It seems to me that everyone has a little tyrant living inside them. The tyrant, if it cannot be exorcised, must be exercised — much like a two-year old must be worn out (with safe activity, away from uncovered electrical sockets) in order to let you have a moment’s peace.

My tyrant has, in the past, been a touch…overbearing. Especially during The Great Diet of ’00, wherein the Tyrant allowed me to eat a strictly allotted portion of calories spread over a strictly allotted assortment of food groups — preferences and cravings be damned.

I’ve seen other Tyrants playing fast and loose with other people’s diets. The Tyrant who disallows Suspicious Ingredients. The Tyrant who eschews fat in all its forms. The Tyrant who cannot countenance pepperoni, much to his ardently pepperoni-loving host’s despair. The Tyrant who insists you must eat salad, even if you hate it. Especially if you hate it.

In order to live with the Tyrant, I’ve decided to put him to productive use. Namely, I’ve used his seemingly boundless energy and unbreakable rigidity to build structure around my eating. Then, once erected, I’ve barred him from entering the tabernacle, the holy abode of my body’s wishes and wants.

Simply put, I do this by eating meals.

To the beginner, it helps to think of meals not so much as meals, but rather as “eating appointments” — defined times or intervals during the day kept sacred to the act of feeding oneself. No matter what eating may or may not occur outside of these appointments, the appointments must be kept. Sitting must occur, and a single bite or drink of something placed in the mouth.

But whether the plate is balanced, according to the Food Guide, or looking more like Sunday brunch at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory — in this the Tyrant has no say. If I eat one bite or go back for thirds, it is entirely my choice.

If building structure is defining the space within which things can happen, the appropriate use of discipline is to build and maintain that structure — and then let go of what happens within it.

Up till now, I’ve just been too lazy to pick out some of the gems for you, but I’m going to start. There are too many hilarious, touching, and/or informative vignettes to let them pass without extra notice.

Today’s accolades go out to Arwen:

I remember reading it [Fit for Life] one hungry day – I did most of my reading of diet books to remind me why I was staying hungry – and there was something about how “people aren’t really meat eaters: you don’t see a squirrel in a park and want to kill it and eat it.”

And I thought, oh, man, squirrel. I bet that would be delicious.

So I’m just going to do this instead:

ALL FOOD CONTAINS NUTRIENTS. NUTRIENTS ARE GOOD FOR YOU. NO, REALLY. I’M SERIOUS.

Thanks for playing. Hug it out in comments.

I’ve been working like crazy, but we’ll get together again soon. I have some stuff I’ve been thinking about, not least of all, my own weird realizations about food and the way I eat.

Not surprisingly, focusing so much on food and eating with my clients has bled over a bit into my personal life, and I find myself noticing some interesting things. For example:

• Pizza is more satisfying when cut into smaller (and more) pieces.
• Pizza only feels like a “real” meal when I have a salad on the side.
• Ditto macaroni and cheese.
• Eating lunch earlier in the day feels better than having it at a “normal” time.
• Meals don’t feel complete without a big, cold glass of water alongside.
• I accidentally ate reduced-sodium tomato soup today and didn’t notice it. I previously hated it.

What about you? I miss you.

Love,
Michelle

P.S. Sharing and caring in comments. Cookies may or may not be served. Hugs guaranteed.

During that time, I encountered Ellyn Satter’s approach to nutrition in the first book I read on fat acceptance, Losing It by Laura Fraser. Reading that book brought me the realization that I no longer wanted to diet, and, because of the interview with Ellyn Satter, I also realized I wanted to work in nutrition, helping people to overcome chronic dieting and disordered eating.

So, just the other day, a conversation on one of Lesley’s posts at Fatshionista brought me to the point where I had to introduce the idea of eating competence.

A lot of what I’ve written on this blog has been leading, slowly, up to this. But I haven’t broached it yet, because it’s been critical for me to first build the foundational argument that it is your right as an adult to eat whatever, and however you want.

And that it’s no one’s business to tell you to do otherwise. End of story.

So, what of eating competence? Also known as ecSatter, it’s a concept developed by Ellyn Satter (and protected by her — this will become important later) that’s based on her clinical observations of how people who do well with eating…eat:

I consistently found prescriptive dietary interventions to undermine my patients’ foodways, to destroy their ability to intuitively regulate food intake, to worsen their nutritional status and to spoil their attitudes about eating. Because eating is so central to life, my patients were not only demoralized about eating, they were demoralized overall. Because it was so glaringly clear to me that the harm far outweighed the benefit, I changed my ways. Rather than trying to control or subvert their natural tendencies to regularly provide themselves with ample and enjoyable food, I learned to build on those tendencies by emphasizing permission and discipline:

• The permission to choose enjoyable food and eat it in satisfying amounts.

• The discipline to have regular and reliable meals and snacks and to pay attention when eating them.

Basically, eating competence describes how “normal” eaters eat. It’s descriptive in that sense, and prescriptive only for those people who are uncomfortable with their current eating, or who worry about their nutrition and health, and seek to make a dietary change.

People who already feel they are doing fine? Excellent.

This is not a set of “shoulds,” nor is it a prescription to change the way you currently eat. Discard at your leisure.

But the people who come to me to learn to eat don’t feel they’re doing fine. They have considerable anxiety around food, and feel lost or resentful when it comes to nutrition. And the purpose of my work is to help them get good at eating.

I do that by using the best-researched approach available, which is the eating competence model — and, not, incidentally, Weight Watchers:

Even Weight Watchers, which many people tout as the best of the diet centers because of its reliance on real, fresh food and flexible menu choices, doesn’t help people learn to develop a sense of inner competence about eating. ‘What it comes down to is the issue of trust versus control,’ says the nutritionist Ellyn Satter…who treats what she calls ‘dieting casualties’ in her practice. She believes that people need to learn to trust that they will get full, even on food they consider highly desirable, and know that they can reliably regulate their own food intake, rather than depending on outside rules to manage those choices. ‘Weight Watchers is pretty good at liberalizing food choices, teaching people how to eat attentively, and encouraging them to increase the variety of food in their diet,’ says Satter. ‘But it’s still fundamentally a control stance they use.’ When people rely on outside rules, scales, and diet cops to regulate their eating, their relationship to food remains brittle.

-Laura Fraser, Losing It

As it turns out, there are four factors that comprise eating competence:

1. A good attitude toward food and eating. People with good eating competence enjoy eating, and they don’t feel guilty about either food or their enjoyment of food. They are pretty relaxed about it.
2. They are also decent at trying new things, and at eating not-super-favourite foods when the situation calls for it. They are not afraid of food — even “unhealthy” food — and, as such, they manage to eat a decent variety.
3. They are pretty good at internally regulating how much they eat. They can feel hunger. They can feel satiety. They can comfortably eat until they are truly satisfied, both physically and emotionally.
4. They plan ahead to feed themselves. They do the work necessary to ensure there is food on hand, and they have regular meals. They give some thought to nutrition, as well as taste, when selecting food. They make the time to eat, and to give some attention to their food while eating.

What are the outcomes for people who tend to eat this way? Well, they tend to have stable body weights (even if they are fat.) They also tend to have better blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels, which translates into a lower risk of heart disease.

The basis of Ellyn Satter’s message is that good nutrition depends on the enjoyment of food, first and foremost. She is famous for saying, “When the joy goes out of eating, nutrition suffers.”

From the perspective of ecSatter, enjoyment and pleasure are primary motivators for food selection, and nutritional excellence is supported by enjoyment and learned food preference based on subjective reward from eating.

-J Nutr Educ Behav. 2007 Sep-Oct;39(5 Suppl):S142-53.

That’s why, when it comes to teaching people eating competence, the first priority is to enhance their enjoyment of food, and reduce their anxiety and guilt about eating — before any thought to nutrition enters the picture.

Population food surveys have consistently shown that people’s first priority in selecting food is how it tastes. This is not going to change just because the nutrition establishment thinks it should — instead of fighting against people’s desire to eat pleasurable food, the eating competence model works with it.

And, instead of fighting against your own body’s natural weight tendencies, eating competence also endorses self acceptance.

This has just been a brief introduction to the concept. We’ll discuss it in more detail in posts to come.

Let’s back up for a moment to detail my reasons for drinking coffee. Reasons which, I think, probably apply to the vast majority of coffee-drinkers.

• I like the taste.
• I like the caffeine buzz.
• I like the ritual, and the emotional comfort of it.

You notice what’s not on that list?

Antioxidants.

That’s why it tripped me out to notice the big label on the can.

I mean, it’s been there a while. Sure, I’ve noticed it before. But I never really noticed it until that morning.

Inspired — and in a half-awake undercaffeinated haze — I decided to grab the nearest thing and look for a similar label.

Since we ran out of milk the day before, and since we drink Canadian-style wussy coffee (meaning with milk or cream, plus sugar — black coffee is an abomination unto the Lord and shall not defile this house), the nearest thing was a delicious powdered non-dairy creamer. Which we keep as back-up to avoid a potential coffee crisis.

(Priorities, people. We have them.)

So I grabbed it, and guess what?

CHOLESTEROL FREE, YO.

Which, you know, I suppose is useful information if you have significant dyslipidemia (that is, high blood cholesterol levels) and are sensitive to cholesterol in food (which not all people are, especially not at levels as low as a spoonful of cream or milk in your coffee. Saturated fat is now pretty well-known as the culprit in raising people’s blood cholesterol, and it’s been established that the dietary cholesterol panic of the 80s turned out to be misguided.)

The lactose-free label, well…I take no issue with that. It’s something useful to have, front and centre, if you want to expand your market to include the many folks wishing not to endure a torrent of gaseous mishaps in the course of enjoying their morning brew.

So, quick analysis, what’s up with these largely irrelevant labels on things? Especially things that I wouldn’t really think of as “food” in the first place, and which don’t contribute significantly to your total intake? (I mean, coffee is largely non-nutritive, and a teaspoon or two of fake coffee creamer is pretty damn close to non-nutritive. And, in any case, most people don’t drink more than one or a few cups of the stuff in a day.)

My hypothesis is that, rather than the default cultural attitude toward food and food-like substances being “it’s fine to eat this, and it probably has things in it which are good for me, or, at least, are not actively harmful” we’ve reached a point, collectively, where our default attitude tends to be, “Should I eat/drink/ingest this? Is it poisonous? Am I allowed?”

Coffee (and caffeine itself) has become a particularly loaded substance in certain dietary circles. When I was dieting, I also avoided drinking coffee…for no specific reason I’m aware of. Because it was The Thing to Do. Because coffee was vaguely regarded as A Bad, Unnatural Thing.

Part of the package of virtuous self-denial included giving up coffee (and diet soda, and and and…whatever not-particularly-harmful or not-particularly-nutrition-impacting thing someone enjoyed just for the sake of it. Because food had become a tool, and only a tool. Everything consumed required instrumental justification.)

That’s a whole lot of anxiety to carry around. Enough that it’s going to make you second-guess your habitual purchases. Which is not very good for the folks who sell instant coffee.

