Laugh if you will...

...or just don't bother reading on, because I want to write a post about diets. Or maybe I should just say, "diet," and not *diet* such as in, "I am on a diet!" but diet as just in what I am eating or not eating, or eating too much of...etc.

I am not really sure what I want to say, but I have been thinking about eating a lot lately, mostly because in the last few years I seem to eat as much as possible when it comes to *free food* and I want to STOP IT. As much as I love food, I am also a terribly picky eater, so I don't know what my problem is. I even went so far to go back and re-read some of those terrible diet books we have, you know, Atkins, South Beach, French Women Don't Get Fat, WW Points, etc. The first three suck for plenty of reasons, but the biggest reason being the recipes. Stop giving me f*cking recipes that involve some weird herbs or ingredients that I need to travel to five different specialty stores to find and then never use because I am too tired after trying to find them all...not to mention I just spent $100 trying to make some meal I won't even like. I don't like brown rice and I don't like fish (or any seafood for that matter). I can't pretend so don't make me. I don't want to eat only meat for 2 weeks straight so don't make me. And I cannot and will not go to Eastern market and spend hours pouring over the perfect pear or something because that's what the French would do. PLEASE!!!

And then WW points. Sounds ok--you want to eat something, but you have to figure out how many points it is and then keep within your little limit...that is fun, for about a week and a half and then it tends to backfire on you. You start questioning portion size, "Gee, these McDonald French fries seem a little light today, so maybe I'll knock off a point," or, "Well, I didn't eat all the sauce in my lean cuisine, so maybe it was really only a 2 point meal!" Ha! Please....save me.

Even worse than WW points was some weird computer program a couple of graduate students gave me at work that you had to type in your weight, your goal weight, the date you wanted to reach your goal, and then it would calculate how many calories you could eat each day, but you had to make sure you logged in every. bite. of . food. all. day. long. until you maxed out for the day. Who has that kind of time or patience??????

My work is offering these *wellness* sessions on healthy eating or healthy lifestyles and I went to one on Wednesday called the *virtual grocery store* where a nutritionist proceeded to tell us for an hour we need to eat more fruits, veggies and whole grain foods, and stop eating things like potato chips and processed food. Really? I was shocked (note sarcasm here). But I nearly lost it when she told us that a fun food would be microwaving a sweet potato, adding a pinch of brown sugar, a packet of Splenda and mashing it all together and it was "just like dessert!" Are you f*cking kidding me? Did you really smoke crack before you showed up to teach this session? Even worse were the people in the audience chiming in with, "I make sure I eat 45 grams of fiber daily!" or, "I like to mix in spinach leaves into a smoothie for my kids, and they just love it!" I felt like I was sitting in with a group of nutritional Stepford wives. You should have seen the looks everyone gave me when I admitted I still drink whole milk. The horrors!!

So, my latest purchase in trying to understand my great need to stuff my face like a pig has been the book, Intuitive Eating. Another quick read, and I could sum up the entire book in about 2 sentences, but the thing I liked most about this one was no recipes. No freaky ingredients...no one telling me that I would learn to love to eat x, y, or z in my new *lifestyle change*...just intuitive eating. What is it? Eat what you want, but stop when you are comfortably full. If you want a snickers bar, don't eat carrots or rice cakes, eat a snickers bar. If you want ice cream for dinner, then eat ice cream for dinner, just don't gorge yourself...stop when you are comfortably full. How, well...intuitive! Now if I could just convince my brain to start thinking that way again. I especially like the part where (paraphrased, of course) they said if you started eating something and it tastes like crap, don't FINISH it--throw it out (unless you are a a situation such as a relatives' house where you would clearly offend the host if you didn't eat their prepared meal).

Kids are natural intuitive eaters--they know when they are hungry and WILL stop when they are full until they are taught by an adult that it is BAD to leave food on their plate because people are starving in (insert some starving kid country here) or they must eat everything on their plate or they can't leave the table and we'll sit for 12 hours until you finish that soup!! Or, "Are you sad? Here, have a cookie!" Stuff like that....I was lucky being number 7 of 8 so that other than the occasional prodding by my mom to "eat just ONE kernel of corn", I was never really hassled into finishing my plate or eating something I didn't want (but I honestly think it was because my parents figured, hey more food for the rest of us if you don't want to eat!) but lately...the free food, especially the unbelievably large amounts available free at work makes me gorge.

Take yesterday--we had our annual Halloween potluck and had dishes from every corner of the globe. There were twice as many desserts as there were main dishes, and I just wanted it all...it was so good I ate until I felt physically sick for the rest of the day and I don't understand why I do this now when I would never have done something like this in the past.

Then there are the invited lecturers or conferences where there is gobs of free cheese and crackers and fruit...or the Ph.D. dissertation defenses where the defender brings in soda and cake or cookies and sandwiches trying to win over their dissertation committee with food...it is all there, in the workroom, begging to be eaten...or the birthday every other week with cake...why why why can't I just say, no, anymore? What has changed where food has become such an obsession?

So, my real hope with writing this post is that if I actually write it down and put it *out there* so to speak, I will force myself to do this...to really think about how I feel when I eat and just stop when I am full. Just because they give me 500 lbs of food at the Chinese restaurant at the mall doesn't mean I have to eat it all.right.now. It will still be there tomorrow...and it is ok to throw out food...I don't need to eat food just because one of my kids wants to *share* their goldfish or cheese....and just because there is *free* food in the workroom, doesn't mean I have to eat it.

So maybe I do not need to lose 20 lbs, but I don't want to gain it, either. I want to have some energy again at the end of the day...I want to exercise more...I want to be healthy...but I don't want to be brainwashed by some new fad, either. I know when I am not obsessing about it, I do eat fairly healthy. I know some days I could just eat whoppers all day long, and others I just want fruit and veggies. Eating less seems reasonable to me...if I could just get my mouth to work with my brain and stomach, maybe all would be well.