Unsafe at Any Size

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Down another .6 for a total of almost 113 lbs lost!  Pretty good considering I’m not doing what I “should.”  Meaning I’m not tracking.

Our leader handed out a slip of paper with nine tracking free days on it.  Hah!  Every day is a tracking free day.  Really, I would be losing 1-2 lbs a week if I were On Plan.  But I’m not, and I don’t.  And I’m ok with that.

At most, I think I’ll go for another 10 lbs.  I’ve achieved my goals with weight loss: I’m healthier, I don’t have joint pain, I can do stuff I want to do, and I’ve inspired my husband to come along for the ride.  I’m living a healthy life, regardless of what the scale says.

I cook most of the food I eat now, and I think that has the most to do with being healthy.  Oh, I guess WHAT I choose to cook has something to do with it… I used to make fudge and cookies for myself, yum!  Those days are no more.

I really do believe that junk food is as addictive as heroin.  How else to explain continuing to do something you know is bad for you?  Like those rats in the study, I would’ve tolerated electric shocks for that fudge.

I looked at my desk, and realized I have, count ‘em, five packs of different flavors.  Everyone in the office comes to me for gum.

Chewing gum means:

1. My breath is always minty fresh
2. I’m not eating food I shouldn’t be
3. My jaws hurt at the end of the day

Something David Kessler mentions in The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
was how we sometimes need to replace a deleterious habit with a better one.  Certainly, chewing gum is a better habit than stuffing my face with food.

Humans are incredibly oral. A huge amount of the brain’s real estate is dedicated to the lips and tongue.  When we are babies, the mouth is our connection to our mothers and we are soothed when something is put in our mouths.    As adults, we still tend to soothe ourselves orally: if not with food, then with gum, a pencil, a cigarette.

So if you feel like eating, try chewing on something (I don’t recommend a cigarette).

I was surprised that a blog I follow for healthy kid’s foods wasn’t categorically against vending machines in schools.  In her Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids, Amy says she doesn’t oppose putting vending machines in schools because we need to teach kids how to resist temptation and make healthy choices.  She argues that there will always be unhealthy foods, at work, at the autoshop… and our kids need to know how to stay away from it.  We won’t stop obesity by legislating away junk food because it will always be there.

Fortunately, making these choices at school are a long way away for my 6-year old twin boys, because if they had change and there was a vending machine with candy they would so not be making healthy choices.  It would be nice if vending machines even had healthy choices, but they generally don’t.

So no vending machines in elementary schools with Dorito happy 6 year-olds.  I think we’re all ok with that.

But when do we start trusting kids to make healthy choices?  We don’t trust them with the choice to buy cigarettes until they are 18, and alcohol until they are 21.

Now, is junk food analogous to cigarettes and alcohol?  Perhaps more the latter, as it’s possible to drink responsibly and sociably, but it’s more likely to be abused by the young which is why we limit their access to it until they are more responsible.  Drinking a six-pack is more immediately dangerous than eating a box of Ding Dongs (mmmm…. Ding Dongs), but both present serious health dangers over time.

Yes, our kids need to learn how to make healthy choices, but do they have to have these challenges everywhere, including school?  There are plenty of other places where they’ll have to exercise their healthy choice muscles.  Unfortunately, many are already addicted to unhealthy choices, as I was.

What’s your take?

Great article about addictions in the Harvard Magazine.  It would be worth reading  just for the story of how a researcher got zebra fish to crave cocaine.  The article doesn’t discuss food addiction much, but does lump it in with other kinds of addiction:

Some of my takeaways:

1. Eat with someone.  Research shows more addictive behavior when people are alone:
   

   Connections with other people interrupt the addictive cycle; they redirect attention away from the self-reinforcing feedback of the addictive activity that can quickly escalate to excessive levels.

   When we are with a group, the norms of the group rule and all of a sudden it’s not acceptable to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (unless they are like me).

2. Ask for help:  According to clinical instructor in psychiatry Stephen Bergman ‘66, M.D. ‘73,
   

   “All addictions feed the ego, the self. The ego is insatiable. If you are into your ego, you can never
   get enough–not enough drugs, sex, money, alcohol, relationships, not enough anything. Enough, that is, to feel ‘not bad.’ Many of these people don’t like it if they have to be in a room by themselves for a while. In 12-step programs, those who recover do it by asking for help. The connection has to change, from the self to a we. The only thing that helps is getting beyond yourself.”

   Some of us do that when we join programs like Weight Watchers. George Vaillant, M.D. and professor of psychiatry at Harvard, finds that having accountability, an external superego, helps.

3. Find a behavior that’s not so bad for you:
   

   “Say a drinker goes to Alcoholics Anonymous, sobers up, and starts drinking a lot of coffee and smoking cigarettes,” [Vaillant] says. “Then he quits smoking, by chewing the erasers off pencils and overeating, so he gains weight. Now his problem is obesity, so he winds up hanging around Overeaters Anonymous and drinking a gallon of water a day. It’s what teachers call ‘redirecting.’ You may not be able to stop two four-year-olds from fighting, but you can say, ‘Let’s go get ice cream cones.’”

   Speaking as a mother of twin five-year olds, this analogy speaks to me!  Let’s go get ice cream cones!  No, wait…