So, what can the food-industrial-complex use to smuggle its products through the barbed-wire fence of ambivalence erected by its twin sister, the diet-industrial-complex?

A label.

A label that, despite seeming to give you straightforward, useful information about antioxidants and cholesterol, is actually telling you, “Just this once, you’re exempted from guilt. You are granted permission to drink this coffee for Specific, Nutritional Benefits — not for the evil caffeine buzz, not for the comforting emotional associations. Not just because it’s enjoyable. Because it has antioxidants, and it’s cholesterol free.”

In short, it’s a Get Out of Jail Free card. From a jail I believe they helped build.

To you, the guilt-ridden consumer, from the food industry with love.

ETA: Awesome reader Bookwyrm made an equally awesome Get Out of Jail Free card. Read it and weep.

And telling people to eat whatever they want is…well, it’s incredibly controversial.

It’s just not done.

You know why I think it’s controversial? Not just because we live in a culture that’s messed-up, food-wise, but because we, as a culture, seem to take the worst possible view of human nature.

Let me explain.

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading here that our culture views food as a moral issue. A potentially dangerous moral issue. And, setting aside the very-interesting-but-not-to-be-had-right-now discussion of ethical and religious foodways, food just…isn’t.

Food isn’t moral. It’s not immoral, either. It’s morally neutral.

But, sadly, we live in a time and a place where it seems Twinkies = Eternal Damnation. (Notice, here, how the supposed moral value of food pretty snugly overlaps its supposed nutritional value. This is not a coincidence.) And we tend to take the most pessimistic view of human nature.

So, when I say “Adult human beings are allowed to eat whatever, and however much they want,” what people actually hear is: “GO OUT AND CRAM YOUR FACE WITH BAD, BAD TWINKIES!!!!!!”

I’m here to plead with you on this: first of all, people aren’t stupid. Please stop thinking that — it’s unkind and incorrect. Also, Twinkies aren’t bad. Even if they were, they couldn’t make you bad by association.

You know what else? This may come as a huge surprise, but if you’re willing to let go of those negative assumptions about human nature for one second, you might realize that pretty much no one wants to eat that way, anyhow.* Or not for long.

We’re animals, which means we’re pretty highly motivated to stay alive. We want to stay alive, okay? Which means means:

We want to be healthy.

We want to eat food that’s good for us.

Those desires, being tied to the ultimate desire — to survive — are pretty damn strong.

But you know what we want more than either of these? To be free. To not be told what to do. To not be bossed around as though we are perennially six years old. To not be manipulated, coerced, or condescended to.

Being un-free is a fate worse than death to an animal. It means either you will be killed, or you will be tortured and then killed, or your entire life and all of your efforts will be used exclusively in the service of someone else’s desires. And that service is probably going to be pretty unpleasant and continue indefinitely, until you die (see: tortured and then killed.)

Ever wonder why animals are willing to gnaw their legs off to get out of a trap? Why prisoners are willing to risk death in order to escape?

We’re all sensitive to threats to our freedom, even if, practically speaking, those threats don’t seem as bad as being trapped or imprisoned. We’re able to detect the merest whiff of a threat to our freedom, and we respond appropriately. To a strong and imminent threat, we’ll fight to the death. To a threat that’s just a whisper of a shadow of a threat, we’ll dig in our heels a little bit. Stop listening. Roll our eyes and take a step backward. Procrastinate.

In the case of rewards and punishments used to induce certain behaviours, there’s a distinct manipulation at work. Freedom is taken by force or given up willingly in exchange for some savoury reward. But, either way, it is lost, whether you gave it, or it was taken from you.

We don’t like this. Even if we think we do at the time. Even if we go along with it.

I won’t go off on my whole long tangent about intrinsic motivation again, except to say: there is a body of research showing that humans acting under the threat of punishment or the promise of reward do sub-par work.

Whether that work is solving puzzles or learning information or exercising and eating well, the fact that an external, overriding consequence is actually the driving force behind the behaviour — rather than one’s own intrinsic desire — means that that behaviour is not actually free. It is coerced and manipulated and induced.

And going through the motions in order to reach the carrot or escape the stick actually takes something away from the benefit of those motions.

Exercising to lose weight makes fitness not as fun or useful.

Eating to lose weight makes nutrition not as fun or useful.

And, when things are not fun (meaning, intrinsically rewarding), it’s pretty much guaranteed that you will stop doing them, rendering your time “on the wagon” pretty much a loss. Because you’ll lose whatever long-term, intrinsic benefits might have come from doing those things voluntarily.

Besides which, who wants to ride a shitty wagon that keeps throwing you off? You’re better off on foot. (Maybe rollerskates.)

So, when I say “Eat food. Stuff you like. As much as you want,” I don’t believe you’ll dive into a vat of Twinkies. Or, if you do, it’s only going to be to see what it would be like to dive into a vat of Twinkies.

I trust that you’ll climb your way out again.**

The bottom line is — freedom is important. In fact, it’s necessary. Without it, you can’t sustain anything that’s supposed to be good for you. Therefore, freedom is good for you.

And because I believe humans are reasonable beings who care about their own health and survival, I trust you to decide what you eat.

What if you’re not reasonable, and don’t care about your own well-being? Well then, my friends, not only is it still not my place to tell you what to do — telling you what to do wouldn’t fucking work in the first place.

Readers have been clamouring a bit for me to just tell them how to eat already. And while, yes, I have a very specific training and a very specific set of beliefs about how to approach food, my first job is to clear the slate, set aside all the rules we’ve been handed about food, and establish a foundation of trust — trust that I am not going to take away your freedom, or your food, even when I have suggestions about what might be a good thing to try.

Trust that, ultimately, you’re the one who must decide what to do.

So, in the service of that, I offer you this:

Far from being irresponsible, this is, in fact, the only unsolicited advice anyone has any business to offer another person.

And until you’ve accepted it as your irrevocable right as a human being, my opinions on nutrition don’t really matter much.

*Barring some kind of underlying medical condition or eating disorder, in which case a weight-loss diet is the last thing you need, anyhow.

When you needed food, you felt hunger, thought of food, and cried or reached out for it in one motion. There was no ambivalence, no questioning your own motives, no shame. You needed something — end of story. And if you were lucky enough, you got it.

I look back on the time I was dieting as a period of falling-out with my body. We fell out of synchronicity, and out of favour, with one another. We were no longer on speaking terms. And though the diet was a dramatic physical manifestation of the rift that had formed between my mind and my body, I believe the fault that led to the rift started much earlier.

The fault began to form when I started to feel the gaze around the age of 10 — when I began viewing myself from an external viewpoint, filtered through the preferences of my culture, and learned to continually measure myself against that standard.

The fault deepened when I first encountered food rules. Whether they came from the USDA or my parents or the school lunch program, the message was the same: there is predefined, normative standard for what and how much to eat. Any deviance from that standard leaves you vulnerable to criticism, ridicule, forceful re-education — possibly even social ostracization and loss of love.

In short, there is a right way to eat. Anything that doesn’t exactly fit that standard is, by definition, wrong.

Right is good; wrong is bad. And so, by extension, are you.

Ellyn Satter is probably most famous for her theory of The Division of Responsibility. It applies to feeding relationships between parents and children, and it states that while parents are in charge of deciding where, when, and what food to provide, children alone must be in charge of deciding how much and whether they will eat from what’s provided.

As the American Dietetic Association says:

Perhaps the best advice regarding child-feeding practices continues to be the division of responsibility between adult and child advocated by Satter (64). According to this division, the role of parents and other caregivers in feeding is to provide positive structure, age-appropriate support, and healthful food and beverage choices. Children are responsible for whether and how much to eat from what adults provide.

It’s a profound concept — one that successfully negotiates the gray area between guidance and control, autonomy and anarchy. And, as it turns out, it can be applied to any relationship where there is some kind of power differential.

The thing is, when you step all over someone’s autonomy — someone’s right to choose how much and whether — you have breached their boundaries, and you have done them violence. They may react to this by rebelling or, as in many cases of abuse, by taking on the role of doing that violence to themselves.

One thing is for certain, though, whatever the response: trust is lost.

A rift is established. Your mind and your conscious will, those parts of you that are indoctrinated into society, separate themselves from the rest of you — the body with its physical needs, the unconscious will and motives. The mind reins in the body to secure safe passage through society, and to synchronize its efforts with the larger body of humanity. The body is dressed, trimmed, made presentable, and its needs are secreted away in the private pockets of life.

Rules that attempt to tell us how much and whether (FIVE A DAY!!!) violate our boundaries. We, in turn, rebel in a desperate attempt to regain autonomy, while simultaneously learning to flagellate ourselves, to take on the role of the abuser in our own minds, and to view our behaviours from an external vantage point — the gaze that continually judges what we eat against our culture’s ideal of the mythical, perfect diet.

The mind has overstepped its boundaries, aided and abetted by cultural pressures. You begin to monitor your eating in ways that go beyond providing pleasurable food and adequate nutrition for yourself, beyond choosing and then respecting mealtimes. You count calories, or assign points. You deny pleasure, and embrace nutritionism.

You hush your body’s cries of hunger and fullness and desire until, eventually, you may find yourselves no longer on speaking terms.

One thing I dislike about nutrition is how often we discuss eating as though it’s something incredibly dangerous that people must do just right or risk INSTANT DEATH.

When society has become so risk-averse that we can’t even enjoy food, you know something is terribly out of whack.

Barring allergies, intolerances*, non-functioning organs, and foodborne illnesses, food isn’t going to hurt you.

Because food? Isn’t poison.

Even in those exceptional cases, it’s the microorganisms in the food, the immune response of the body, or the lack of some vital function that is to blame. Not the food itself.

The worst food-related thing that can happen to most people is not having enough of it. Or not being able to digest select types of it. Or somehow losing (through various bodily fluids I won’t itemize for you) what nutrients they do manage to take in.

That’s when people get very, very sick, because not only can not getting enough of a particular nutrient cause a deficiency, it can also cause you to get too much of another nutrient, since that’s the only one you’ve got handy.

Not having enough variety can make you sick. Not having clean, safe food can you make you sick.

In fact, plenty of non-foodborne diseases kill you by taking nutrients away from you. Cancer is one. Diabetes is another. Then there’s cholera and typhoid fever and all kinds of lovely things.

But food itself? Not inherently sick-making.

What else isn’t food? It isn’t medicine.

Eating certain types of it, or taking certain isolated nutrients, probably isn’t going to cure anything except an underlying deficiency.

But when does food masquerade as medicine? When you selectively take some of it away.

Taking food away is inherently risky, because your safest bet, mathematically, is to always get enough food with as much variety as possible. Selectively reducing that variety can cause nutrient deficiencies and excesses.

Whether you do it because you don’t have enough money, or because you’re just a picky eater who only eats the same six foods over and over again, or because of ethical or religious reasons, or because your doctor told you to, or because you’re trying to lose weight — selectively reducing variety carries an inherent risk.**

Fucking around with restricting your food intake, despite being treated by many people as a casual pastime, is not a totally benign endeavour.

