can blink, I’ve eaten four donuts and I feel like crap and I can’t eat anything else that day because I’ve already eaten my calories for the day. Once I let myself have that first donut, I have to eat more. Not because they taste good (really, they make me ill from too much sugar), just because they’re there.
So maybe, in my lifetime, I can never eat another donut, another piece of cake, another brownie that hasn’t been plated for me. Maybe I can’t make cookies for xmas. Does that make me a little sad? Absolutely. You know what makes me sadder? That I would continue to put my life at risk by choosing to keep those things around when I know I will overeat them.
If you’re someone who can limit what you eat all the time, you don’t have to deny yourself food. But if you’re like me and you’ll sit down with a one pound bag of peanut butter m & m’s or a quart of ice cream and scarf them down in one night, you have bigger concerns than feeling deprived.
Does that sound cold? Maybe. But it’s true for me. And it’s hard for me - I associate so much of my comfort, of happy moments in my childhood with baking with my mother, shopping with her or my father. There’s a reason I’m fat to begin with. And I am coming to realize that I have to find different ways of expressing love and thoughtfulness for people - before I baked or made candy. Now, I don’t know what to do. But here’s the thing - if I want to get in shape, to help my depression, to have healthy kids one day - all of those habits have to change. And if the way I have to change them is to deprive myself of those foods forever, I’m willing to do it. I will have to find something else to take their place, but damn it, I’ll do it.
If your number one concern when you’re dieting is whether you’ll still be able to eat the same foods, you’re doing it wrong. You won’t, it’s okay, you’ll learn to deal with it.
There have been studies that compared the Alcoholics Anonymous school of treatment (”don’t drink anymore”) with alcoholism treatment that focused on teaching people to drink in moderation. Interestingly, they’re both found to be about equally successful, but not for the same people.
I think whether you fall into one group or the other (if you succeed, of course) depends on your view of the whole thing. To use dieting as an example: if you consider your current eating habits in terms of the way you ate before (”I eat less than I used to”) I think you’ll do better by abstaining completely from your danger foods, because the historical comparison will taunt you. On the other hand, if your viewpoint is “I used to eat more than I do”, I think you’re more likely to be able to withstand the temptation of eating something in moderation, and may be more likely to succeed because you won’t feel deprived.
My point is, people come into a treatment program with varying levels of readiness. You may not be willing to give up our past relationship with food, but that doesn’t mean you always won’t be. To use a crappy relationship metaphor, when the day comes that a donut is no longer an old flame but just a good friend, you’ll be able to face it without overeating.
I see two groups of people dieting in this country: a group who put their mind to it and seemingly magically succeed (but many of them end up yo-yo dieting), and a group who get two weeks into every diet they try and fail. The vast majority of diets are based on the idea of moderation, of replacing foods with similar foods without throwing out the contents of your pantry and completely changing the way you eat. Maybe the second group, the ones who always fail, just need to take the AA approach. People who need that approach are not well served by the current commercial diet landscape, or by the vast majority of restaurants.
but the donut and I, we had such good sex. Can that flame every really die? I’m not sure it will for me.
This traffic pylon is twice the man you’ll ever be.