Weighing your chocolate. Not a bad idea…

{image via pinterest}

It’s International No Diet Day, and that means that your need for your at-home scale just flew out the window, right along side your Weight Watchers magazine and your fat-free ice cream. I mean, really, fat-free ice cream? Would you buy pants-less pants? But I digress…

Since you don’t need your scale today (or, perchance, at all anymore?), I thought you might like some ideas for what to do with that less than necessary piece of machinery.

1. Play “Guess Whose Purse Weighs the Most” with your friends or co-workers. Whoever wins gets the other players to pitch in for a shoulder massage.

2. Step on it to reach high into your cabinets where you hid those chocolate chips you were storing away for a rainy day. Who needs a rainy day when it comes to chocolate?

3. Balance it on your head to practice your posture.

4. Write a sappy break-up letter, à la ”It’s not you, it’s me…”, and leave it on top of it. Tell it how you just need to go your separate ways so that you can truly find yourself.

5. Put your dog’s squeaky too underneath it, so when someone steps on it, they get a little surprise.

6. See who has more hair products by weight – you or your partner. Then make fun of the loser.

7. Unscrew it and take apart the pieces. Mix them up. Now see if you can put it back together. If you can, pat yourself and the back and and start referring to yourself as an amateur engineer.

8. If you couldn’t put the pieces back together, create an piece of modern art with them. Even better!

9. Tape a picture of your grandmother or someone else dear to you on it. If you get tempted to step on it, you’d have to step on her face. And that’s not cool.

10. Practice carrying it with one hand above your head in case you decide to be a pizza delivery person. You’ll be set.

What else could you do with your scale? Let’s get creative!

Living in a culture that treats thinness as it’s the golden ticket to all things happy and wonderful, it’s not hard to understand why millions of people flock to the latest diet trends. In our society,  achieving a certain body can seem to become almost a matter of survival. And pursuing survival leads people to do all sorts of irrational things.

The tricky thing is that those irrational ideas don’t seem quite so crazy when we’re in the midst of them. In fact, they seem like the most rational and necessary behaviors in the world. Think about a relationship that you’ve had where you can now look back with the perspective that time and distance provides. There are undoubtedly things that you did, maybe at the beginning or end of said relationship, that you recognize now as ridiculous. Standing outside your lover’s window at late at night holding up a radio playing a Peter Gabriel song, for instance?

Likewise, the drive for thinness can leads us down paths that are silly and ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst. And, sadly, it’s often only the benefit of time that shines the needed light on how absurd these ideas are.

Take for example some of the craziest diets that have somehow made their way into public use:

Sunglasses Diet – A Japanese company recently started marketing blue-tinted sunglasses that reportedly make all food like unappealing. The idea is to curb your appetite by changing the color and appearance of the food you are considering eating. No mind that you could, say, take the sunglasses off. Or the fact that you look totally ridiculous wearing blue glasses at lunch in a dimly lit restaurant. At least you could curb you’re eating out — no one will want to be seen with you!

Tapeworm Diet — It’s still not clear whether this is an urban legend, but reportedly stars of the 1950s took capsules containing tapeworms that would then cause dramatic weight loss. Because, obviously, they are parasites! Call me crazy, but I try to avoid ingesting things that are known to cause disease and death.

Cotton Ball Diet — Another one of the more dangerous diets, the Cotton Ball Plan suggested ingesting cotton balls (low in calories apparently, and high in fiber) as an appetite suppressant. The fact that they can also clog your digestive system and serious malnutrition apparently was considered unimportant. (Note that if you find yourself eating non-food items, you should talk to a mental health professional.)

Swamp Diet — In a classic case of allowing a correlation to be confused with causation, one scientist found that people who lived near swamps tended to be heavier. His conclusion was that to maintain your figure, you need to simply move to a drier climate.

Miracle Soap — Many in China and Japan have sworn by the so-called miracle seaweed soap that they claim removes body fat in three out of four cases. Call me a skeptic, but my take? You might look cleaner and smell nicer with a good wash, but you’re not going to lose weight.

