Tag Archives: food

Eating Dessert Makes You Thin

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Many of us walk very thin tight ropes when it comes to pleasure. We avoid falling into our cravings, afraid that if we give ourselves what we deeply desire, we will lose control. We won’t be able to stop.

If you are female you know the pressure is real to be thin. It’s everywhere, but most importantly it sits in our heads.

And it sat in mine for a long time.

But at a certain point I got off the treadmill. I allowed myself to devote only 25-30 minutes at most to work-outs. I told the obsessor to jump in a lake, and cut my workouts down. Additionally (and more dangerously) I also allowed myself to eat what I wanted.

And what I wanted was frozen yogurt.

Every night I had a tradition of making tea and preparing my favorite nighttime snack. This was frozen yogurt (mint chocolate chip or the new Fage 0% blueberry) mixed with ginger cookies that were dipped in tea. This would make the cookies warm and gooey and would create a swirl in the frozen yogurt. This was always enjoyed while watching one of my favorite shows like “Modern Family” or “Girls” or “Happy Ending”….the ultimate double indulgence.

I became lazy about watching my food, and I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted. I told the perfectionist in me to relax, go put her feet up.

Then came the week of my boyfriend’s birthday. I ate cake four days in a row.

What I didn’t realize was that allowing myself to indulge made it less forbidden. The sweets were not as exciting because they were not off limits. The rebel in me became bored. Then at a certain point I no longer needed the desserts every night.

[Some of you might role your eyes..."oh Frozen Yogurt...that's the healthy stuff, she's crazy." The truth is when you are short and curvy and you're trying to lose a few pounds...eating a bunch of sugar (even fro yo)--before bed--will get you.]

After the fro yo indulgence and burnout I decided that was enough dessert and I wanted to be more aware of what I was eating. I wasn’t caving in to the enemy by being aware of my health, but rather going after something that I wanted for a long time–and that was being able to go to bed without dessert (or wine). Tracking what I ate didn’t seem horrible like it once did. And now I track what I eat.


The cookie monster within you will set you free

From tracking I realized I wasn’t eating enough during the day. What I learned from tracking my food is that you shouldn’t deprive yourself all day only to eat too much at night. Don’t let the diet industry manage your thoughts all day until you can’t take it anymore and you eat everything in the fridge.

Now I get to eat what I want during the day. I eat peanut butter. Sometimes I eat it twice a day. I don’t eat the whole jar, but I eat it. And it tastes wonderful. As of very recently I’m not eating chocolate protein bars anymore, but real chocolate…

And I feel a lot better. Neither weight watchers nor the gym nor a low carb, high protein diet were the answers for me. It was actually getting past the mental barriers in my mind about pleasure and deprivation.

There is a weird thing in America around eating. The big lie the diet industry tells us is we can shame and abuse ourselves into getting thin. The truth is you don’t abuse food when you don’t feel deprived of it.

So the psychology lesson is when you don’t deprive yourself, you end up empowered. You get control of your life and your choices. You do that by giving yourself what you need when you need it.

You can see my electronic hoarding of desserts on Pinterest. The hoarding is only happening online now I’m happy to report. Until I feel like eating cake again…and I will eat it, without guilt.

 

The Hungry Homemaker: How Women Are Taught To Feed While Depriving Herself

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I’m interested in the relationship between women and food. That being said I’ve been reading Fat is a Feminist issue by Susie Orbach. I’m reading this book because I’m curious about how woman are taught to be nurturers and providers, while also taught they must deprive themselves of food in order to be worthy.

As Susie Orbach wrote in her book that looks at compulsive eating, “The roots of compulsive eating in women stem from women’s position in society–she feeds everyone else, but her needs are personally illegitimate.”

To be slim is the ultimate achievement for women. But to magnify this pressure, it’s not just about being disciplined about what goes in your mouth, you also must be the perfect homemaker–crafty, DIY, it’s cool in a 50s kitschy way to be the perfect homemaker today in 2012.

There’s nothing wrong with being a stay at home mom, but there is something deeply wrong with the media’s relentless cacophony of messaging that women must be perfect. And we participate in the creation of this cultural reality for women.

Go look at Pinterest. Pinterest features an array of fashionable clothes, artfully witty infographics about feeling guilty for eating chocolate, tips on how to get a six pack, photos of Ryan Gosling, religious messages,  and aesthetically pleasing photographs of food. It’s like being in the mind of the girls from the Virgin Suicides if they ever grew up. It’s a scary place–and this ladies and gentleman is the dominant ideology of America in 2012.

“In a woman’s psychology, an important aspect of her self-esteem derives from her ability to be a good nurturer–in perhaps a parallel sense the aspect of self-esteem that a man derives from his job and his capacity to be the economic provider….if we take a look at almost any magazine that is directed at women, a woman is assaulted page after page with reminders about her responsibility to feed others…At the same time, the not-so-subtle message of women’s magazines and daytime television advertisements is that women cannot afford to rely on their judgement about what food is appropriate.”

What Susie Orbach wrote about in the late 70s is not a new story, but the sheer omnipresence of that story has grown due to the spread of technology. Everywhere we look we are told we must be thin and we must also be the providers–the one who makes the decision in the house about what’s for dinner.

Additionally women learn to hate their bodies at a young age, often through their relationship with their mothers. How she feels about herself is passed down through the generations.

“A woman’s body we learn, is not a very good or safe environment to live inside. Rarely are our mothers and other female adults able to convey to a young woman that her body, whatever natural shape it has is a source of pride and of beauty since they themselves have not been able to feel that….It is no wonder then that we become frightened of our bodies and see them not as where we live but as a part of us that we must control, watch and direct.”

That joke about the Jewish mother (or Greek mother or any mother), “eat, eat, you’re skin and bone” rings true. Women sweat to feed their families but when it comes to their own needs, forget about it. And not providing for the family in the kitchen makes you less of a woman.

“Food is what she gives to others but must deprive herself of. Food is good for others but somehow dangerous to the woman herself. Food, which is imbued with the spirit of giving when prepared for others, takes on a sinister face when women eat. A woman is meant to police her eating, to feel cautious of what she eats. Food is her power in the family, it is her way of caring for others. Food is her power in the family, it is a means by which she exerts incredible influence; she brings comfort, reward, reassurance through it.”

I want to know, as a society what is this obsession with looking like a teenage boy? Why is the media still dictating that the ideal woman looks like Justin Bieber, but has big boobs? Who is driving home that image? Are they straight?

We need to start questioning what we all take as normal and acceptable. It’s not acceptable.