Diet Fanatics, Please Listen to Me!
I am going away for the weekend, so here are 1500 for Friday:
Tonight I went out to dinner with the family, and the waitress brought me a hamburger instead of a turkey burger. I haven’t had a real hamburger in a long time, and my kids were already eating so sending it back would have been the worst thing I could do. So I ate it, and it was one delicious cheese and bacon covered mess. I ate every bit of that half pounder and a good number of the french fries that came with it. I wondered if my dinner companions noticed from behind their “Smart Eating Choices” that it was a hamburger not a turkey burger, and if so if they were quietly calculating the calories that I was putting down. And then I wondered, why do I care what they are thinking about my dinner, and then I wondered, why do I think that they would be thinking anything about it? I realized at that moment that I am just hypersensitive now from years spent with people who watch others around them with a “trained” dieter’s eye, making remarks to no one in particular about how many calories are in this food or how much fat is in that, and giving that understanding but extremely skeptical look when you try to say “I haven’t had a burger in so long.” So, I now feel compelled to make the following plea:
People of America, don’t tell me what you eat. Don’t tell me what you don’t eat. Don’t tell me that you are having a big lunch and skipping dinner. Don’t tell me that one piece of frozen pizza is a huge lunch. Don’t tell me that you never keep potato chips in the house. I don’t care. There may have been a time where I found all of this relentless dieting talk bearable, but that time has past. Go on a diet, go on a fast, go on a binge, eat nothing but cabbage soup, just please, please don’t tell me about it. If I promise to notice that you have become smaller, would you please promise not to provide a single detail of how you got that way? I cannot think of any topic I would care to hear about less than the minutia of another person’s caloric intake. Wait, there is one topic I care even less about – people of America, don’t tell me about your exercise plan. I don’t care if you run or walk or jump rope. I don’t care if you go to the gym, have a personal trainer or spend your early morning hours doing exercise videos. Unless you are planning to use me as a back up to an alibi that you have recently given authorities, I do not need to know how many minutes you were on the treadmill or how many miles you ran. If I promise here and now to be happy for your dedication to good health, can we drop it?
I am sorry if I seem insensitive to those of you that like to share your dieting tales. I know some people think of dieting and exercise as a hobby or a mission, much as other people like to talk about painting or helping the homeless, but I have reached my limit. I am not objecting the occasional discussion of Atkins versus Ornish or other aspects of the ever changing information regarding health and how to achieve it. I like to talk about current events. What I do not like to talk about is how much bread you’ve had in the past five days, because while this may well be current information, it is not eventful to anyone but you and your dietician.
And while I am at it, let me express one more dieting peeve. If you are clearly 3 sizes smaller than me and a good 25 pounds lighter, don’t tell me how fat you are. This requires me to say something along the lines of, “you are much smaller than me, so I wouldn’t worry too much,” which compels you to say “oh no you’re not, we’re about the same size.” This is a blatantly false and irritating bit of reassurance that I am not after. I am working on myself, and I am not worried. I had three kids, added about 5 pounds with each one, and hopefully someday I’ll have taken it all off. I can’t worry about it every day because frankly – it is too boring. I would like to start running again if my knees will allow me, and I figure if I am able to do that, in a year or two, I’ll probably have lost most of the weight, but that won’t what makes me happy. I’ll be happy because I can run, and running reminds me of being a kid, and a few hours every week of being a kid will be fewer hours that I have to be a stressed out adult. Another thing kids don’t care about: what other people are eating (unless it is candy) or how much other people exercise.
Oddly, a show I have recently enjoyed in The Biggest Loser. Not the original incarnation, but the one that is on now where the people are only on for two shows. They have wisely done away with the humiliating eliminations that made it like Survivor for fat people (I’m only guessing here, because I couldn’t watch it and I never watch Survivor because I don’t like to see people embarrassing themselves or being mean to each other). Now each Biggest Loser team has four people and you see them at the beginning and then at the end. There is a lot of video of people hiking up hills and running on treadmills, but mercifully little discussion of the actual dieting. The show is chock full of heartwarming details and stories of how fat and unhappy people were, and then you see them the next week (although it is actually 5 months later), having lost 30 or 40 pounds. To a person they are all happier, better looking, and more confident. I feel glad for them because they have all achieved something that is quite difficult, changing their whole way of life in order to change the way they look. Why can I be happy for strangers on TV and tolerate their stories? Probably because I will never see them again. They will never sit their skinny butts down at my dinner table, complain about how fat they are, and consume a plate fit for a mouse.