Drinking Man’s Diet – In a classic representation of the 1960′s, Robert Cameron began selling a pamphlet describing his “genius” diet solution: don’t eat, just drink. We would now call that alcoholism, but back then 2.4 million people bought the instruction guide and limited their intake to what Cameron called “man-type” food, items low in carbohydrates like steak and gin.

What’s significant is that each of these diets made a huge splash when it was introduced. People grasped on to soap and gin and cotton balls like they were the holy grail, only to be seriously disappointed when the results were absent, fleeting, or, in some cases, deadly. What’s also significant is that many of these diets were supported by trained medical doctors and backed by “research” (not the randomized controlled clinical trials we should expect, mind you). So while it would be easy to call the individuals who used them gullible or even stupid, they might not be so different from the rest of us.

I have a strong hunch that many of the diet trends that perpetuate our popular media today will be looked upon with eye rolls and smirks in years to come. Why are the Paleolithic Diet or HCG Diet or Wheat Belly Diet any different than those above? Just because the books these days are glossier and have their own Facebook pages? Because we see doctors-made-famous-by-reality-television promoting them? Because we feel more desperate than ever given the national push to address this so-called epidemic?

Personally, I don’t trust any way of eating that suggests cutting out dessert or leaving your body deprived of certain nutrients. I’ve seen enough of the comings and goings of certain fads to hop on any diet train. What I’ve learned is that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. And if a diet claims to be able to bring you happiness, popularity, or anything other than a possible reduction on a machine that you should probably throw away, you should toss it out with the blue-tinted sunglasses.

{Image Credit :: wolvesandrabbits}

She’s only half the woman that she once was, but don’t tell her that.

At 28, my friend Laura has long lost almost half of what was once her highest weight. She hasn’t been to that point in almost ten years, dropping the pounds in desperate attempt to forestall what she perceived to be inevitable rejection come move-in day of her freshman year of college. Her self-proclaimed fat clothes are not shoved in the back of her bulging closet; they are long discarded – adorning Goodwill-goers and those with bodies far larger than Laura herself.

But Laura doesn’t see herself as the size six with killer triceps. When she looks in mirror, she is flooded with memories of sitting alone at the community center, drinking her diet coke and feeling hot and uncomfortable in the black tafetta dress her mom finally found on sale in the Women’s department. “Black is so slimming!” she was told. “Right,” she thought. “And so are vertical stripes. But I refuse to go there.”

She recalls watching the other girls dance with bright, carefree smiles adorning their perfectly made-up faces. And Laura is angry – though she’s not sure if it’s at the girls for fitting into the strapless sequined dresses that she’d been eyeing for months or at herself for letting Dunkin Donuts distract her from her low-carb, low-fat, high-anxiety diet once again.

But Laura is no longer that girl, though her mental image of herself retreats to that dark place whenever her anxiety starts to build. She can’t understand why, years after she has shed the weight and has built what she considers a healthy lifestyle, she remains stuck in a 16-year-old’s mind.

Speaking with may individuals who have lost a significant amount of weight, the disconnect between their new bodies and their old minds becomes strikingly apparent. Despite years upon years passing, many still describe themselves as feeling, at their core, like a fat pig.

Do memories of being overweight ever fade?

According to NPR’s Peter Sagal, the answer is no. Even physically fit as a 3:27 marathoner, he grapples with the concept of not being fat. “Mirrors are not to be believed,” he said in a Runner’s World piece. “You stand in front of them, knowing that you can’t trust yourself as an arbiter of truth, so you turn from side to side, thinking that maybe, if you snap your head around quickly enough, you can actually see yourself as others see you.”

Like Sagal, those who have become thin through regular and intense exercise often continue to feel that they are the mercy of their athletics. Sure I’m skinny, you’ll hear. But that’s because I run thirty miles a week. The implication of course is that if by some horrible stoke of luck  they weren’t able to exercise, they would return to the large life as quick as you can say tendonitis. They are, they believe, fat people in thin disguises.

