Wednesday, November 25, 2009

...but no one will love me if I'm fat

I just had a great walk/talk with my friend Aaron. Like so many men in our culture, he was indoctrinated into the belief that tall, skinny women are sexy. But he shared that that's not what he's really attracted to. What he really likes are short, curvy women.

When a friend points out a tall, skinny girl and says "She's hot!," Aaron doesn't get it. He remembers going out with those tall, skinny girls, thinking he should like them, then finding himself losing interest.

"Now, finally at 40," he says, "I can own that I really like shorter, heavier women. For a lot of guys, it's hard to acknowledge this. It's not what we're supposed to want."

I was so delighted to hear him acknowledge this truth. Clearly it's not just Aaron or my own sweet hubby who are attracted to REAL women. Otherwise only the skinny people would pair off.

The next time you find yourself lamenting that you have to lose weight to find love, remind yourself of Aaron, and all the other guys out there who will want you and love you exactly as you are. Beauty comes in all kinds of packages.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Eating In Captivity: A Holiday Story

When I was young, food was mostly forbidden. My mother controlled what we ate diligently, determined her family would not get fat. She doled out glasses of nonfat milk, and diet Shasta Cherry Cola. She stir-fried leftover chicken with broccoli or cauliflower (ew!). For herself, there was always a bag of malted milk balls, hidden atop the fridge in a big wooden bowl. My primary form of exercise was climbing the counter to get to that bowl.

My mother also loved to entertain. Thanksgiving was a huge production with family and friends. The meal was channeled to my mother through Gourmet Magazine. In the living room before we ate, our guests were treated to room temperature Brie cheese and water crackers - things that were absent from our home the rest of the year. The turkey was served with chestnut stuffing, gravy made from the pan drippings and butter, potatoes whipped fluffy with cream and more butter. Vegetables were there too, though not my personal focus. And after the meal, my mother served her famous sinful chocolate cake - basically a cake-shaped disk of dark chocolate ganache covered in a shiny chocolate glaze.

My mother laughed with her guests and reveled in their compliments about her food, her table, her decor. But she kept a watchful eye on us too. A reach for seconds of those potatoes was sure to be met with a raised eyebrow, a nonverbal message which clearly said, "you don't need that."

It was torture to finally have access to really good food, and have to pretend not to want it. I learned from my older sisters to get around my mother's watchful eye by clearing the table. After dinner, one of us would clear the leftover brie from the living room, so the guests could retire there. In the kitchen my sisters and I would share slices of cheese, no matter how full we might be from dinner. When the guests left the dining room, we took the plates to the sink and then descended on the bowls of food. As we transferred their contents to tupperware, we had the seconds we craved. This was after all one of our only days of indulgence, a furlough from food jail.

The holidays are always a difficult time for emotional eaters. But they are that much worse for those of us who've endured tightly controlled eating or restrictive diets - whether it was our mothers, coaches, or ourselves who enforced the rules.

Ironically, the tighter the control, the more we eat. Like refugees, we grab every morsel we can during a binge or while "cheating," because the threat of going back into food jail looms large.

This holiday season, I invite you to do things differently. If it would feel good or be interesting, close down food jail. If restricting food makes you want (and eat) more when it's finally available, lift the restrictions and see what happens. If you love stuffing, start having stuffing now instead of waiting till turkey-day. And notice, if stuffing is no longer forbidden, do you overeat it?

After many years now of eating what I want, when I want, I am always tickled to find myself eating comfortably (instead of getting over-stuffed) at Thanksgiving. Without the watchful eye of my mother (or my inner critic) waiting to get me into trouble, I just eat what I want. And when I feel full I stop. If I want mashed potatoes with gravy again the next day, I have them. If I want turkey with cranberries and stuffing in July, I make it. When food is freely available, it all gets so much easier.