I Hate Dieting
For the last couple months, I've been trying very hard to diet. I've been doing the weight watchers points plus program, which is really good, but it doesn't fix my fundamental problem, which is, I love food. I enjoy food. I take pleasure in food. I've lived much of my life with an attitude that you could add food to anything and make it better. Not just any food either. Salty, sweet, fatty, cheesy, chocolate, bacon wrapped goodness. I like the food that makes your mouth do the happy dance and doesn't care one bit about tomorrow.
The problem is, this put me about 40 pounds above the weight I feel healthy and I've started to feel unhealthy, even convicted about what it is all that food is doing to my body. Also, given where I work and the research I see all the time, I know that being overweight shortens your life and complicates medical issues and even has an impact on acquiring life long diseases. Yet, even with all this truth, I constantly want to give up.
Last night we had dinner at church, which we do every Wednesday. Before the food is served people already have chocolate lemon slices of pie in front of them. I'm one of them. I don't need a piece of pie, I'm probably closer to my goal if I don't eat a piece of pie. I want it though and I'm surrounded by people who also want it, who will enjoy these desserts with me. I hate that I enjoy it so much. 8 points, 25% of my daily total, are swallowed with the pieces of short term satisfaction pie. I make it through dinner with just a few points left, but under my daily allotment.
Service passes and I get my haircut, which means I get home later than usual. The kids go right to bed and I play just a minute of Warcraft before Shelly gets home. There is a problem. Dinner, for what ever reason hasn't stuck. I want something. For brief moment I imagine myself hiding in the garage devouring food where no one can see me, so I can act like it never happened. No log. No witnesses. I hold on initially with a cup of coffee and a couple chocolate covered espresso beans.
We get settled in with Ghost Hunters and my iPad is nearly dead. So, nothing to distract myself with at the slow parts. Nothing to think about, except what goodness might be lurking in the kitchen. "I want something," I say out loud. Shelly points out that upstairs there are chips and cheese. Yum! A frozen box of Thin Mints. I'm dying.
Brenda at work is a Weight Watchers employee, so she asks me nearly everyday how I'm doing. Steve, one of my accountability partners, checks my log and asks me if I logged everything. I prepare the things I will say to them to tell them I am done. I'll tell Brenda I can't do it. I'll tell Steve I need to work on something else, he needs to ask me about work or praying or even working out, but never about dieting again. I think about the bliss of throwing in the towel, reveling in the freedom to eat what I want. That's what I really want, is it?
I don't say anything for a bit. I wrestle with myself, immediate gratification, the desire to be just like it seems everyone else is. Perhaps I could just workout more, I think, but the math doesn't work. A two mile walk and 30 minutes of weights would get me about 7 points, or less that the pie I had earlier. I spend 15 minutes trying to forget about the snacking I want to do.
I tell Shelly I can't or shouldn't eat those things and head upstairs. I open the fridge, looking for an out. Something, anything to help. It won't be what I want, but just something. I settle on a Greek yogurt with orange pieces of cuties in it. It uses just a few of my points and it kills, at least for the moment, the desire to give up all together.
I don't want to do this anymore, but I don't want to fail either.
posted by Jason Smith @ 10:08 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
When I was practicing jujitsu in my senior year of high school, I found that drinking a glass of water would help to fight any cravings I might have. Also, I have noticed I snack more when I watch TV. If I can keep my hands and brain engaged, I tend not to notice cravings. I'm not a psychologist, but I believe cravings come more from our brains than our stomachs. One of the points of dieting is to reset your body and brain's gauge on the proper amount of food to eat. Hang in there. You can do this.
This is a difficult time of year to be watching what you eat, for sure. At the risk of sounding self-righteous, would it help at all to think of Advent the way the medieval church did, as a second period of fasting during the liturgical year? Not skipping meals for the sake of weight loss or fasting in an attempt to merit God's favor (which is an incorrect but all too common understanding of the practice) but deliberately giving up something you routinely indulge in for the sake of training the physical self to be subject to the spiritual self. I've already heard several ministers--Catholic, Protestant, high Church, low Church, all over the spectrum--encouraging their congregations to revive the old Advent fast as a way to counteract the temptation that most of us as Americans face to get caught up in the overindulgent consumerism that leads up to the Christmas holiday. Pick a meal a week to skip, spend the time meditating on the first coming of Christ to earth, and donate the skipped food or its monetary equivalent to charity. Or choose something you enjoy to give up for the entire period of Advent. The medieval church recommended food fasts as penance for most sins, and although you and I would take issue with their concepts of cooperating grace and penance, I do think they were onto something in recognizing that the root of many sins is an overindulgence of the flesh and a lack of training in self-denial. In the years that I have given up something for Lent, I have found that the first three weeks or so are the hardest, but about halfway through something clicks and I start to become more mindful of overindulgence in other areas of life (do I really need a new hat for Easter?). Only you know if this will work for you or lead you down the path of legalism--or if it's just the lunatic ravings of a sleep deprived medieval history nerd--but it still may something worth thinking about. Keep pressing on.
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