Why is it so hard to adopt a new mental image of yourself? One reason might be that our brains are actually wired for distortion when it comes body image, as recent research suggests.

Another reason is that often the feelings associated with our body size are visceral – the transcend all reason and are rooted in a place far more powerful than intellect. Those who have found themselves struggling with weight, particularly as children, often form an identity around this. If not given other messages, we often learn, in part due to the weight discrimination rampant in our society, to approach others from a place of disempowerment and of shame.

At the heart of the matter is not fear of simply having an arbitrary numerical value on a scale rise again – it’s a fear of a loss of human connection, of feeling powerful and capable and strong, of rejection. And in an ironic twist of fate, fear and stress are connected to weight gain.

Learning to let go of a restrictive view of ourselves is a task for all of us – whether we have lost, gained, or maintained our weight throughout out lives. When the stories that have defined are lives are no longer working for us, it’s time to write new ones.

Have you ever found yourself caught in memories of a body you no longer have?

As one of my best friends is fond of saying, “Food is medicine.” Conversely, the wrong foods can be poisonous. While that may sound over-exaggerated, it’s been an accurate description of my struggles with food.

I’ve been accused of having all kinds of eating disorders, and the accusers include my family members, friends, and even doctors. It’s been painful to hear that I need to change the way I think and function when I haven’t done anything against my body. But they’ve been proven wrong. The issues that affect me aren’t eating disorders – they’re hyperthyroidism and acute sensitivity to specific foods, artificial colors, and preservatives.

Obviously, that’s not going to be true for the majority of people who struggle with food. But I’ve found that taking my medication and eliminating the offending foods from my diet hasn’t “healed” me completely. The turning point where my overall health began to improve noticeably was when I found the right way of eating for me.

In my case, the right diet means one that helps me gain weight to achieve my goal of surpassing the “normal” BMI for my height. Diets don’t have to be about counting calories and losing weight. They’re meant to help you get healthy, no matter what that means for you.

I’ve tried a number of eating plans recommended to me by doctors and friends, including Paleolithic, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, and vegan, but there was always something about each one that didn’t agree with my body. Fortunately, I came to the conclusion that my body is unique and deserves to be treated as such. How many people can really say that a generic diet is the best possible one to follow for their specific bodies? I know I can’t say that personally, so here’s how I figured out what to eat according to my body’s responses to food.

Unless you try new ways of eating, you’ll have a hard time identifying foods that are healthy and unhealthy for your own body. I tried one way after another, as recommended by doctors, and when I still didn’t feel healthy, I started to alter those diets based on others I had read about or heard about from friends. For example, I was told by one doctor to go gluten-free and, about a year later, a second doctor added dairy-free to the mix. With both gluten and dairy eliminated, I began to feel better, but I knew there were more adjustments to be made to feel my best.

I always felt sick after eating red meat, so I stopped eating it and made sure I got enough iron from my multivitamin to compensate for that change. I took it even farther by trying veganism, which definitely didn’t give my body everything it needed. I backed off to vegetarianism, but still struggled to get enough protein. I discovered that I needed meat to comfortably get enough protein each day. Now, I mostly rely on eggs and seafood for my protein, but I also eat chicken occasionally. I’ve never felt better, but I don’t know of any generic diet out there that includes every aspect of my own eating pattern.

My doctors and unique diet have helped me get healthier, but I’m not going to stop listening to my body. I know that everything can change and that I need to be prepared to respond when my body reacts to something in my diet. That’s been the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my three-year journey toward eating well: my body is the expert and I can’t afford to ignore it. Paying attention to your body isn’t a waste of time; it’s a wise investment in your future health.

If you’re interested in developing your own unique diet, I would recommend seeing a dietician or other nutrition specialist. This type of professional can help you find a good starting point and make sure that dieting is helping you rather than hurting you. Once you start learning more about what your body does and doesn’t want or need, you can build a healthy diet accordingly and start enjoying the benefits of eating well. No matter how long it takes, it’s well worth the time investment and inconvenience. Your body will thank you.

Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

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{Image Credit :: Flickr}