Just One Bite?

If you have tried a few (or many) diets like I have, you have at some point encountered a certain school of thought that has been on my mind a lot lately.  For example, there is currently a weight watchers commercial where the lovely, thin woman says she WILL sometimes have a cupcake, just not the whole cake.  Many diet books/gurus will tell you that you should not eliminate any particular food.  "Don't tell yourself you can never again eat cookie cake because then you won't want to stick to it."  Right?  You follow me?  That is a very common belief.  If you try to think you can never have this or that special yummy that you love then you'll quit because you can't face life without pizza, or Snickers or whatever.

I understand where this train of thought comes from.  I do.  And I understand that if we talk in terms that are super rigid and unforgiving, some people won't ever start and others won't last long.  Many believe that they are setting themselves up to fail if they don't allow for the occasional indulgence.  I'm not saying that we should never indulge in something diet-naughty ever again.  I'm not saying I won't ever indulge again.  I AM saying that my idea of what is an indulgence has changed.  And I think that for long-term success and happiness in this new lifestyle, that is what has to happen.  And after talking to many, many juicers and recently converted vegans and raw-foodists, etc, that can and WILL happen if you give yourself half a chance.  Pretty much everyone says the same thing, "My taste buds really HAVE changed!" And we all say it with the same tone of wonder and disbelief in our voices and on our faces.  Lets face it, for those of us weighing in the 300s and 400s, we didn't get there by having an appetite for loads of raw veggies.  Those were the things we didn't mind having a bit of with our meat and butter laden mashed potatos and before our cupcake... or whole cake.

I don't need people telling me that it's okay to have a cupcake.  I got to 340 lbs telling myself that.  If I eat really healthy food 90% of the time, then a cupcake won't hurt anything, right?  Well, of course it won't.  But here's the problem: nobody who has gotten to be fat, sick and nearly dead (thank you Joe Cross;o)  has the ability to eat "healthy" by conventional wisdom standards and then occasionally treat themselves with a frigging cupcake.  Truth.  I know I'll take some heat for this view but it's truth and sometimes truth hurts.  If we COULD do that, don't you think we would have already?  Would you tell someone who is a few months after having their last cigarette that just one cigarette won't hurt. It'll make you feel like you can keep going!  Hello Ms Alcoholic who spent a couple years in jail for DUI and got sober 6 months ago, have a drink.  Just one won't hurt anyone and it'll make you feel like you can stick it out longer.  IT'S THE SAME.  IT'S THE SAME. IT'S THE SAME!!!!!!!

If I could have done this the "conventional wisdom" route, I certainly already would have.  Certainly tried often enough.  I tried with Weight Watchers, I tried with Atkins, I tried with tracking and balancing the key nutrients on Sparkpeople (NOT dissing Sparkpeope - it is a FANTASTIC tool/resource that I use every day) and I tried Nutrisystems where they sent me prepackaged meals... including ittle-bitty "healthy" cupcakes.  I tried cabbage soup and some email "pre-surgery" diet that involved lots of tunafish and bananas.  I lost weight with every single plan I tried.  And then I gained weight.  I didn't throw my hands up and just give up and turn around and start going to McDonalds again.  (At least usually I didn't... there were times.)  Usually, it happened something like this:  

Day 12:  I think I'm really going to have to have a little treat at the birthday party or I'll feel too deprived and give up.  And of course, I can't turn down Aunt Mary's special recipe macaroni and cheese or I'll hurt her feelings.

Day 13:  I really shouldn't have had that 3rd piece of cake.  I'll be super, extra good the rest of this week.

Day 14: One little piece of pizza isn't so bad.  I'll eat just salad for supper.

Day 15: What do you mean I gained a pound?!  I have to get down to business and stick to the plan perfectly this week.  Right after I pout with this Sonic meal that I really can't avoid because I don't have time to do anything else today because of x, y and z.

Fast forward to Day 21 by which time I have gradually phased myself right back into eating whatever falls into my hands the easiest.  