It’s treating food like medicine, and medicine generally comes with side-effects.

Despite what the media and some healthcare professionals and the culture at large seems to think, humans actually have a finite capacity for consuming food.

Which is why it’s pretty rare that harm ever comes directly from eating too much food — harm usually comes from eating a particular food in such quantities that, by physical necessity, it displaces other foods that you need.

Not because that food is poison, or because you broke the universal law of How Much Should Be Eaten. But because you missed out on something else.

One of the riskiest things a dietitian can ever do to a patient is to take food away. It starts at a minimally risky, generally tolerable level with a mild therapeutic diet, and goes all the way up into the red at intravenous nutrition.

You only use intravenous nutrition when shit is seriously fucked up, and the patient can’t eat and absorb nutrients from the gut anyway. Why? Because it’s dangerous.

And why is it dangerous?

Because the patient is getting no food, which comes neatly packaged with enough inherent variety to naturally balance things out. Which means a dietitian had better do her math correctly, and better run labs on that patient constantly, to make sure nothing goes terribly wrong.

Can you get too much of a particular vitamin or mineral? Yes. But that’s not the same thing as eating too much food. If you have access to a decent variety of foods in adequate quantities, and your internal organs are more-or-less functional, it’s pretty fucking hard to eat enough actual food to give you a nutrient overload.

That’s why food, in most circumstances, is safer than taking supplements. Because there are built-in safeguards (distribution of nutrients in the food; nutrient density of the food; capacity of your own stomach) to keep you from fucking it up too badly.

If your body wasn’t adequate at regulating your food intake, and if foodstuffs hadn’t evolved that were good for humans to eat, we wouldn’t be sitting here in front of our computers in the year 2010.

We wouldn’t be alive to be as neurotic about food as we are. If food were poison, humans wouldn’t exist.

And I, for one, wouldn’t want to.

So, if food isn’t poison, and if it isn’t medicine, what is it? It’s food. It’s sunlight and air and soil and water and love, in edible form. It’s every creature that’s gone before you, and the thing you’ll be to those who come after.

It tells us we belong here — that we deserve to live, that we’re still here when we die.***

In short, it’s good. Food is everything that’s good.

*Which are very real, and very important, and you shouldn’t go around questioning people’s health conditions because it’s fucking rude.

As usual, the garden party will be held in comments. BYOB.

Because obviously they just don’t know what they’re doing. And that’s why they eat so badly, and hence, why their health tends to be poorer!

And eureka! — you have a tidy solution that not only absolves financial and economic guilt, but, as a bonus, allows richer, more-edumacated people to assume the role of benevolent experts.

Here comes the part where I bust up that nice, warm bubble bath.

The reality is that people who don’t have enough money (or the utilities and storage) to buy and prepare decent food in decent quantities, cannot (and should not) be arsed to worry about the finer nuances of nutrition.

Because getting enough to eat is always our first priority.

That’s why Ellyn Satter (yes, her again) created the Hierarchy of Food Needs. Which looks like this:

The idea is that, before we worry about nutrition (i.e., “instrumental food”) we’ve first got to HAVE food. Enough of it. Consistently. And it’s got to be acceptable to us (which, for some people, might mean not coming from the garbage, or meeting certain standards of preparation) and it’s got to taste reasonably good. A little variety is nice, too.

These are not silly little preferences that can be brushed off lightly — even “tasting good,” which seems to always be the first thing thrown out the window when someone decides to change their diet For Health Reasons.

Tasting good is actually a function, biologically, of

1. food’s microbiological safety and freshness (meaning it’s not spoiled or contaminated with sick-making germs),
2. food’s caloric density (there’s that pesky ENOUGH FOOD thing again — because calories and water trump everything else, nutrition-wise, and hey, guess what?? Sweet, fatty foods are the order of the day when it comes to caloric density), and
3. food’s chemical safety (meaning, it’s not naturally poisonous, chemically adulterated, or containing some toxin produced by sick-making germs.)

Of course, flavour isn’t infallible — C. botulinum can’t be detected by taste, for example, and ethylene glycol, a.k.a. antifreeze, is apparently as tasty as it is poisonous — but there’s likely a strong evolutionary reason why we developed certain flavour preferences. And it’s not because we’re totally depraved and destined by our love of Twinkies to doggy-paddle the Lake of Fire forever and ever, amen.

It’s because, for the most part, those preferences kept us fed and out of trouble with food. And they still do.

For most of us, this becomes apparent for the second reason listed above — when we’re hungry. I’m sure you’ve noticed how cake and fried foods and whatnot become SUPER MASSIVELY APPEALING when you’ve either missed a meal or started a diet.

It’s not because you lack willpower or have an inborn preference for BAD, BAD JUNK FOOD — it’s because those foods are naturally jam-packed full of what you need right that instant: energy. Meaning, calories — most of them coming from carbohydrate (whether it’s starch or sugar) for instant energy, and fat for MOAR energy (and tasty, creamy mouthfeel, to boot.)

So, extend this to someone who doesn’t have enough food on a regular basis. In my neighbourhood, which is poor, corner stores sell Ensure and Boost individually for about $2, right up in a big display near the counter. You find empty bottles of the stuff laying around on the sidewalk next to smashed beer bottles.

It’s complete nutrition; it’s portable and requires no preparation; and it’s reasonably calorie-dense. Imagine being hungry and walking into that corner store with a couple of bucks in your pocket.

Sure, choosing the Ensure over a chocolate bar or bag of chips might make logical sense, and you might even do that sometimes to ensure you don’t end up with some horrific nutrient deficiency. But there’s one important point I forgot to mention about Ensure and Boost: not super tasty.

So, when it comes down to it, you’re likely to choose the tastier option — which is pretty calorically dense and provides some nutrition (as well as the satisfaction of chewing actual food) — more often than not.

And it’s not because you’re stupid, ignorant, lazy, or just a bad, bad person who loves bad, bad food.

It’s because other needs come first.

The following quote from this book sums things up nicely as it relates to what people really need when it comes to nutrition, and how nutritionists, dietitians, and social workers can best help:

Is it our role to teach the poor how to live quietly on less than minimum standards of health and decency and how to starve on minimum wage? Do we teach them how to budget malnutrition more neatly? Or is it our job to struggle for those minimum standards…?

I think you know what answer I’d choose. And once again, we’re back to the social determinants of health.

You want people to eat better? Give them enough money, a place for cooking and storage, and access to a decent variety of food.

Then you can worry about the finer points of nutrition.

Magazines are giving out advice on HOW NOT TO BE A TOTAL DISGUSTING PIG, YOU FUCKING SLOB.

Yessss.

Seriously, I wait for this all year. Like Christmas morning.

First up, from my lovely reader Maggie (thank you, Maggie, and wake up, please, I think Rod Stewart’s got something to say to you, and if you think that’s bad, try living with “Michelle, mah belle” for 30 years), comes Cosmo’s “How to Pig Out on Thanksgiving (But Without the Guilt.)”

And they pretty much give you a basic, average, low-fat kinda smallish meal on which you can totally PIG OUT, girlfriend!

Nary a mention of pie, mashed potatoes, gravy, or anything else that makes life worth living when you’re across the table from that beloved relative with the unfortunate spitting habit.

Because you should totally, totally feel guilty about food. Especially tasty food, and most especially on holidays where you’re supposed to be thanking your lucky fucking stars for even HAVING food in the first place.

Right-o, then.

Next up, we’ve got CBC’s “Go Healthy, Not Hungry for Holiday Eating.”

Which, you know, sounds like it’s going to be about moderation, and eating tasty-but-good-for-you food, and not trying to diet your way through two months’ worth of homemade cookies and seven-course meals…

…except it’s pretty much just a list of ways to avoid eating anything remotely holidayish. Plus some musty old behaviourist weight loss tricks.

Cause God forbid you should break out the real cream once a year! Or eat a meal that’s in any way different from your normal, weeknight meals during the motherfucking holidays.

And Holiday Eating Without the Guilt – or the Pounds brings the whole guilt aspect back into play. Because, really, what’s a holiday without the festive sprinkling of demoralizing shame?

The American Dietetic Association gets in on the act, too, with last year’s Health Tips for Holiday Eating, which is a litany of ways to avoid eating tasty food (including VERY SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS on how to dip your crudités in sauce), capped off with this inadvertent punchline: “Be realistic. Don’t try to lose weight during the holidays.”

All these various pieces of seasonal advice — and pretty much all nutrition advice, in general — seems to come down to one thing.

Which is:

Do I have a problem with that? Yes.

The problem I have with it is this little thing I’ve kinda-sorta hinted at in the past: intrinsic motivation.

Okay, story time.

A number of years ago, when I was a young housewife trying to figure out 1) how to lose weight, and 2) what the “right” way to eat was, I went to the library book sale and bought a well-used textbook on behaviour modification.

I read that thing cover to cover. Twice.

It was a revelation. It was the fulfillment of a long hoped-for dream, my original reason for taking psychology in 7th grade — to learn how to manipulate and control people.

(Yes, I was kind of a weird 12-year old. Shut up.)

And, in the same way Darwin believed that watching his baby son grow up was like watching a time-lapsed version of human evolution, I believe my experience there reflects something of the history of psychology. Because when psychology shifted from the primarily Freudian, psychodynamic approach into behaviourism — something with objectively observable phenomena, and ways to measurably change behaviour — I’m sure many a psychologist jumped in the air and clicked his heels at the prospect of actually being able to predictably influence another person’s actions. Of actually being able to, in effect, manipulate and control people.

So that’s what I set out to do, with my fat body.

Likewise, that’s what psychologists, nutritionists and doctors set out to do with their fat patients.

The only problem? By the late 1970s, even premier obesity researcher Albert Stunkard had to admit that it kind of wasn’t really working. I mean, the techniques all worked to some extent — everyone say this with me in unison — they all worked in the short-term.

But as we now know, over the long-term, homeostatic mechanisms, like weight, are pretty damn good at regulating themselves.

So good, in fact, that if you take the long view of things, measely attempts to control a homeostatic mechanism through behaviour modification seem…kind of ridiculous.

It’s like trying to keep a balloon submerged in a swimming pool — it’ll stay under for a little while, giving you the illusion of control. But if you lose focus for even a moment, or tire of the game even a little, that damn thing bobs right back up to where it started. Human efforts can’t override natural laws, not for long.

And the cost of eternal vigilance is, well, never again having a very good time at the pool.

But the seduction of control, no matter how short-lived, proved too much, and behaviour modification techniques didn’t stay limited to a few clinical applications. They sifted through the culture, into primary-school education, into smoking cessation programs, into diet tips and parenting advice and self-help books of every stripe…and, as you can easily see above, into diet tips.

Diet tips like “EAT FROM A SMALLER PLATE!!!” and “PUT YOUR FORK DOWN BETWEEN BITES!!!” and “REWARD YOURSELF FOR NOT EATING WITH A NICE HOT BATH!!!”

And, granted, some of these strategies might actually be useful for other applications (like, say, teaching someone to eat mindfully, or even dealing with binge eating), or else they can be used, as Ellyn Satter uses them, subversively as a way to teach people how to organize their eating.

