The Diet Logs

I’ve been reflecting on this for some time now, which has culminated in a favourite blogger of mine also mentioning the matter in passing a few days ago. The matter being: our relationship with food, especially when we’re trying to lose weight, and the feelings of guilt too many dieters seem to go through.

Now, guilt, I’ll bet my keyboard that we’ve all known it, at some point or another. It’s so easy to experience it. We’re here with our nice diet plans perfectly laid out, we follow them to the letter and even more, but then, bam! comes the odd cookie or slice of pizza, and all of a sudden it’s all over, we’ve given in, we’re doomed, we’re failures, we’ll never manage to lose the weight, we’ve been bad, food is the spawn of Satan, and might as well eat the whole pizza while we’re at it now, because we’ve “completely blown it”.

Yeah, right.

It has taken me some time to realize it, I admit, but I’ve been there, done that and got the T-shirt. However, now I wonder: why? Why do we have such thoughts? Why do we depreciate ourselves, burden ourselves with such feelings? Because in some cases, you’d think we’ve committed a sin worse than murder, when all we actually did was to eat a couple of cookies. How logical is this? How flawed? It is only food, after all, and yet, we’re on the verge of ascribing moral and ethical attributes to it. Something is rotten in the state of Weight Loss.

I’ve discussed the matter with other people, all of them trying to lose weight as well. And we’ve realized something else: this black vs. white, all-or-nothing thinking is something that will cause most people to fail, not succeed. Self-esteem is already fragile enough as it is, without the need to add more shadows to it, and negative reinforcement, well, is worth what it’s worth, but in this case, it’s really more of a problem than anything else. We don’t deserve to treat ourselves this way, nor do we have to speak the language of guilt.

Guilt of what, I ask? Of eating an ice-cream cone? Instead of wallowing in guilt, then, maybe we should just, all that simply, say: “Okay, I’ve eaten it, now it’s over, and I’m going back to healthy foods. Like, right now”. Guilt doesn’t work, at least not in the middle and long run, so why go on? isn’t it more empowering to acknowledge that we’re human and imperfect, and therefore not bound by some kind of divine law to behave perfectly all the time? Mind you, it IS insidious! How many of us have already said, even only once, “I’ve been bad today, I’ve eaten in a way I shouldn’t”? Such a quality judgment has no place when it comes to food.

So, if you tend to tell yourself such things, but nothing ever seems to change, perhaps it’s worth doing what I’ve done as well: say no to the guilty thoughts, replace them with responsible thoughts, in the hopes of making the relationship with food a little more normal, a little less heavy and flawed. We’re often in this for life–our tendency to gain on weight more easily than someone else won’t disappear just because we’ve been dieting–and I very much doubt anyone wants to tell themselves words of guilt and insult for the rest of his/her life.

Granted, it may not make dieting easier either… but at least it will stop poisoning the mind!

Y.G. wrote this on July 20th, 2007 and filed it under Diet Logs |