Hey look, another dieting pet peeve - the guest who won’t eat. If you are coming to my home for a week and you are in the throes of a serious dieting episode, please don’t worry that I am in the kitchen buttering up bacon and adding lard to scrambled eggs that I will then force feed you. I am not much of a plotter and would not be particularly interested in spending a week trying to make you fat. However, the weeklong visitors are not the ones who irk me. You dinner guests who accept the invitation and then refuse to eat anything fill me with rage. I have read the diet books and seen the weight watchers commercials. I know you can save up calories for one big night. I know you can load up your plate with vegetables and drink seltzer so that you don’t overdo it (which is fine, but don’t be obvious about it). I know that you can try one of everything and when you wake up the next morning you will not be any heavier. Therefore, if you decide to be a guest who won’t eat, please stay home rather than come over and make everyone else at the party uncomfortable and inevitably, fill me with rage.
I know some of you out there may be thinking, wow this angry chick must be some sort of porker. But generally I am not an angry person, and I suspect my disgust with the dieting and exercise talk is probably just the focus of my disgust at the whole tone of conversation these days. Everyone needs to trumpet their virtues – dieting, sobriety (not the AA kind, you guys trumpet all you want), piety, superior child rearing (that is a topic for another 1500) - rather than just putting them to use in a life that others can witness and admire. If the average observer can’t tell what kind of person you are after spending a little time with you (provided that you don’t stub your toe while he/she is there because I think that is something that makes everyone drop the f-bomb), will you really be able to convince them just with the things you say? I was encouraged this week to read a letter to the editor in Newsweek that addressed the article written about the book The Mommy Wars (a book about stay-at-home versus working moms). Ms. Jo Ann C. Mullen from Lafayette, Indiana pointed out “This is not the stuff for a cultural war. Is one side really going to “win” and make the decision for every family?” (To those of you out there nodding, please find another blog to read). Really, her statement could be applied to most aspects of our culture that are in the news. Why are people no longer able to mind their own business? Don’t actions speak louder than words?
So for all of you overtalkative, overzealous dieters out there, let’s try something. Let’s go out to lunch, and chat about the weather, and order from the menu without tedious calculations over every mouthful. I won’t get annoyed if you only eat half of your sandwich, just don’t waste my time telling me that you can’t believe how big the sandwich is, that you don’t understand why portion sizes in restaurants are so large (they just are), how full you are, how many miles you’ll have to run to burn the calories, etc. I’ll happily listen to stories about your kids, your job, or your recent dental work, if you will just please keep your eyes and your calculations off of my plate.
Tonight I went out to dinner with the family, and the waitress brought me a hamburger instead of a turkey burger. I haven’t had a real hamburger in a long time, and my kids were already eating so sending it back would have been the worst thing I could do. So I ate it, and it was one delicious cheese and bacon covered mess. I ate every bit of that half pounder and a good number of the french fries that came with it. I wondered if my dinner companions noticed from behind their “Smart Eating Choices” that it was a hamburger not a turkey burger, and if so if they were quietly calculating the calories that I was putting down. And then I wondered, why do I care what they are thinking about my dinner, and then I wondered, why do I think that they would be thinking anything about it? I realized at that moment that I am just hypersensitive now from years spent with people who watch others around them with a “trained” dieter’s eye, making remarks to no one in particular about how many calories are in this food or how much fat is in that, and giving that understanding but extremely skeptical look when you try to say “I haven’t had a burger in so long.” So, I now feel compelled to make the following plea:
People of America, don’t tell me what you eat. Don’t tell me what you don’t eat. Don’t tell me that you are having a big lunch and skipping dinner. Don’t tell me that one piece of frozen pizza is a huge lunch. Don’t tell me that you never keep potato chips in the house. I don’t care. There may have been a time where I found all of this relentless dieting talk bearable, but that time has past. Go on a diet, go on a fast, go on a binge, eat nothing but cabbage soup, just please, please don’t tell me about it. If I promise to notice that you have become smaller, would you please promise not to provide a single detail of how you got that way? I cannot think of any topic I would care to hear about less than the minutia of another person’s caloric intake. Wait, there is one topic I care even less about – people of America, don’t tell me about your exercise plan. I don’t care if you run or walk or jump rope. I don’t care if you go to the gym, have a personal trainer or spend your early morning hours doing exercise videos. Unless you are planning to use me as a back up to an alibi that you have recently given authorities, I do not need to know how many minutes you were on the treadmill or how many miles you ran. If I promise here and now to be happy for your dedication to good health, can we drop it?
I am sorry if I seem insensitive to those of you that like to share your dieting tales. I know some people think of dieting and exercise as a hobby or a mission, much as other people like to talk about painting or helping the homeless, but I have reached my limit. I am not objecting the occasional discussion of Atkins versus Ornish or other aspects of the ever changing information regarding health and how to achieve it. I like to talk about current events. What I do not like to talk about is how much bread you’ve had in the past five days, because while this may well be current information, it is not eventful to anyone but you and your dietician.