But as a means to control people? To get us to eat less forever, ergo, to lose weight in the long term?

Nope. Doesn’t work.

If it did, none of us would be fat today. “Obesity” probably would have been “cured” by New Year’s Eve, 1969, and we’d all be living in some sort of fabulous, utopian, skinny future with perfect lives reflecting our perfect figures, and having no other problems whatsoever.

Ahem.

So, to get back to what I was saying about intrinsic motivation — why don’t attempts at behaviour modification work to get people to permanently lose weight?

Well, not only because it’s like trying to hold a balloon underwater for the rest of your life, but also because people are pretty fucking smart. We know when we’re being manipulated by external pressures. And when our behaviours are not rewarding in and of themselves, life kind of sucks.

And that’s not something anyone, short of a masochist, can sustain for very long.

It’s my belief that personal autonomy, agency, freedom, liberty, sovereignty — whatever you like to call it — is one of the strongest, most fundamental desires that drive us as human beings. Because, from a purely animal standpoint, not being in control of your own decisions and choices is potentially dangerous, even fatal. And it robs life of meaning — what’s the point of having your own life if someone, or something, else is calling the shots?

Alfie Kohn, whom I adore, has written a lot of books criticizing the educational system that relies on grades as a dual system of reward and punishment for students, presumably in the service of getting them to learn. He elucidates research which has shown that students’ learning actually suffers in the presence of external rewards and punishments, and that the quality of learning improves when those sticks and carrots are removed, and replaced instead with the students’ own genuine curiosity and desire to learn about the subject.

(Now, replace “Alfie Kohn” with “Linda Bacon” in the preceding paragraph, replace “educational system” with “weight loss industry”, “grades” with “weight”, and “learning” with “health”, and you’ll begin to see what I’m driving at.)

And, to plunge even deeper for a moment, what that comes down to is a basic philosophical choice about human nature: do you trust people to do the best we can for ourselves in our current circumstances, or do you not? Do you have a pessimistic or optimistic assumption about human nature?

This may sound awfully Anne Frankish of me. So be it — the world would be a better place if more of us were like her. And as such, I firmly believe in, and make the daily effort to reinforce to myself, an optimistic assumption about human nature.

I trust that we inherently want to learn, want to improve, want to be better, want to be kind and do good in the world, and want to take care of ourselves. When we fail, because we all do at some point, I believe it’s not due to some character flaw or moral shortcoming, but because there are barriers. Sometimes those barriers are insurmountable and we are never able to get over them, to realize our potential, which can be tragic. But what it’s not is proof that we are bad or inferior.

How does this relate to nutrition, and holiday dieting tips, and eating? Well, I believe that all of us genuinely want to eat well. We want to do good things for our health. We want to take care of our bodies, and, a lot of the time, we even know instinctively how to do these things. But there are a lot of pressures and barriers in this world that get in our way, that confuse us, that distract us and attempt to control us in counterproductive ways.

When it comes to coercion and intrinsic motivation, even the most dedicated person can be swayed from their objective by someone coming along and bombastically demanding that they do the very thing they were about to do anyway.

When I was a little kid, I remember when I’d be psyching myself up to clean my room — and, at that very instant, my mom (hi Mom!) would invariably come along and say, in a very mom-ish tone, “Clean that room!” Thus utterly killing any natural desire I had to clean that room.

I’m sure this experience is damn near universal.

Our need to preserve some scrap of autonomy, even in the form of counterproductive, cutting-off-one’s-nose-to-spite-one’s-face rebellion, is far stronger than the initial impulse to clean our rooms.

So, naturally, after my mom told me to, I didn’t. Not without a lot of whining and struggle, anyway.

When it comes to grades, or eating, or whatever, the bottom line is that telling us what to do doesn’t work — even if we wanted to do it anyway (and most of us do, if you take an optimistic view of human nature.) Telling people what to do doesn’t work because it robs us of our dearest possession — the freedom to make our own choices, and even our own mistakes.

That’s why, when it comes to eating, I’m a bit more like:

And that’s because I believe:

This is an intensely personal thing to write about, and it’s something I usually avoid, because I absolutely believe that it’s no person’s — especially no fat person’s — obligation to disclose what they eat as a means of justifying their existence.

But because this blog is about nutrition, dieting, and normal eating, and because I’m positioning myself here as the “expert voice,” and setting something of an (anything but perfect) example — and not least of all, because I’ve grown gradually at ease with this space — I thought it might be useful for people to get a peek at some of the behaviours of a mostly-normal eater.

I say “mostly-normal” because I do have a history of disordered eating (which is distinct from a clinical eating disorder, but, I believe, falls along the same continuum), just as anyone who has ever dieted has a history of disordered eating. And there are still things I’m working on — I’m not perfect at feeding myself, and likely never will be.

But in the past eight or so years, I think I’ve come a fairly long way.

It occurred to me today that there are some things I do with food that, a few years ago, I would never have believed I would or could do, and which may prove interesting to people struggling to find a semblance of peace with food.

For instance, last night I went to a movie with my husband. Beforehand, we went out for drinks. My appetite has been very weak for the past few weeks, due to illness and side-effects of medication for that illness, and I’ve just not been very interested in eating. Whenever this happens, I find it mildly distressing, as I actually miss the pleasure of getting hungry and looking forward to food.

After drinking a beer, I felt a little hungry. I tend to get beer munchies. (In fact, I started rambling to Jeffrey about how they should serve beer to sick, malnourished patients in the hospital, if it weren’t for, you know, all the potential medical complications.)

I was excited to actually feel hungry again, so I ordered a cup of clam chowder. Jeffrey got onion rings, and I filched two of those as well, and was so pleased with the experience of not feeling indifferent to (or mildly nauseated by) food, that I bounced in my seat with happiness as I ate.

(Yeah. I do that sometimes.)

We next stopped at a drugstore to fulfill the obligatory tradition of buying verboten treats to sneak into the theatre. (I get a cheap thrill out of this, even if I’m not hungry.) I had a feeling that, once inside the theatre, I’d be jonesing for a snack, due to past associations if nothing else. I got Jr. Mints with M&Ms for backup.

(I should disclose right now that I really, really love candy. Like, a lot. A whole lot. This is sure to be a recurring theme on this blog. Consider yourself warned.)

We got to the movie theatre and the lobby was, of course, redolent of melted butter and toasty popcorn. It was lovely, but not very tempting — though I love hot, salty popcorn with my Jr. Mints and M&Ms, as salty + sweet + chocolate is one of the best flavour combinations OF ALL TIME (thank you, Kanye), my appetite just wasn’t up to popcorn, and I suddenly disliked the idea of getting my fingers greasy.

During the movie, I happily switched between Jr. Mints and M&Ms, reaching over frequently to throw some in Jeffrey’s open mouth.

As I ate the M&Ms, I discovered quite by accident that, for me, the absolutely ideal number to have in my mouth at once is three. Exactly three M&Ms. It allows the chocolatey flavour to spread evenly on all sides of my tongue, without being so overwhelming as to make my mouth feel sticky or dry, or to be laborious to chew and swallow.

Don’t ask me why I notice these things.

Partway through the movie and candy — maybe about 3/4 through both — I stopped. I put them in my purse. That was that.

I don’t know why I stopped when I did, exactly. As a person who previously had (and sometimes still has) a compulsion to eat candy until it’s gone, appetite be damned, I still find it mildly surprising when this happens. It was not an entirely conscious decision. I’d simply had enough — reached some kind of natural stopping-place, the end.

The movie finished and we walked home in the delightfully cold air, then slept till noon.

The next day, I had oatmeal for breakfast, and decided in the late afternoon to wander to a local coffee shop for some reading and thinking, as an excuse to put on proper clothes and get outside for a bit.The box of Jr. Mints were on the fireplace mantel, and I decided they would be a good accompaniment to coffee, so I took them with me.

After being greeted and teased by the barista, I sat and drank cappuccino and gradually ate Jr. Mints, one at a time, while alternately reading, highlighting, making notes and staring off into space.

Around 6pm, my prodigal appetite returned with a vengeance. My mouth kept having little fantasies of mashed potatoes, so I suddenly cleared the kitchen and set about making myself a meal out of the holiday ingredients that had gone unused during my illness.

I peeled and boiled a lot of potatoes. I chopped an onion, a pear, and an apple and sauteed them together in butter, to which I added salt, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, cardamom and black pepper. I defrosted some pork tenderloins, salted them, rubbed them in cinnamon and allspice, and cooked them with the fruit. Then I made some classic American boxed stuffing.

When they were soft, Jeffrey’s strong arm helped me whip the potatoes into smooth, fluffy goodness with no lumps, and we sat down to a miniature holiday feast.

My hunger was so intense that, after I’d finished about 3/4 of my plate, I went back for pre-emptive seconds — more mashed potatoes, more stuffing, and a second piece of pork. But just a couple of bites later, I was done. That was it.

We shared the leftover M&Ms for dessert; I put my full plate in the fridge; I washed the dishes.

Three hours later I was ravenous again. I reheated the plate of food and ate half of it, with two glasses of orange juice.

It was the kind of hunger that only seems to come after a long period of not eating quite enough — the kind that still gnaws a bit even after your stomach is physically full. To me, it’s the hunger of depleted nutrient stores, not the simple daily, rumbling-stomach kind of hunger. It seems to come only after days of living primarily on cereal and toast, broth and gingerale.

I know tomorrow will most likely be different. Different foods will seem appealing, and I’ll eat them in different amounts. I may know again with stark certainty where to stop — or I may not.

If not, I will remain assured, as I did today, that my body will make up for it. That my appetite will eventually compensate for whatever mistakes or miscalculations I might make.

No matter what changes, I’ll remain relaxed. If I like food, if I don’t like food that particular day, I’ll be okay. I’ll know that another day will come when things will be different, but unchanged in one vital way — I’ll trust myself.

And I’ll prove worthy of that trust.

How goes it for you? If you feel like it, leave a snapshot of your eating in comments.

First rule of nutrition: eat or die.

Second rule of nutrition: there are no other rules.

This is not something you are likely ever to hear from someone in my field, since we make our living by thinking up rules and then pretending they have been whispered in our ears by God himself, but nevertheless — it’s the truth, and I’m saying it.

Except for those of us who observe religious and/or ethical restrictions on the foods we eat, there really are no rules about what to eat.

I know this is disquieting, perhaps even frightening to you.

But, in fact, there is no stone tablet on which Jenny Craig or Dr. Atkins or Michael Pollan or whoever the fuck has etched any immutable Laws of Diet.

There are no Laws of Diet.

There is only one Law, which is this — eat or die.

That’s it; that’s all.

I could stop there, but I know that would upset people. We will now proceed to the hand-holding and handkerchief-wringing.

The words “rule” and “law” imply a directive that is established by a supreme, governing body (or deity), and which is imposed, sometimes violently, upon a population of lesser subjects.

Or, in the case of physics, a natural inevitability which occurs predictably under a given set of conditions.

And, except for eat or die, nutrition simply doesn’t work that way.

