Diets

This summer, let’s effing eat!

Cooking a favorite pasta dish with a view in Port Angeles

CONTENT WARNING: Diets and weight loss are discussed in today’s letter. No specific foods or weights are mentioned. I wanted to give you a heads up if this is sensitive for you. I am not a qualified professional in this field, just sharing my experience and encouraging others to stop talking about diets all the time.

Dear Friend,

I love you and I want to hear all about your life. But please don’t tell me about your diet. Better yet, don’t go on a diet. But if you must, I beg you not to tell me about it. I don’t care if it’s overtly for weight loss or not. You and I both know we sometimes use words like “health” as euphemisms for weight loss.

I do want to talk about food, though! I love food! I don’t even mind talking about the health benefits or detractions of various foods from time to time. I love my kombucha! But I will not discuss weight or size reduction, nor will I discuss food nor exercise in that context - I just can’t.

First of all, you are so much more interesting than the size and shape of your body. I wish we wouldn’t spend so much of our time together (especially as women) talking about it because you’re gorgeous and also I just like other things about you that are so much more important.

Secondly, I tell you this as a boundary to protect my own peace. I have finally come to a place of acceptance and joy in my body as it is right now. I am grateful for what it can do and if I don’t feel good in my clothes, I buy different clothes. I don’t have the mental capacity to worry about my ideal weight or what foods are “good” or “bad” this year. I’m too busy with travel and hobbies and children.

I have done diets, oh have I done diets. I have been on Weight Watchers multiple times. At one point in my twenties, I was skinnier than I was in the 8th grade. I’m sure that was not healthy. It certainly wasn’t sustainable. I once did a juice cleanse before going to Hawaii a couple years ago. It made me so sick I could barely work for days. Our bodies are meant to change as we age. I don’t know why we spend so much time fighting it instead of enjoying the shit out of getting older. Sometimes we’re meant to be more plump than last year, with fewer fucks to give about all of it. Let’s do that.

I grew up in nineties diet culture with Snackwell cookies and Diet Pepsi galore. The idea that we needed to always be working toward thinness was societally ingrained. But you and I don’t have to accept that, do we?

From time to time I’ll focus on nutritious foods because it makes me feel good, but I refuse to count calories or restrict. My focus is on adding foods that fuel my activities and my brain. Maybe I focus on reducing alcohol or caffeine because they affect my sleep negatively. I think tinkering with what we eat is okay if we don’t make it our whole thing (and if it’s safe for you, as an individual, to do so). Obviously some have medically-driven restrictions and some have moral aversions to certain foods. I will happily accommodate any and all of those while I cook us a feast.

But collectively, let’s stop making what we do and don’t eat our whole thing. We need to stop making the size of our bodies our whole thing. No one worth knowing is going to like you any more or less if you go up or down a pants size. But they might like you a little less if that is all you talk about.

So how do we stop caring about this stuff? Here’s my advice, if you want it. If you follow anyone, include fat influencers on Instagram or wherever you social media. Follow disabled influencers, too. Follow people who look like you and who don’t. Follow people of all physical types and groups like Unlikely Hikers. The goal is to see many types of bodies doing cool things. Watch them have fun, do things, and exist with joy. Don’t abandon them when they share about how the world hurts them. Get uncomfy discovering your own biases. Read (and listen) about why our society is so fucked up about this stuff - I suggest starting with the Maintenance Phase podcast. 

Throw out your scale and your diet books. Unfollow anyone who makes you feel insecure about your body or who is trying to sell you a path to thinness. Adjust your ad settings so you see as little of that shit as possible. Do nothing that has the stated goal of weight loss. Read fewer magazines. Watch less TV. Go for a walk outside. Take up a new physical hobby if you can. None of this is a one-shot solution to healed body image, but it all has helped me.

I’m not perfect at this stuff, but I think we can do better together. I just don’t want you to be as miserable as I have been before. I don’t want you to pass out on a fucking juice cleanse.

See you down the road,

Jamie