Here's the thing, the one thing, the MAIN thing.  We super-fatties don't do Just One Bite.  We don't even usually do Just One Piece.  We might stick to just one at the party (because we fatties aren't supposed to let anyone else see us eat) but then when we get home, we'll have another and usually another.   We "just one piece" ourselves into guilt, shame, rage and yet another 25 or 50 or 80 lbs by that time next year.  And it isn't lack of willpower or lack of character or pure-dee old gluttony; it's addiction.  Addictive substances are added to almost everything the modern American eats.  Yes, even those tasty little weight-watcher's entrees.  It is also a big heaping dose of misinformation.  The people we should be able to trust to tell us what we need to know to feed our families and ourselves in a healthy manner, you know who I mean, the FDA and the Department of Agriculture etc, they lie.  They pander to the money and they lie to us.  Straight up.  

So is it hopeless then?  Do we accept that we can't moderate our own eating.  Fall into the shame and blame trap?  Fail to even try because life is no fun without sugar and deep-fat fried everything? No because we can CHANGE what we crave.  We CAN change what constitutes an indulgence for us.  For real.  I'm not talking about pasting on a smile and pretending that we are just loving having this salad at Olive Garden while the family all eat lasagna and eggplant parmesan.  I'm talking about really, for real finding ourselves loving the taste of clean, fresh, whole, veggies that are not slathered in butter or cheese sauce.  Feeling that we have really treated ourselves to a splurge when we have banana/berry sorbet from our blender.  There really IS a magic pill.  Go cold-turkey on EVERYTHING processed, packaged and made by man for a while.  Become a strict whole food junkie for just a while.  Or do what I did, watch Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and then watch Forks Over Knives and then do a juice fast.  After just a week on nothing but fresh-made veggie/fruit juice, I stopped craving things.  After a couple of weeks on juice, I literally found the taste thought of over-processed junk posing as food (like those little frozen weight watchers dinners and cupcakes) repulsive.  And after several weeks of an almost exclusively juice diet, as we test the waters of what foods work for us and figuring out what we actually like now, we really truly don't like the taste of the same crap that we used to feed on all the time.  When my grandkids were over the other day, their mama brought some food with them since they surely couldn't survive the day on just fruits and veggies.  Harmoni (my 17 year old) and I tasted one of the "chicken strips."  I looked at her and she said to me, "I can't believe that used to be chicken to me.  That's disgusting."  And today, she tasted a little taste of the kind of peanut butter we used to buy and said that it didn't taste good... in fact, it didn't taste like peanuts!  (We use Smuckers Natural peanut butter now.  It's the best stuff!  Nothing in there but peanuts.)  We have found that salad actually tastes really good with some herbs and a tiny bit of vinaigrette on it.  We really don't have to smother it in ranch dressing.  (Read the ingredients on that little bundle of joy sometime.  Ugh!)

So, the point of this not-so-short rant is that, yes, I am pretty hard line.  No I'm not okay with the idea of a bit of birthday cake to show solidarity.  No, I'm not going to pretend it's okay if I ever DO slip up and eat something disgusting.  It's not okay.  I'm not going to beat myself up and dwell on it but I'm not going to say it's okay and I'm certainly not going to plan ahead to do it.  People don't regain all the weight they lose on any eating plan by just turning right around and heading back the way they came, they turn around little by little by little.  They turn around by taking just one bite.  And then a few more.  We all have choices in life.  Every day I make the choice to ONLY eat things my body truly needs.  Think about that for a minute.  How much of what you eat does your body truly need? Answer: Very. Damn. Little.  Every day I make the choice to find comfort, entertainment and pleasure in other ways.  It doesn't have to be through my food.  It sounds so trite to say that feeling this healthy is better than how any food out there tastes.  What's that saying?  Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.  Well, there sure as heck isn't anything that tastes as good as healthy and energetic and getting thinner every day feels.  Nothing.  And I refuse to just-one-bite myself back into the trance of processed, poisonous, addictive crap that 99% of people think is food.  News flash: McNuggets aren't food.  Food is the carrier of the nutrients our body needs into our system.  McNuggets and Totinos pizza and Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup carry a few nutrients on the back of literal poison.  Addictive poison.  I'm over it.

This:

Or this: