It's New Year! Let's talk about dieting.

This post has been a long time coming. I've written it several times over and deleted it every time, rejigged my opinions. I've been concerned about nailing my colours to any particular mast for fear of getting them shot down, blown up and beaten by commentators on both sides of what is probably the biggest, angriest debate in health this decade.

Mmmm, Bacon....

Either that or nobody will read this and I'm having delusions of grandeur. Whatever.

There are statistics out there about fat and weight loss that I'm sure you've heard of or seen here and there. 50% of women are on a diet at any given time. The weight loss industry is worth $46.3bn in the USA alone. 95-98% of all diets fail. The Health At Every Size (HAES) and fat positive movements are gaining ground and my twitter and tumblr feeds are awash with the Fat Fightback. I'm fascinated.

What fascinates me is my own conflicting, complex relationship with what goes down my throat, and how these arguments and research relate to me and my own views on fat and health.

When I was fat (and there's no other word that's gonna suffice here) I got into the whole mindset of fat being someone else's problem, not me. I remember arguing passionately that I ate healthy, had sensible portions, that 121kg was a perfectly normal weight for someone of my height and the fact I couldn't find clothes I liked in my size was down to a "ghettoisation" of fat people, that I was being marginalised for being me. I don't think I ever compared it to something like racism or homophobia but if anyone can attest to me saying something so fundamentally fucking stupid then please correct me, I wouldn't be surprised.

Ironically, I gave one of my most impassioned "Rights for Fatties" speeches as a Lighter Life meeting I was attending, with a group of other women who were paying nearly 80 pounds a week to attend group counselling sessions and ingest (I wouldn't call it eating) less than 400 calories a day in the form of powdered soups and shakes. I was in my second week there. The fact I was sitting there, having just written out a cheque, saying that the only reason I wanted to get out of the morbidly obese bracket (BMI of 40, kids) was because of society, not me, neatly encapsulates for me the conflict I felt within myself about my body and how I and others saw me. Truth was, I was spending that money because I'd reached a point where my shame in my own body was such that I could barely look at myself in the mirror. Where there was this fat...thing instead of the 23 year old image of dark-haired beauty that I'd clung on to until I couldn't deceive myself any longer. I hated how exercising get me hot, sweating and sore after ten minutes. I hated what I'd become.

When I realised that there was no magic bullet, just years of exercise, extreme changes in diet and lifestyle, and a whole new understanding of myself and food, it changed everything. I appreciate that changing a huge part of who you are is an incredibly difficult thing to do, but if you want to do it then there's nothing really stopping you. So, I bought less food, started cycling to work, stopped buying booze to drink at home, and the weight started to come off. Admittedly, I lost the weight at a rate of about 1-2 dress sizes A YEAR, but off it's come. Slow, steady, and just like the doctors say it should. I don't need to tell you what I can do physically as it's pretty much all I write about on here, but it doesn't take much to figure out that it's a LOT more than I could do in my early twenties. I feel transformed.

After something like this, it's hard not to be evangelical. "Hey, I managed to lose 40kg! EVERYONE can lose weight! It's easy!". It's quite easy to sound like an asshole in such circumstances (man, I make it easy to sound like an asshole in almost ANY circumstance). With that came a sense of annoyance at other people's inability to follow suit. When people would complain about their weight, I'd hear excuses. Hell, I'd managed it, anyone who couldn't was WEAK and LAZY and JUST GET OVER YOURSELF.

I want to take a moment here, to apologise to everyone that I've been a total asshole to about their weight. Be it making comments about fat people, jokes, whatever. I'm sorry. It's not cool, ever. I've been learning.

A fat person, some time ago.

My theory is that as a society we ARE getting fatter, no amount of Fat Activists (FA) posting up old pictures of larger people will change that fact. I think it's because as a society we've been given an endless land of plenty, simple carbs and instant gratification (when was the last time, outside of the festive season, that you took longer than an hour to prepare a meal?). It's left a lot of us, me included, very messed up in our relationship with an addictive substance that you need to ingest a little of every day. To break that programming, that NOW + LOTS + CRAP equation, is really, REALLY hard.

However, it can be broken. I am now constantly vigilant about what I eat. I think about my diet a lot. What I've had to eat today (four slices of wholemeal toast and low-fat peanut butter, half a bowl of couscous, a bowl of vegetables roasted in olive oil, wine vinegar and a little honey, a banana, two carrots and three kiwifruit. I didn't even have to check the fridge). What I'm going to eat tomorrow. If I'm eating enough protein. If the reason I had a crap run today was down to the last gasp of a vile hangover, or not having eaten the right stuff earlier (I'm going with hangover). I have to be this aware, to prevent old attitudes resurfacing.

Which they do.

I used to be able to eat one of these in one go.

I hate buffets, or places with food out on tables. Because I'll nibble and nom and munch and I won't even be thinking about it until I've snaffled a crapload of food without thinking. Give me the chance and I'll take more than my fair share. Stopping myself from doing this is hard. Really hard. But I try. I have to. I don't buy anything that's even vaguely "snacky" (apart from fruit and veg), because a packet of biscuits becomes an open packet of biscuits becomes an empty packet. I can't trust myself.

This is going somewhere, trust me.

Over at Slow Fat Triathlete (mentioned here before) Jayne talks about research into weight loss, and the "exhausting" lengths people who have lost weight have to go through to maintain weight loss. For example:


Ms. Parker-Pope then interviews a woman who lost a lot of weight and has kept it off for years. This woman's regimen includes minutely detailed food and weight journaling; constant weighing and measuring of every mouthful (she knows, for example, that lettuce is about 5 calories per cup); researching menus and performing calorie calculations before any meal outside the house; avoiding all foods with white flour and sugar; and exercising 100-120 minutes a day. “It’s one of the hardest things there is,” she told the Times. “It’s something that has to be focused on every minute. I’m not always thinking about food, but I am always aware of food.”

Yeah, that sounds familiar. This struck a chord with me because I'm like this and I CHOOSE to be this way. I worked so hard to change my health and gain fitness, I'm not willing to give it up. If I stop thinking about my diet, working on how to improve it, thinking about how to stop reaching for the chocolate bar when I'm stressed, then I KNOW I will become one of the 95-98% of the failed dieters out there. It's too easy.

I'd rather be here....

However, just because I have decided that the rewards of being slimmer outweigh the immense pain in the arse it can be having to be super-vigilant about my diet, doesn't mean EVERYONE has to be. If someone decides that dieting isn't for them, that they are happy being their size, then that's a choice that's been made and fair enough. Personal, informed choice is something I am a fan of.

BUT....

...than here.

I can't accept that fat is healthy. I have put on about 6kg since the accident, and I'm aware of it. Aware of how I move, how it sits on me. I understand on a basic level that this extra weight is interfering with my ability to work out, and that I'm going to have to haul ass (literally) to get rid of it. It's a matter of physics more than anything. Shunting around the equivalent of an adult human being on my frame all the time was bad for my health. It's bad for anyone's health. Lose the weight, reduce that stress on the body. Simple.

If you're not incredibly active, then no big deal I guess. If you don't feel any strong desire to skate till you feel sick or run until your legs shake then that is totally your prerogative. But if you do, and you want to use your body ergonomically rather than just see it for its aesthetics, then excess weight is not going to help you in your cause. Either take the (very) hard road of food-watching and dietary vigilance, or lose out on your potential, fitness-wise.

And on that note, there's a month to go until skating starts again. Woop woop!