Here’s where I state the obvious: it doesn’t work that way because people are different.

Do we have ideas about what type of food is good for people with certain conditions?

Yes.

Do we have ideas about what type of food is good for the general population without said conditions?

Yes.

Do we know that over- or under-consumption of dietary components (vitamins, minerals, water, carb, fats, and proteins) can cause certain health problems?

Yes.

Can we treat or ameliorate some physical conditions through the application or restriction of dietary components?

Yes.

Do we have certain social norms and cultural preferences about what types of food to eat and how?

Yes.

Do any of these constitute authoritative, immutable, unchangeable, and inarguable rules governing what each individual must eat, think, and do, forever and ever, amen?

No.

No, they don’t — especially not among people for whom eat or die never enters once into daily thought. (I’m referring to you there, person in front of your computer wearing your favourite sweater, with a nice warm mug of preferred beverage at your elbow, and at least a vague plan of what’s for dinner? that doesn’t involve begging, a food bank, or hunting and gathering.)

If you choose not to abide by any of these rather rough and exception-pockmarked guidelines of how might be a good idea to eat if you’re a certain person in a certain situation, do the Food Police arrive at your door to arrest you?

No. (Not yet, anyway.)

Do you die instantly? Highly unlikely, severe food allergies excepted.

Because? There are no rules. Sing it with me now:

there are no rules

there are no rules

there are no rules

there are no rules

there are no rules

Now then.

Are there ways to eat which will (potentially) optimize your functioning while minimizing (your immediate and long-term risks of) certain diseases?

Probably.

Are there ways to eat which will (possibly) undermine your functioning while increasing (your risk of) disease?

Probably.

And why do I say probably instead of striking out with a sexy, definitive Yes?

Because, while these are likely results, they are not inevitabilities. They are not laws. This is not a² + b² = c².

It’s more like a² + b² = c ^{probably, maybe, if x, y, and z are also present}.

Because — let’s go back to being obvious again — people are different.

If you’re shopping for laws, try here. Take a good look. Notice there’s not one piece of dietary advice among them.

Why am I telling you all this? So you’ll have absolutely no idea now what to do with your eating, and throw your hands up in despair and head for the nearest Cinnabon, because, fuck it, there are no rules?

No.

(Though if you’re tempted to do just that, I’ll totally understand.)

I’m telling you this because it is crucial that you be the one to decide.

I’m telling you this because you are in charge of this particular voyage, cap’n.

I’m telling you this because it is critical that humans operate on the basis of autonomy.

And I’m telling you this because you make the rules.

That Ultimate Authority? That guru, or nutritionist, or Oprah-certified megalomaniac you’ve been searching for all this time? Because you’re that desperate for someone to tell you what to do?

I’ll just let that sink in for a minute.

You’re either bouncing with delight, or sweatily clutching the sides of your chair right about now.

And here’s why: either you’ve accepted the idea that both your desires and your ability to appropriately respond to those desires are inherent, internal fixtures of yourself…

…or else you’re convinced that, deep down inside, you’re all id, and that you absolutely rely on some form of external superego to rein you in.

Because you believe you are bound, fated, to go too far if left to your own devices.

Because you believe you are absolutely, inherently, unreservedly, out of control.

And I’m here to tell you that you’re not.

I’m here to tell you that, as an adult person of the human persuasion, you’re inherently responsible, reasonable, and (basically) rational. If you’re alive, breathing, reading and processing this information, your body is (basically) functional.

You are not broken.

You are capable of this. You are capable of choosing what and how to eat.

You can do it on your own (or, if you have a history of disordered eating or certain health conditions, you can do it with just a little guidance that will teach you how to do it on your own.)

And if, right now, you feel like you just can’t, that is not your fault. You live steeped in a culture that tells you, over and over again, that you’re out of control and cannot be trusted. That your desires are bad, bad, bad, that your tastes are suspect. That you require rules, which, of course, often come oh-so-conveniently attached to someone selling you something.

You have become confused, which is only natural.

In fact, it’s entirely reasonable. Because you, and I, and all of us, have been targeted.

There are entire industries profiting from our belief that we are out of control and must be led by the nose. These industries collect massive amounts of money by making up rules that don’t exist and selling them to people who don’t need them.

Obviously, the propaganda works. And if it works on you, you needn’t feel alone — it works on all of us, myself included. A sustained, positive effort is necessary to work against it.

This is where normal, dare-I-say-it, healthy eating starts. Not with rules. Not with food guides.

But with media literacy.

With skeptical inquiry and critical thinking.

And, lastly, with this whole self-determination thing.

These are the fundamentals of navigating nutrition in a world where people (sadly, not of the charitably disinterested variety) are telling you what to do with your body 24/7.

Because when it comes to nutrition, there are as many rules as there are people, which is to say: there are no rules, only exceptions; there are no laws, only choices — all of which we are condemned to make for ourselves.

And I know that’s fucking scary.

But it’s also kind of awesome.

I recognize this is a pretty radical way to talk about nutrition, and likely to spark a lot of discussion, disagreement, and possibly confusion. There are caveats and important distinctions to be made — and, as always, I’m totally willing to hash all that out in comments.

I will now take the remainder of this post to qualify that statement.

Here’s what I mean: only in certain, limited contexts does WHAT a person eats play a direct role in their health. We’re talking deficiencies and diseases where the body’s storage and handling of nutrients changes radically.

In these situations, diet or nutrient supplementation needs to be controlled with varying degrees of precision, or, as we so often like to express it in this lovely fucked-up culture of ours, strictness.

I’m talking kidney disease. I’m talking diabetes. I’m talking recovery from cancer. I’m talking scurvy and beriberi and pernicious anemia — and plain old iron-deficiency anemia, too, for that matter. I’m talking inflammatory bowel disease, I’m talking recovery from trauma like surgery or burns or bad wounds or anything which renders you incapable of feeding yourself, thus requiring a tube and/or IV. I’m talking celiac disease and food allergies. I’m talking liver disease. I’m talking certain medications (like monoamine oxidase inhibitors) that don’t play well with certain foods.

And, as far as I’m concerned, these are the only types of situations in which WHAT a person eats takes primacy over HOW they eat it. And even then, in many cases, the WHAT is only just barely more important than the HOW.

Personally, though I’ve completed basic training in the WHAT at university, my interest has always been much stronger in the HOW.

The HOW we eat applies to all of us — disease or no disease, allergy or no allergy, nutritionist or pastry chef.

By way of explicit example: yesterday, I ate two cups of ice cream and a bunch of rainbow Twizzlers for lunch.

I wanted it, I had it, and I felt pretty good about it.

I functioned well physically for the rest of the day.

Later on, I had a bowl of bran cereal for dinner.

Was this balanced? Absolutely not. Was this “healthy” by popular standards? Not at all. Do I eat this way every day? Nope. Was it totally fine for me? Without reservation — yes.

Here’s what I believe: human diets (meaning in this case not “weight loss diets” but “everything one eats”) in their natural, un-fucked-up state are pretty chaotic. We eat a little one day, and a whole shit-ton another day. Using examples from my own life: we might eat a quart of strawberries per week in June, and then drink a quart of homemade Irish Cream in December.

The bottom line? If you’re not messed up around food in some way, it balances out over time.

This is part of the reason that dietetics is such an imprecise science. When you get a three-day food diary from a client and then analyze it for the nutritional breakdown, you’re only getting a snapshot of their entire diet.

Diets change seasonally and regionally by what’s available, they change by what’s on sale, by what you can afford, by what looks good to you on any given day. They change by your mood, since all human beings (since the beginning of time, probably) use food to comfort themselves or to celebrate.

And, lastly, yes — your diet also changes based on your changing physical requirements.

For the most part, a lot of our nutrition — which is to say, the molecules our cells use to work, and to produce the raw materials that comprise our bodies — is stored. And some of those stores last for decades. Or a lifetime.

For example, your skeleton? Yeah, it’s not just the handy-dandy coat rack that your organs hang from, and those chompers you use for donut-munching — it’s also your travelling calcium pantry for whenever your motor neurons need a bunch of calcium ions to work the chemical/electrical ju-ju that triggers a muscle contraction.

You know, so you can walk and talk and scratch your butt and stuff.

These uses for calcium are so effing important that your body is willing to raid that pantry — even weakening it to the point of physical collapse — so you can continue breathing at all costs, even if all your ribs crumble in the process. And that’s part of the reason we have such a GIANT FRIGGIN’ STORE OF CALCIUM in our bodies, enough that it would take years to use up entirely, even if you never ate another milligram of calcium again.

Now. I’m not suggesting that you should stop eating calcium and watch what happens, cause I can tell you right now — your bones are going to weaken as your body raids the pantry, and that’s not good for you. But I am saying that our bodies are pretty well set up to survive, even without food, for quite a while. (And, luckily, calcium is present in so many foods that it can be difficult to avoid.)

We’ve got failsafe upon failsafe upon idiot-proof failsafe working in our favour. And these’ve developed the hard way, by trial and error over hundreds of thousands of years.

So, if you’re like me and, I’m going to guess, like 99% of the people who:

• Have access to the computers and the internet and the basic literacy skills required to read this blog,
• AND if you have adequate access to clean drinking water and enough food so that you’re not constantly hungry,
• AND your food’s safety is regulated by an imperfect but basically functioning agency intended to prevent a huge and lucrative population of tax-payers and stuff-consumers from keeling over dead by the swath,
• AND you don’t have some disease or injury requiring direct and aggressive therapeutic nutrition intervention, then

YOU’RE GOING TO BE FINE.

You can stop obsessing about WHAT to eat now. You’re welcome.

Okay, so I know it isn’t that easy. Sure would be nice if it were, though, eh?

We’ll talk about the HOW next time.

Until then, please bitch me out or correct my horrendously simplified depictions of complex human physiology in comments.

Just the other day, I received the following wonderful letter, and nearly broke my spine tripping over myself to thank the writer for writing it:

Dear Fat Nutritionist,

I am trying to improve my diet by adding things to it, in recognition of the fact that one’s diet is a vital source of vitamins and minerals. So far I have added a daily serving of orange peaches (about the only thing from the orange-vegetables list that I like) and a serving of green vegetables, and I have been eating fish at least twice a week. (I’m giving myself a gold star for that, because it’s progress even though I have far to go. Seriously, eight servings of vegetables every day?)

What I’d like to know is whether there is any truth to the idea that nutrition-free additions to nutritious foods make them less nutritious. Is there something about pouring caesar dressing on a bowl of romaine lettuce that makes the lettuce less nutritious? Are chocolate coated almonds less almondy than unsalted ones? Does cooking my zucchini in butter make it less zucchiniful?

I know these things raise the count of calories and calories-from-fat, but these are things that I am deliberately ignoring.

Thanks Fat Nutritionist,
Bookwyrm

Dear Bookwyrm,

Wow. I’m actually really impressed with how you’re stretching your food-related horizons, especially with more “challenging” foods like fish and vegetables. I’m not a huge vegetable fan myself, so I know that can be a rough one. And as far as the eight-a-day goes, eeeehhh — I treat all those rules as more of a suggestion from a super-paranoid health-freak friend. Which is to say, with salt.

