Why I Don’t Diet – An Ode to My Father.

This says so  much to me, I’m teary just reading it.  Of course this is not my experience and even though both sets of my Parents, (yes I was adoption and had two mothers and two fathers) Everyone of them had food issues and would diet…When I found my birth mother’s food journals I saw that we dieted the exact same way even though I had not been with her since the age of six.  Our numbers and diets always started in at around the same weight, 175 lbs was the weight we had both decided was unacceptable and our fasting would begin.

Some days when I’m feeling weak and down I wish to be that number again, but it’s been years since I was that slender.  Yes you read correctly 175 was “Slender.”  Now at 290 pounds for the most part I accept myself where I am.  FAT, Obese?  Morbidly Obese? to some…This is where 40 years of dieting got me.

Someone once said to me that I was the kind of person they would want to have in their cave.  And who knows…perhaps my ability to fast and binge would have helped in prehistoric times.  But that is not going to send me out to follow the Paleo Diet now…or what ever BS they are selling ( thin trend du jour )  My disordered eating gave me years of crazy eating rules to undo in my head about foods…perfectly delicious and nutritious fruits and vegetables became intolerable.

This is who I am today and I strive to be healthy at this size, and move joyfully… (sadly even movement has been effected by my dieting and disordered body image history.)  I cry in yoga class because my body remembers how flexible it was years ago when all I did in a day was run from karate, dance, spinning, yoga, weight training….But I couldn’t live like that…I am more then just my body, I am more then my physical appearance.  I have things to say and places to go and things to create.  Focusing on my exterior 24/7 was not enough.  So I put that aside.  I wear clothes that feel good, sizes that fit, I may not look like I did when I was dieting and eating disordered but for the most part my thinking is clear, I am doing something with my life and I have family and friends who love and support me in the here and now.

This is not an easy journey, but I fight everyday so that my son and other people’s children will not have to deal with the body image issues and negative physical side effects that dieting and diet culture has created in our current world.

Everyone is so concerned that we are fatter then we ever were before, and that this is effecting our health and the health of our children.  Frankly I think doctors and the government are looking at the wrong source of this “Epidemic”

DIETING IS THE CAUSE OF THE OBESITY CRISIS ( if there is even such a thing )….

DIETING IS DISORDERED EATING

DIETING MAKES YOU FAT

DO NOT DIET!!!

Love and respect yourself as you are….move joyfully and eat yummy food without judgments like “this a good choice” or “this a bad choice”  If you like pineapple eat it….if you like potatoes eat it….eating things because you think they will make you thin or healthy strips the food of the pleasure and often destroys it’s nutritional value.  ( especially when you can no longer even put it in your mouth, because just the smell of it sends you back to the time that was all you ate. )

Sorry for the rant and tears, I was supposed to be antiquing today having fun and I find myself here blogging.  I’m not even going to reread what I wrote….I just had to get it out.

Thank you Tiffany for your Post it really triggered something in me this morning.

My Son was hurt yesterday when a relative saw a picture of me back when “I was sick” as he likes to say.  She commented on how good I looked and it made him angry.  He knows how hard I work to be who I am today, and I had to admit that yes I did look lovely then, but I didn’t feel lovely…I felt crazy, and I might have well been the weight I am now for all I knew.  I thought I was….Man Mountain Dean as my adopted mother used to call me.  A little girl probably no more then 12 or 14 who had not even reached that 175 pound mark yet on the scale was “MAD Mountain Dean” as I thought she was calling me….it was only after getting involved with fat activism did I google him and find out his real name… a wrestler from the 1930’s did I realize what his real name was.

Yes I am a fighter, and yes I am fat, I don’t diet any more and I will fight to my death against this way of life which is destructive and a construct to weaken women and to get them to shut their mouths…both physically, behaviorally, and physiologically.  I’m hungry and I’m big and I’m loud and I’m proud!  Delicate little Flower??? I eat those on my salads!!!