Bring back delighting in delicious food
I’m sick of this bullshit diet and appearance culture. I have spent the past many years completely shifting my mindset about food and it has literally made everything better. I don’t care that I’m fat. It literally doesn’t matter to me. You know what does matter? Enjoying my life.
The world is overflowing with delicious foods - flavors that can take you on a journey, create a permanent memory, and even change your life if you let them. At the very least, they can turn a bad day into a good one. It is absolutely criminal that society has been allowed to turn this into a bad thing - into something to be wary of.
“Food is good but being hot is better.”
Yeah, well, you can be fat and hot.
Also, here’s something worth considering:
Presumably, if you’re constantly turning down delicious foods because you don’t want to gain weight, it’s because you believe that being a certain weight will make you more happy than eating freely would, right? So, here’s my question: Are you actually happier? Like, right now. Do you regularly and honestly delight in your appearance to a degree that makes it worth it that you are regularly depriving yourself of the things you want?
“Well, no, but I will once I reach my goal weight.”
Oh really. And when exactly will you reach that? How long will it take? How many delicious experiences will you turn down before you reach it? And, when you do reach it, what then? Do you just continue eating the required low to maintain that for the rest of your life? Will it really make you happy to be that weight or will you set a new, lower goal? Even if you don’t set a lower goal, how will you know when you’ve really reached the one you set? Is it purely the number? Will you feel a sudden happiness when the number is right? Will it change your life? Or, do you think maybe it’s more likely that it will be like turning 18, where you expect something big and great and euphoric only to realize you’re the same person on the inside, which is what the real disappointment is?
Constantly dieting is setting yourself up for constant disappointment. Each time you lose a little weight, it makes you feel good... and each time you gain weight, even an ounce, you feel like trash. Your self worth tanks. This up and down roller coaster of self worth based on pointless numbers isn’t going to serve you well - not now, not ever.
I understand the desire to lose weight and to have control over your appearance. I get it. I know it feels good to be able to say, “I’m in control because I can say no to things I want.” But you know what else feels good? You know another kind of control you can have? The control to tell society and its expectations to eat your ass because you deserve to have a massive burger and fries once in a while. Because it’s your body and you make the rules about what goes into it, and that means you can put good food into it as often as you feel like.
That doesn’t mean you have to eat in a way that makes you feel like shit about yourself. I understand that eating extremely poorly doesn’t feel good. Sometimes I buy a bag of chocolate and eat it a bit too fast and it makes me feel kind of icky because it fucks with my blood sugar and gives me a sugar crash. There’s a balance to it. You have to listen to your body. When your body wants to eat a bowl of ice cream, just get yourself a bowl of ice cream. However, when you start to feel the urge to stop eating the ice cream, just put it back in the freezer. You don’t have to finish it if you got too much.
Listen to your body. Listen to your desires. Enjoy your life. Food is fucking delightful and you deserve to delight in it like everyone else. Do you really want to feel the constant sense of sadness and disappointment in yourself that comes with dieting for the rest of your life? Because I don’t.
A massive percentage of what determines our body shape and size is purely genetic. If you want to be thin while your entire family history says you should be otherwise, you’re going to be fighting your genetics forever. Being fat isn’t a sign of weakness or poor health or poor self control. That idea is sold to you by the same people charging 6 dollars for a tiny pack of “fancy diet snacks.”
(Don’t come onto this post and talk pro diet, pro ED, or pro exercise either. There’s a time and place for the first and last and it’s not here. This post is anti dieting, full stop.)