Lots of it.

So, in response to your question, “What I’d like to know is whether there is any truth to the idea that nutrition-free additions to nutritious foods make them less nutritious. Is there something about pouring caesar dressing on a bowl of romaine lettuce that makes the lettuce less nutritious? Are chocolate coated almonds less almondy than unsalted ones? Does cooking my zucchini in butter make it less zucchiniful?”

Basically — no.

Stuff doesn’t magically become less nutritious because you add butter or dressing. There are always tons of crazy nutrient-nutrient interactions, but many of them are so miniscule, or there are so many of them going on at once, that you’d drive yourself crazy trying to account for them all.

You can also always point out to any random nutrition police that, for every nutrient interaction that actively interferes with absorption (like calcium interfering with iron), there’s another nutrient interaction that enhances absorption (like vitamin C with iron.)

So, basically, let’s assume it all evens out. Roughly speaking.

The wider the variety of food you learn to eat, the better your nutrient intake becomes. So, whatever gets the food up off your plate and into your mouth is effectively enhancing its nutritional value.

Because:

1. You’ll eat it today, and
2. You’ll like it enough that you might eat it again another time, and
3. You’re going to be way more likely to stretch those food horizons even farther in the future, since you’ve had awesome experiences with, I don’t know, gravy on your broccoli.

And, going even further, a lot of flavour-enhancers (especially the fatty ones, like butter and oil and salad dressings) actually improve your ability to absorb nutrients in the food (fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K.) What’s more, fat slows down food on its trip through your gut — meaning, your gut gets more time to absorb all the goodness.

Now, of course, it is true that cutting, mashing, and cooking vegetables (and other foods) can destroy certain sensitive vitamins, as does letting them sit in the fridge too long, blah-de-blah-de-blah-everything-you’ve-ever-read-in-a-dry-nutrition-advice-column-blah-de-blah.

But, honestly, it’s really freaking hard to come by food that is so totally bereft of nutritional value that this is going to make much of an impact — assuming you eat enough food to begin with, which most people living in rich countries do. If you’ve got a food-security problem, that’s a whole other ball of wax that needs to be addressed before you go around worrying whether your broccoli is is broccolicious as it can possibly be.

So, bottom line? If you’re eating actual food, and eating multiple food groups, and not starving or unduly restricting yourself, then yay. You’re doing well.

And anything you can do to make that food tastier, sexier, and more likely to end up in your mouth? Go for it.

Hope this helps,
Michelle

Join the FOOD-FIGHT!!!! in comments.

And I didn’t write anything, because, naturally, that’s what you do when you’re gripped with an irrational fear of putting yourself out there.

Last night, I finally took some time to sort things out, do a little housekeeping, light a candle on my desk, and make the attempt to reclaim…what? I’m not sure. My space in the world? My mental happy place?

Something like that. Only pretend I used less cheesy terms than I just did, okay?

I’ve got a million things going on right now that all feel like they’re pulling me away from myself, and I’ve always resented that feeling. I’ve got a class I’m taking (disability studies FTW!), and hospital work to do, and some sort of volunteerish stuff, and maybe writing a Big, Important Paper with someone I admire.

And as much as I truly want to do all those things, and freely chose to sign up for them, when they start becoming The Enemy and I start feeling like The Captive, I know I’m in trouble.

Incidentally, this is all related to that intrinsic motivation thing I mentioned the other day. And to the whole making-friends-with-yourself thing, which is sort of the whole raison d’être of this blog.

So, I recognize that it’s time to get reacquainted with my reasons for wanting to do these things — just as it might be periodically advisable to get reacquainted with your reasons for, say, eating well, when you start to slip back into authoritarian mode and getting all “shouldy” and finger-pointy with yourself.

We all do it.

My first step in the reacquaintancing, as it were, is to remind myself: I don’t have to do this. In fact, I don’t have to do any of this. If I look at things realistically, there are very few things in this world I have to, absolutely have to, do.

One of them is breathing.

Another one might be eating and imbibing fluids — and even then, it’s just enough to get sustenance into my mouth. There are no rules about how well I have to do it. Just enough to stay alive is good enough (and you’d be surprised — I once lived through a period where I basically just ate hashbrowns, toast, and milk. And another period of frosted strawberry Poptarts. Not that I’m recommending this course of action — I’m just sayin’.)

And then there’s sleeping and going to the washroom.

Anything else? No, not really. This is the bare minimum required to sustain existence. So, what I’m saying to myself, which I find comforting at times like these, is I DON’T HAVE TO DO JACK SHIT except survive. I could dump all my “obligations” tomorrow, in the most unceremonious fashion possible, and I would still be a human being who deserved to live.

I start to feel better almost instantly.

Now, since most of us are interested in something more than rudimentary existence — if you’re not, I’ll gently suggest you may want to seek some kind of counsel. I’m a little more well-acquainted with mental illness than I’d like to be, and I can tell you that this is one of its distinctive calling cards — the second step is to take stock of what on earth you’re doing.

I mean, do you have a reason for being here?

Do you have something that makes your heart beat a little faster, just thinking about it? Are there people you love, things you want to see, art you want to create, or just little ineffable ripples you want to send out like Morse code across the big old pond of human affairs?

I do. First, I have a sort of working morality that’s developing as I blunder clumsily through my days. There are people I love, many of whom are far away in a place I’d like to get back to. There’s my husband, who is my buddy and my co-pilot and co-philosopher and co-conspirator all rolled into one. Then there’s writing, which I can’t even explain my attachment to, except to say that without it, I don’t think I’d be fully me, and I seem to crave doing it every single day.

And then there’s the fat nutritionist thing.

I’m passionate about nutrition, which is pretty weird for someone who thought seriously she’d be either a theatre major or a fiction writer someday. I’m passionate about helping people get to the happy place with food and their bodies. I’m committed to it, and it’s become incorporated, inextricably, into who I am.

These are the things that matter to me. And every one of the things I’ve decided to do with my time contributes to one of these things. In addition to being satisfying in and of themselves.

I want to do these things. They are not the enemy.

And I don’t have to do everything at once. I don’t have to write every blog post in the world at once, or have all the research for the paper done instantly, or take on every job remotely related to mine at the hospital. I don’t have to do all the readings and complete all the assignments for my course RIGHT NOW.

I just have to keep the pins in the air, like a juggler. Touch one spot, do one thing, write one thing on a list, move forward an inch. Be in the process.

Plan a good meal. Read a new recipe. Wash a dish. Get reacquainted with the good things you’ve chosen to do for yourself.

But take a breath and be there for it.

I took this picture on Sunday. I like the bee.

Since I believe in kindness and compassion, for other people, as well as for oneself, I decided to figure out what was going on with me.

The thing is, I set up this website, like, a metric eon ago, and I haven’t worked much on it since. I’ve tweaked some settings here and there, and I’ve gazed at it, and I’ve wondered about what to put on it, and I’ve had a million ideas that stayed in my head.

In short, I’ve worked myself up into a state of near-panic about it. Rather than just being excited and happy about having a THING that’s all mine, that can be a blank canvas I colour in as I like.

So, naturally, I haven’t actually been writing anything for it.

When I get scared, the second thing that happens is, I become paralyzed. And whatever is HIGHLY IMPORTANT that I do at that moment, whether it’s studying for an exam or going to bed at a decent time, is exactly the thing I cannot seem, with any amount of force, to actually do.

It’s gotten to the point where I damn near have a phobia about stuff like schoolwork. I actually cannot remember the last time I studied properly for an exam — I take them all by the seat of my pants, just because I find it too scary to study. Talk about conterproductive.

But, as it turns out, this morning I figured out what purpose this paralysis serves. And its purpose, apparently, is to 1) protect me from the scary, scary thing, but more importantly, 2) to act as a signal that I have lost touch with my intrinsic motivation to do whatever that thing is.

And this is the part that’s so very important, and so very relevant to this here normal eating blog.

Intrinsic motivation, to my understanding, is basically the natural reward inherent in a behaviour. Whether it’s eating, or going to the bathroom (eew, I know), or doing one’s homework. It’s the natural high you get from doing those things, because they are somehow gratifying in themselves.

Food tastes good, and it feels good when you’ve had a varied and nutritionally-dense meal that meets your needs. I get a calm, fluid feeling right in the centre of my chest when I’ve eaten a good homecooked dinner. Like my soul is letting out a big, satisfied sigh. Ahhhhhhh.

And peeing when you’ve super-gotta-go provides an immediate, and if you’re honest, heady sense of relief. Ahhhhhhh.

And doing one’s homework is gratifying because, not only might the content be interesting and relevant to you personally, if you can focus on the joy of learning rather than the threat of a bad grade — but also because it contributes to the life you’ve chosen for yourself.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

In short, the only real reason you or I do any of these things is because they are a kindness to ourselves.

But if you get caught up in a sense of competition, or wanting to impress other people, or even trying to prove your worth to the world, it can majorly undermine that intrinsic pleasure.

It might not happen today, maybe not even tomorrow, but, eventually, if you’re anything at all like me (read: rebellious and stubborn), you might find yourself completely paralyzed, some part of you totally unwilling to take another step forward until you’ve straightened your shit out.

Because forcing yourself along for years and years with carrots and sticks is exhausting, humiliating, and, at its base, actually kind of cruel.

Well, homey don’t play that shit.

Being cruel to yourself, even for the stated purpose of doing something “Good for you” is counterproductive. And it’s shitty. And don’t do it.

So, you might be wondering how I’m going to tie this to normal eating. Well, even though I struggle mightily with schoolwork, the one thing I no longer struggle with is eating. So, in order for me to understand stuff, I often filter it through an analogy of how I eat.

This morning I realized — what I’ve been doing to myself with trying to force myself to work on this or that, to get the highest grade, or compete with people in the business world (okay, so that one’s mostly in my head, but still), is not so very different from what I did when I was dieting — taking something (eating) that IS already inherently pleasurable and a good thing, and using an external motivator (weight) to suck all the joy out of it. And eventually ruin it for myself.

In short, to flagellate myself. With something that is actually supposed to contribute to my well-being.

And how messed up is that?

So, writing this blog is hugely important to me. It’s contributing directly to the life I want to live (maybe I’ll tell you about that later. It’s pretty beautiful, and damn near inspiring, if I do say so myself.) And because I like myself, because I’m pretty good buddies with myself, making the effort to contribute to that life is so totally worth it.

So, hi. I’m here now. And I’ll be here for a while, building cool shit for myself. I hope you get something out of it.

I’ll put some old entries about eating up in the archives. Feel free to poke around and ask questions.

So, I’m working on this thing I like to call my Unified Theory of Kicking Ass. What that means is, I’m reading and learning stuff about normal eating and nutrition and how people change their behaviour.

I have a pretty decent understanding of this stuff already, since I’ve almost finished my nutrition degree, but I’m looking for something more.

Something that will really help people. Something that will totally kick ass.

