#NoDietDay in Everyday Ramblings

The front page of 750 Words this morning said that today is #NoDietDay. “May 6th is #NoDietDay, an annual social media campaign to encourage the rejection of diet culture. This movement, started by Mary Evans Young in 1992, celebrates the importance of body acceptance, diversity, and respect for all body shapes and sizes. It is such an interesting topic to think about, a thorny one for sure.

I am thinking about it because I am wrestling with all the things. I brought my scale over from Fred yesterday and weighed myself for the first time in a month and my weight is exactly the same as it was a month ago. Because of the issues with my skin starting last fall I decided in spite of all that I know to be true about the long-term success of weight loss plans that I needed to lose some weight to help with the flare up.

In the meantime, I have been using antibiotics, both topical and orally and a special wash and I had steroid shots as well as a commitment to wearing looser clothes.

The flare up subsided and my condition is now back in remission. Overall since I started back in November, I lost somewhere between 6 and 7 pounds. I am not dieting. I am tracking everything I eat in the Cronometer app. though. And although my goal is to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, I have fallen far short of that here in displacement land.

My go to is raspberries. I love them and they are available almost all year here with factory farming. I have managed to have them pretty much every day. They are high in fiber and fiber is one of the things I am tracking because, see above, oral antibiotics. Bleh. They do mess with a person’s digestive functions.

A few days ago, after 2 ½ months of taking them diligently I “forgot” to take my daily dose. And that was the end of that. It is going to take at least as long I think to get my gut back to some semblance of normal, though I think my yoga practice may help with that.

The problem for me is my mind. Even though I am no longer seeking a relationship with a man, I still want to feel attractive in general. And I am full of a lifetime of altered thinking and painful self-loathing when I look at my body. And that my friends, comes from diet culture. It does not come naturally from inside me, or my family, or friends. I am healthy and active. I sleep well and make pretty good choices about what I eat on most days.

But the self-recrimination! I met with four of my students yesterday in this lovely high end coffee shop and I am not a coffee drinker, and they had the most delicious looking pastries, and I ended up getting a raspberry croissant and a glass of water.

You’d think I’d killed a kitten or something, the amount of grief I gave myself for that choice. It was fresh and tasted so good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And yet on the internal mental soundtrack, it was the beginning of the end of life as we know it.

I am so sick of this. There was an advice article in the Washington Post yesterday called “BMI isn’t the only important measure when finding your healthy weight.” I thought oh cool, we are going to read about how anyone can be healthy no matter what weight they are as long as they aren’t taking drugs that affect their weight or have a health condition that does.

But no, it is a medical doctor spouting the same stuff about how to be healthy you need to be some arbitrary healthy weight. Unless you are a professional athlete or a weightlifter. There is one good thing at the end though. “The first step for a provider is to ask a patient if it is okay to discuss their weight.” If doctors could start doing that it would be most helpful for us mere mortals with bodies confronted with an abundance of stress and high calorie attractive food.

I have a couple of students who push themselves to be more active than I think is reasonable. I know there are a lot of folks who think I push myself to be more active than reasonable. And I am not close to being as active as they are. They hang out with people like them.

As with the no diet ever again thing, in spite of my internal critic, I also moderate how much exercise I get. I try to be consistent.

Having a set teaching schedule helps with that. I have backed off from walking 5 miles a day everyday as I have been doing more weight training and skill development. I don’t know how to teach this though.

Consistent movement, that is somewhat effortful, over pushing oneself, or letting it all slide. I guess all I can do is the best I can and try to be a role model in my own bumbling oh so far from perfect way.

I sure wish I could do a brain reset though and get that harmful, critical self-loathing internal voice to pack up and maybe hop a rocket ship to Mars.

Last updated May 08, 2023