And while I am at it, let me express one more dieting peeve. If you are clearly 3 sizes smaller than me and a good 25 pounds lighter, don’t tell me how fat you are. This requires me to say something along the lines of, “you are much smaller than me, so I wouldn’t worry too much,” which compels you to say “oh no you’re not, we’re about the same size.” This is a blatantly false and irritating bit of reassurance that I am not after. I am working on myself, and I am not worried. I had three kids, added about 5 pounds with each one, and hopefully someday I’ll have taken it all off. I can’t worry about it every day because frankly – it is too boring. I would like to start running again if my knees will allow me, and I figure if I am able to do that, in a year or two, I’ll probably have lost most of the weight, but that won’t what makes me happy. I’ll be happy because I can run, and running reminds me of being a kid, and a few hours every week of being a kid will be fewer hours that I have to be a stressed out adult. Another thing kids don’t care about: what other people are eating (unless it is candy) or how much other people exercise.
Oddly, a show I have recently enjoyed in The Biggest Loser. Not the original incarnation, but the one that is on now where the people are only on for two shows. They have wisely done away with the humiliating eliminations that made it like Survivor for fat people (I’m only guessing here, because I couldn’t watch it and I never watch Survivor because I don’t like to see people embarrassing themselves or being mean to each other). Now each Biggest Loser team has four people and you see them at the beginning and then at the end. There is a lot of video of people hiking up hills and running on treadmills, but mercifully little discussion of the actual dieting. The show is chock full of heartwarming details and stories of how fat and unhappy people were, and then you see them the next week (although it is actually 5 months later), having lost 30 or 40 pounds. To a person they are all happier, better looking, and more confident. I feel glad for them because they have all achieved something that is quite difficult, changing their whole way of life in order to change the way they look. Why can I be happy for strangers on TV and tolerate their stories? Probably because I will never see them again. They will never sit their skinny butts down at my dinner table, complain about how fat they are, and consume a plate fit for a mouse.
Hey look, another dieting pet peeve - the guest who won’t eat. If you are coming to my home for a week and you are in the throes of a serious dieting episode, please don’t worry that I am in the kitchen buttering up bacon and adding lard to scrambled eggs that I will then force feed you. I am not much of a plotter and would not be particularly interested in spending a week trying to make you fat. However, the weeklong visitors are not the ones who irk me. You dinner guests who accept the invitation and then refuse to eat anything fill me with rage. I have read the diet books and seen the weight watchers commercials. I know you can save up calories for one big night. I know you can load up your plate with vegetables and drink seltzer so that you don’t overdo it (which is fine, but don’t be obvious about it). I know that you can try one of everything and when you wake up the next morning you will not be any heavier. Therefore, if you decide to be a guest who won’t eat, please stay home rather than come over and make everyone else at the party uncomfortable and inevitably, fill me with rage.
I know some of you out there may be thinking, wow this angry chick must be some sort of porker. But generally I am not an angry person, and I suspect my disgust with the dieting and exercise talk is probably just the focus of my disgust at the whole tone of conversation these days. Everyone needs to trumpet their virtues – dieting, sobriety (not the AA kind, you guys trumpet all you want), piety, superior child rearing (that is a topic for another 1500) - rather than just putting them to use in a life that others can witness and admire. If the average observer can’t tell what kind of person you are after spending a little time with you (provided that you don’t stub your toe while he/she is there because I think that is something that makes everyone drop the f-bomb), will you really be able to convince them just with the things you say? I was encouraged this week to read a letter to the editor in Newsweek that addressed the article written about the book The Mommy Wars (a book about stay-at-home versus working moms). Ms. Jo Ann C. Mullen from Lafayette, Indiana pointed out “This is not the stuff for a cultural war. Is one side really going to “win” and make the decision for every family?” (To those of you out there nodding, please find another blog to read). Really, her statement could be applied to most aspects of our culture that are in the news. Why are people no longer able to mind their own business? Don’t actions speak louder than words?
So for all of you overtalkative, overzealous dieters out there, let’s try something. Let’s go out to lunch, and chat about the weather, and order from the menu without tedious calculations over every mouthful. I won’t get annoyed if you only eat half of your sandwich, just don’t waste my time telling me that you can’t believe how big the sandwich is, that you don’t understand why portion sizes in restaurants are so large (they just are), how full you are, how many miles you’ll have to run to burn the calories, etc. I’ll happily listen to stories about your kids, your job, or your recent dental work, if you will just please keep your eyes and your calculations off of my plate.
posted by Shannon at 2:19 PM
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