The thing is, there are a lot of useful theories around. There’s intuitive eating, and eating competence, and demand feeding, and health at every size, and various non-diet approaches to good nutrition. And we’re going to discuss them all on this blog.

They’re based on solid evidence. They work. And a lot of people really, really like the idea of putting them to work in their own lives.

But that can be really, really hard to do.

I know because I went through it myself.

I had a serious Dieting Incident that really messed me up. It took me five years to relearn to eat, and move, and feel normal with my body again.

I’m not perfect by any means, but I’ve reached a place that is, apparently, enviable: I feel comfortable around food.

I don’t think of food as “good” or “bad.” I don’t see my weight as a reflection of my character. I combine what tastes good and what feels good without a lot of thought. I mostly get hungry at regular times, and I mostly eat until I feel just right. My weight is stable, finally.

I’m cool with food. And I’m pretty cool with my body, too.

Five years ago, I literally thought I would never get to this place. I cried just thinking about it. (Yeah, I’m emotional like that.)

But I’m here, and it’s every bit as awesome as I’d hoped. And the reason I’m writing about it is because, after being involved in the Fatosphere, and reading so many discussions about food and intuitive eating and whatnot, I know there are tons of people out there who feel like I did — that normal eating will never happen for them.

Well, I think it can. And I’m here to help.

Normal eating is what we’re born to do — and I truly believe we can relearn how to do it, if it’s necessary. (And it is.)

So, you’re here. I’m over the moon you’re here, because I really need your help with this.

I’ll tell you what I figure out along the way. I’ll bounce ideas off you. In return, I hope you’ll give me your suggestions, your thoughts, your stories and your support.

Help me develop this thing, this Unified Theory, and I’ll be your biggest fan. Seriously. How could I not?

In theory, I’m a food libertarian and don’t believe the state should take responsibility for curbing individuals’ greed.” [Emphasis mine.]

And her…colourful…use of hyperbole, which wouldn’t be entirely out-of-place in the opinion section of your local junior high student paper:

But it’s sad to watch already-chubby kids at the food courts eating hassock-sized cinnamon rolls, haystacks of french fries and stacked baseballs of ice cream. The kids may as well be wearing T-shirts proclaiming “Diabetic in Training.”

Whoa, Hoss, let’s tone down the outrage for a second there and consider things sensibly, shall we?

First of all, people don’t eat because they’re greedy. Greed, and the other deadly sins we hold so dear to our shrivelled, black hearts, has absolutely nothing to do with food. We eat because we’re hungry, or because something looks and smells delicious, and because we’re hard-wired to eat tasty food.

As much as is available.

This is a survival mechanism — because who knows when it’s coming around again, right? Particularly if you’ve ever survived a food shortage (or, the more likely case in North America, if you’ve ever survived a weight-loss diet.)

Hard to believe, I know, since humans obviously aren’t just animals who evolved from other animals, thus still having certain animal needs and certain animal behaviours. No, no — we’re all just greedy little fallen angels slavering with lust at the thought of buggering some poor, starving charity case out of his last can of Campbell’s Cream of Tomato.

So we can stuff it mindlessly down our gaping, triple-chinned maws…

Baconatorzzzzzzzz

Wait. Where was I again? Oh yeah, considering things sensibly.

Look. We’re human. We get hungry. Yes, we even crave and enjoy salt, sugar, and fat. Because those things (aside from representing two of the three existing macronutrients, and one of the most important micronutrients) are precious commodities to animals in the wild, and it makes sense to eat up as much of them as you can, and store that energy against a rainy day.

And, yes, becoming civilized little monkeys has changed our world, and that strategy is now a bit outdated. But the innate desires are still there. And yes, the food industry capitalizes on those innate desires and tries to manipulate our appetites for profit (want to talk about greed? *cough*)

But none of this should come as a big, nasty surprise to a society of educated consumers living in a rich country in the year 2009.

And none of this makes us greedy, gluttonous assholes — it makes us human beings.

The way to deal with this is not to point fingers at the fatties and shriek with moral outrage about their greed. The way to deal with this is not to conflate eating habits with body size, or to blame diabetes on those evil white foods.

Wacky as it may sound, the way to deal with it is to, first, calm the fuck down. And stop being such an asshole to people who don’t look like you. And stop attaching a moral value to food, or to health.

Maybe learn to take care of yourself with kindness instead of flagellation. You might find that all that hyper-processed stuff makes for a fun treat, but actual, ya know, food makes a far more satisfying and delightful staple. And you might learn to even enjoy it, rather than swallowing it whole out of some deranged sense of duty.

None of us, fat or thin, are such idiots that we can’t figure out how to eat appropriately for our bodies. And it really is okay to enjoy things that taste good.

It’s food. That’s what it’s for.

fat /= healthy

fat = smoking (?)

There’s the unspoken implication here that people will call up for support when they’re in the midst of restricting their food intake, and forcing themselves to do more exercise — because they’re hungry, sore, exhausted, demoralized, and they need a cheerleader to convince them to carry on. Which, to me, bodes…not well. If you’re trying to make a change that could be both physically positive and enjoyable, but treating it like it’s the incredibly unpleasant task of fighting an addiction, then you’re fucked. You’re not going to make it, because you’re turning what should be a positive, self-affirming experience into an onerous, burdensome chore.

And also, eating is not an addiction. Food can be used in pathological ways, and people might need support to change that behaviour (a.k.a. “disordered eating”) — but eating itself is not an addiction. Let me explain.

There exist very intensely pleasurable biological pathways to reward animals for survival-enhancing behaviours. Like eating food, drinking water, licking salt, and having sex. Addiction happens when a non-essential, and in fact toxic, substance insinuates itself into one of those pathways, replacing the life-affirming behaviour with something life-diminishing. Even in the extreme throes of an eating disorder, food is not an addictive substance, and eating is not an addictive behaviour. The behaviour may be pathological, like a compulsion — but a compulsion /= an addiction. I believe Linda Bacon will address this in her upcoming book, but this has always been my understanding of the issue.

On the surface, the shades of difference between “addiction” and “compulsion” may seem purely semantic, but I’m afraid that categorizing basic survival behaviours — even when they become distorted into pathological habits — as “addictions” can lead to a dangerously slippery slope. At the bottom of that slope lies fear of food, fear of the body, and the moralizing of fundamentally amoral behaviours. (Though, of course, I don’t believe addictive substances need be considered immoral either — it’s just that humans commonly use the short-hand of “bad” — morally bad — to describe things that are potentially harmful. And because the consumption of heroin or cigarettes is not fundamental to sustaining life, there’s really no harm in labelling these things as “bad.” But food? Categorizing food as “bad” — morally bad — can be very harmful.)

Let’s put it another way — an eating disorder is a symptom of an underlying problem, possibly biological, possibly psychological. It is not purely a function of the substance, food, or the behaviour, eating. An addiction (though these often do have underlying biological and psychological causes themselves) can come about simply from exposure to an addictive substance. An unborn baby, with no psychological issues or significant biological impairments, can become addicted to a narcotic simply by being exposed to it in the womb. That is an addictive substance.

Sometimes people with iron deficiency experience pica, or a compulsion to eat non-nutritive substances. It is their body’s messed-up way of signalling that there is a deficiency, that something ain’t right. These people will compulsively eat many different substances: ice, chalk, dirt, clay, even socks. Does this mean that socks are an addictive substance? Do they need to go to sock-detox? Or should they go on a low-sock diet, and maybe get some telephone support to help them stick to it, rah! rah!

No. They need to fix the underlying problem.

If someone has disordered eating — whether it’s an extreme eating disorder or a milder form of disordered eating, like overeating — they don’t need a diet, and they certainly don’t need a phone-line to encourage them to diet. They need therapy, training in some form of intuitive eating or demand feeding (possibly with some structure, as I’ve mentioned in the past — pure demand feeding doesn’t work for everyone), maybe medication, and they need Health at Every Size. It may not be a perfect, one-size-fits-all solution, but so far it seems to be the best we’ve got.

A phone call won’t stop the cycle. It’ll only give a push to another revolution of the diet merry-go-round we’ve been collectively riding for the last century. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the kind of revolution I’m interested in.

I’d like to say something about how much fat people eat. I, personally, would be neither surprised nor offended if it were somehow proven that fat people, on average, eat more than thinner people. Of course, this hasn’t been proven, and if it were, there would be exceptions and outliers — but if it were found to be the general case, it wouldn’t surprise or offend me in any way.

I think I eat a fair amount of food, but I do not binge, and I do not habitually overeat. By its definition, overeating is eating “too much,” or an unhealthy amount. In our culture, this means “eating enough to get fat,” because fat is shorthand for “unhealthy” — and it suddenly becomes a lovely example of perfectly circular logic: overeating is what fat people do when they eat, whether it’s a two-pound steak or the parsley garnishing it. Therefore, if you are fat, you are fat because you overeat, else you wouldn’t be fat; and if you are fat, any act of eating you undertake is defined as “overeating” — because you are fat.

I’ll tell you what; I eat exactly the amount of food I want and need at any given time. This is not overeating. This is called Being a Grown-Up Human Being Who Can Take Care of Her Own Damn Self, Thank You Very Much. And if I found that I ate more than a thin person, or that the average fat person ate more than the average thin person, I wouldn’t be offended because I don’t think it’s morally wrong for different people to eat different food in different amounts. I wouldn’t be offended because I don’t think what a person eats reflects on their character. And I wouldn’t be surprised because, well, I am hungry.

I could go into the biological reasons for why I am hungry, into the fact that I support more fat mass than the average person, and to do that requires more muscle mass, more bone mass, more vasculature, more everything, and the fact that, beyond that, nutrient requirements are normally distributed — but I won’t, because there’s really no explanation necessary (and if you think there is, you’re well on your way to a bingo.) I am simply hungry, and there is nothing anyone can say to dissuade me from being hungry, or talk me out of being hungry, or trick me into thinking I am not hungry when I am, in fact, hungry.

I am hungry, and my body is a much better estimator of calories and portion sizes and even balanced nutrition than my head, or anyone else’s, will ever be. I eat exactly what I’m hungry for, and I do this because I learned how — something that many people won’t ever learn, because that is exactly how fucked-up our culture is over food. If I overeat, it’s an occurrence relative only to myself, not to the thin person next to me. And if I eat more than someone else, say, more than someone thin, it is not because I am stupid and they aren’t, not because I don’t understand nutrition and they do, not because I’ve never been read the Riot Act Obesity Act, and certainly not because I am an immoral, no-good, greedy, wanton symbol of evil Western imperialism and overconsumption.

It is because I am hungry, and I know how to feed myself so that I am no longer hungry. It’s something no one else can do for me; I have to do it for myself. And I thank the good Lord every day that I can, and do.

A famous actress was quoted in the newspaper regarding a role that required her to gain weight. Something about the quote struck me as odd. To paraphrase, she said, “Sure, it sounds great to gain weight. You can indulge all your fantasies of endless chocolate, unlimited pasta and garlic bread…but after a while your blood glucose goes crazy, you’re all over the place, and it doesn’t feel good.”

