Post-diet update, Week 1: Everything is everything
My weight is unchanged. But I'm enjoying these Reese's minis a lot more.
A few days ago, I woke up thinking about what I was going to eat that day.
As early as a week before, those thoughts would have taken the shape of calories. Of quotas, of things gained, earned and lost. Of punishment and judgment and prices to be paid, in penance to be extracted in extra walks and lunges that were not to be so much enjoyed as bartered.
That was before Jan. 1, when I decided to live this next decade of my life without believing that my natural instincts to celebrate delicious things was a sin. No more dieting. On this particular day, I measured those projected morsels were not in calories but in flavors. In tastes and sensations and sensuous deliciousness. I was thinking about the fresh, juicy vegetables I get in a weekly box, and what I was going to create with them.
Those creations were probably going to involve generous drizzles of olive oil, scattered handful of cashew, and decadent offerings of olives, or red wine or bourbon sauce. And they would be to taste, not to teaspoon.
I am aware that this sounds a little like sex. And that’s OK. Sex and food are all about pleasure. It’s time to welcome them and not feel guilty about them anymore.
I cannot tell you that after 30-plus years of parsing food in points, in color charts, in moralistic good and bad, that these thoughts were without trepidation. What if I gained weight? What if the bridesmaids dress I just ordered wouldn’t fit this summer? What if I thought in surplus rather than in deficit? What if I just went ahead and listened to my body, which craves oranges and fettuccine in equal portions?
I gotta tell you that in the first week of my new diet-less life, I lost half a pound. I wasn’t trying to. It just did. I have friends who say that when they stopped dieting they lost lots of weight and I would not mind that. But I’m not afraid of not losing weight. I’m trying not to be afraid of gaining it. My weight is settling for the moment around the place it was when I was dieting!
So right now I am going to file this newsletter and then I am going to make vegan meatballs and real spaghetti. And I will fold into every chunky, creamy bite and be happy that I’m alive to experience it.
Doesn’t that sound good?