At first blush, the quote makes sense. It’s true; if you’re eating too much for your needs, or a diet nutritionally unbalanced for your needs, it’s not going to feel good — it’s going to feel gross. Fair enough. But the thing that stuck in my craw was the idea of someone even having fantasies about unlimited chocolate and pasta and garlic bread in the first place.

Now, food fantasies probably won’t sound weird to most people, because most people — and forgive me if this sounds mean — live with a slightly eating-disordered ideation about food, thanks to our culture. But in my experience, having these fantasies, and looking forward to any ‘excuse’ to indulge in them, is highly dysfunctional.

The fact is, a person who restricts their food intake, especially due to weight concerns (or the myriad related ‘health concerns’ that are just an attempted sublimation of the desire to lose weight, look better, gain social privilege, etc.) will have food fantasies. As the food restriction gets more severe, the fantasies get wilder, and the food behaviours more erratic. Remember the details from the Ancel Keys study, “The Biology of Human Starvation.” Recall the food compulsions reported among anorectic patients, people who are supposedly ‘not hungry’ (I assure you, they are, and they obsess about food more than they would if they actually ate it.) Think of the hot-fudge-sundae fantasies that most likely drifted through your dreams last time you were on a diet; craving pasta and potatoes during Atkins’; longing for cream sauces and marbled steaks on Pritikin.

Maybe it’s not enough to do damage, the type of moderate-to-mild food restriction that goes on commonly in the culture, prompting these harmless-sounding, Willy-Wonkaesque food fantasies. Maybe not. But maybe it is.

To divert for a moment, let’s consider the Willy Wonka river-of-chocolate, candy-growing-on-trees fantasy. Who is this designed to appeal to? Children.
Because their food intake is restricted? Well, perhaps in some cases, but I think the larger reason why the Willy Wonka fantasy appeals to children is that children are at their most metabolically active. They are growing; they have huge energy and nutritional requirements by unit body mass, much larger than adults, and in such a state, it’s natural that someone would fantasize about food, crave candy and sugary treats, adore birthday cake and cookies and, well, to do all the funny things with food (and particularly, sweets) that children are renowned for. Much the same goes for pregnant women, who are nourishing a rapidly-growing bundle of cells with their own bodies.

But is it normal for most adults — who should be in a metabolically stable state — to have these types of longings and fantasies and cravings? No. It is a sign that something could be wrong with your food intake and your nutritional status, or even out-of-whack metabolically, hormonally. Maybe nothing severely wrong, not yet, but definitely trending in that direction, and definitely taking away from your quality of life — even if it’s ‘just’ from your emotional well-being. The plain fact is, if you’re not getting enough to eat, it will eventually catch up with you. You will feel tired, hungry, or irritable. You will be distracted by food fantasies and maybe by the restrictive food rules you impose on yourself. You won’t be able to enjoy social meals as much. Your quality of life will suffer, and your performance in all areas of your life will suffer.

Any why infantilize yourself like that? Why subvert your real goals, your real life, to dream about food all day long? One of the first areas where a child learns to exert control is in eating. It is an area fundamental to the awakening of human autonomy. We are big boys and girls now; we get to choose what to eat, and how much of it.

In my experience, when you do two things — 1) stop food restriction, and mentally grant yourself permission to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, however much you want — and 2) pay attention to how eating makes your body react, so that you can balance short-term pleasure with longer-term well-being, so that you are nourished both physically and mentally — when you do these things (and they are not easy, not as simple as they sound, and can take years of effort), the food fantasies will end.

Because do you find yourself fantasizing about breathing air and drinking water on a daily basis? No? Enough said.

P.S. To bring this full-circle: when looking up “The Biology of Human Starvation” on Google Books, the first ad on the side of the results page said “How celebs stay thin.” Terribly apt.

The word ‘diet’ has become terribly perverted from its original, life-affirming definition. In the original sense, diet meant: “food and drink regularly provided or consumed; habitual nourishment.” (www.webster.com.) In the last century or so, it has taken on a second, uglier definition: a particular way of eating, especially to achieve weight loss (or, euphemistically, to achieve health, which 95% of the time includes losing weight.) THAT is the kind of diet I’m talking about.

Let me fill you in on a couple things. First of all, a diet in the secondary sense is always temporary. Even if you call it “a whole new way of eating” or a “lifestyle change.” If you’re really and truly making a lifestyle change, it’s probably going to be so gradual that you can’t refer to it collectively. It’s going to fit in seamlessly with your life so that it doesn’t NEED a name all its own. This is the point.

Anyone who says they are embarking on a “lifestyle change” is going on a diet, plain and simple. Sometimes they will insist that the “maintenance” period (which comes after the weight loss) PROVES that what they are doing is for life. Actually, it proves the opposite. If you go from ‘actively losing’ to ‘maintaining’ you have been on a diet. Maintaining itself is a type of diet, though typically not as restrictive as the original weight loss diet. And the funniest part about maintenance? Ask anyone who’s done it: maintenance is hard…even harder than weight loss.

Why is that? Well, one, because the thrill of seeing your body change is gone. The excitement and novelty have worn off by the time you’ve reached maintenance. Now you’re down to the dirty work of trying to convince your body to behave at a certain weight…for the rest of your life. To eat a certain amount, to do a certain exercise. Maintenance is rigid control and every bit as dysfunctional as weight loss…though you may get to eat a whole extra 200 calories per day (yippee.) It’s not surprising that many people succeed at losing massive amounts of weight, only to trip up during the maintenance period.

For this reason, even supposed “lifestyle changes” and “maintenance plans” can be considered dieting. Why? To recap: because they’re restrictive, unrealistic in the long-term, and represent a rift in your life where you’ve abruptly gone from one mode of living to another…one different enough to be affixed with a label. No matter how you spell it, the label always reads “DIET.”

What about those people who have credible success stories? Those people who have lost lots of weight and kept it off (by doing the “diet” thing) for quite a long time? These stories are easy to access on the Internet. But you have to know that you cannot rely on anecdotal reports as evidence that something is true (this is a basic tenet of critical thinking.) The thing is, everyone is different. Why this worked for someone is a great mystery…but chances are, the same thing isn’t going to work for you. I have also noticed that, while on the surface it appears there are a great deal of success stories to be read (especially on the Internet) if you read enough of them, you start noticing that there are probably less than a fifty, just very well recycled.

For statistical evidence, check The National Weight Control Registry, an organization which boasts 3,000 registered members who have successfully kept of about 30 pounds for five years or longer. This sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? It gives a weight-watcher reason to hope. But wait a second. According to the Calorie Control Council, there are currently 51 million dieters in the U.S. alone. Of these 51 million, only 3,000 are KNOWN to be successful. What kind of success rate is that? About 0.00006%. You’d be better off spending your Healthy Choice frozen dinner money on lottery tickets.

Not only is dieting a dismal failure for 99.99994% of those who attempt it, studies have shown that dieting is harmful to your health. Restricting food intake can lead not only to nutritional deficiencies, but psychological stress and eating disorders. Excessive exercise can cause physical injury and can be addicting. And yo-yo dieting, the phenomenon whereby most people who lose weight gain it back (and then some) precipitating a cycle of repeated dieting and regain, has been scrutinized in research which suggests it leads to higher mortality rates and can actually make a person FATTER in the long run.

Now, if you’ve ever been duped into dieting, I’m not saying that YOU’RE stupid: not at all. In fact, based on popular information from both media and government sources, you made a pretty reasonable choice. And of course not everyone has the time to be a nutrition scholar. That’s why we have Registered Dietitians and other professionals to help guide people whose lives revolve around things OTHER than nutrition.

To help you make better choices about what to believe in the future, I offer the following advice: do not listen to the popular media when it comes to your health. In most cases, the media is there to provide hard news information and entertainment. They are not health gurus. Journalists do an admirable job to dig up interesting stories, but when it comes to health, this can only make things more confusing.

What about fat women who’ve tried to love themselves and have failed at that too?

It’s a curious dilemma. I mean, what do you do when not only diets have failed you, but your effort to try and accept yourself has failed? You’re kind of stuck, and I don’t think it would be a fun place to be stuck. You know that dieting is pretty stupid, but you’re starting to think that the idea of actually *liking* your big ugly body is starting to sound stupid as well…

I have a few questions, and please don’t take offense…I’m just trying to understand.

-Have you put as much effort into learning to accept yourself as you have put into dieting? Have you thrown out the ‘thin’ clothes and bought new ones that you like? Have you read books and websites?

-Have you talked to your spouse or partner about this; does your spouse or partner find your body unattractive? Have you talked to your family? Do your relatives harass you about losing weight?

-Have you found a doctor who is not prejudiced about size? They do exist.

-Have you looked for a size-friendly exercise or support group? They also exist.

The reason I ask this is because learning to love yourself is not easy. If anything, it’s even harder than dieting, but with one important difference: in the end, you will succeed. But the effort must be real. Self-love does not automatically appear when you decide you’re done dieting. It takes work and effort.

Ask yourself this: Suppose you have a set amount of energy to apply to a task. And you have two choices. Which one are you going to choose to spend your energy on? Dieting, which works for most people only in the SHORT TERM, and can make you feel worse about yourself if you gain the weight back…or self-love, which will produce long-term results and can actually improve your physical and mental health?

Making the choice is easy. It’s following through with the choice that takes work. Loving yourself requires ACTIVE changes, since everything in our culture is geared to weight loss. When you look up health, you find weight loss. When you look up nutrition, you find weight loss. When you look up body image, you find weight loss. Therefore, if you sit passively back, the tides of our culture will gradually erode your resolve not to focus on weight loss. You must actively seek out size-positive information and support.

If anyone needs resources for self-love, ASK ME. I have tons, and am more than willing to share. There are websites, books, advocacy groups, dietitians, doctors, and researchers galore who believe in health at any size.

And, for the record: I do not advocate weight gain. My agenda is encouraging people of all sizes to live healthy lifestyles, regardless of weight. I actually believe that keeping a STABLE weight is healthiest of all, whether you start off fat or thin. Sometimes you will gain or lose naturally; but that is not my concern. My concern is for people to love and respect themselves, their bodies, and each other.

One last thing: a note on medical conditions. PCOS has been mentioned to me more than once now, by two different people. I don’t know the specifics of the disorder other than what I have read here, but what I’ve heard is that the condition results in a higher weight, and a harder time controlling weight for women who have it.

To this I offer the following logic: we’ve determined that for perfectly healthy people, controlling weight is near impossible, unless through extreme, unhealthy measures (we’re talking self-starvation, bulimia, compulsive exercise, weight-loss surgery, etc.) In fact, it is so difficult for normal people to control their weight that many health professionals have decided to encourage people not to worry about weight, and focus instead on living healthfully (which means eating nutritious food and exercising regularly.)

Therefore, if you have a medical condition which makes losing weight even MORE difficult than it already is for normal people, why would it make sense to try losing weight? You’re fighting a losing battle. For anyone with a medical condition, I think it is conservative to say that you should eat well and exercise moderately. Why add to the stresses of your condition the impossible task of trying to control an uncontrollable weight?