Tag Archives: dieting

Food Talk: Stop Commenting On What I’m Having For Lunch (And For The Record, I’m Not That Interested In What You’re Having)

April 25, 2012 By in Speak Out Against This! Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

It sometimes starts first thing in the morning. One of my co-workers unveils the egg sandwich she purchased at a local deli, unwrapping it like a much-anticipated Christmas present.

“That looks good,” another co-worker comments, looking it over.

The first co-worker lists the contents of her sandwich. Cheese, bacon, whatever. I don’t remember, it doesn’t matter. In-depth discussion ensues about eggs and who likes them. More co-workers chime in. All the different ways eggs can be made are analyzed and mulled-over. Omelets, hard-boiled, scrambled, over-easy. Which of these ways everyone likes their eggs.

A little bit later, it’s time to start talking about what everyone is having about lunch. The conversation gets earlier everyday. Lunch options. Who makes the best burger. Who likes barbeque and how they like their barbeque. What someone would like to get, but it’s so many calories.

Then it’s lunchtime-the main event. Everyone’s lunch choices are scrutinized and discussed. “How is it? Is it good?” one woman makes her rounds, asking everyone about their food, as invested as if she’d cooked it all herself.

Another talks and talks about how much food she got. Then she goes from co-worker to co-worker, trying to pawn off some of her French fries. She can’t possibly eat them all. She decides to save them for later. A little while later, she speculates on how good they’ll be reheated.

These women are driving me crazy. Please stop looking over my lunch, I want to tell them. And really? I don’t care what you’re having. Can you find something other than food to talk about? I, like others, have issues with food. And all of this talk can be very triggering.

Not all offices are this bad, I realize. I’m temping right now, and different offices act differently. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it. But in a lot of places I’ve worked (and I’ve worked in a lot of places), so much conversation seems to revolve around food.  What we’re eating. What we should and shouldn’t be eating. Stuck at work, you become a captive audience, even an unwilling participant.

I get why people do it. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Part of it can be a social thing, like when everyone is ordering in together. I think another part of it—a big part—is boredom. We are working longer hours, lunch and food generally break up the day. It gives us something to look forward to. Continue reading →

Interview With Jenny Gardiner (Author of Slim to None)-Part 2

August 24, 2011 By in Books and Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

In Part 1 of my interview with Jenny Gardiner, we talked about her novel Slim to None and the body image issues the main character Abbie deals with.

During our conversation, we also spoke more broadly about body image issues. Jenny and I discussed how body image issues affect so many women and how hard it is for us all to deal with them.  As Jenny said herself:

Find me a female in the United States who doesn’t have body image issues. You could be tall, short, thin, fat, average, whatever and you’re not happy with what you have. This is certainly not helped along by our culture that promotes being emaciated, young and perfect. I think it’s even sadder when you see how women feel so paranoid about aging- – it’s hard to find women who aren’t having some sort of procedure done to stave off the process.

I live in a neighborhood with a lot of newly-retired couples and you’ll see these women you might have seen at the gym or at book club looking every one of their 55 years, and then they show up looking like The Joker from Batman with this weird uplifted pull on their mouths and a perpetually surprised look in their eyes because their faces have been pulled back from so much plastic surgery. When I see older actresses on screen looking their age I silently applaud their rejecting the pressures they must feel 100 times worse than your average woman to try to pretend they’re still young.

Cristina: Have you always had body image issues yourself and how have you dealt with them?

Jenny: When I was growing up there was SO much emphasis in my household on how I looked. My father would always warn/threaten me that if I wasn’t careful I was going to look like this aunt who was pretty overweight. It was dangled in front of me all the time (“you have such a pretty face,” the inference was I was going to be a fat ugly cow). And I was a very active, athletic, healthy kid growing up.

But I was always told I was pretty, and there wasn’t all this reinforcing going on about what was inside of me, rather the superficial me. I probably went to the other extreme with my kids and NEVER told them they were pretty or beautiful or handsome, rather emphasized what wonderful people they are. Perhaps I could’ve thrown in more of the “you’re pretty” stuff but I wanted to send the message that how you are in the inside matters far more than what you look like on the outside.

As far as how I’ve dealt with body image issues? God, in some ways that has been a defining thing for me, which is despicable, isn’t it? But one thing I have always known is I am happiest when I am in good physical shape. If I’m exercising daily and feel strong I’m a much happier person. If I’m in a pissy mood, all I need to do is exercise and get those endorphins flowing and I feel much better. This is something I’ve tried to instill in my kids as well.

Cristina: What do you say to your children about body image issues?

Jenny: I’ve actually been really overly conscientious with my kids (we have a boy and two girls) about this stuff. I had a roommate in college who–unbeknownst to me and her other friends–had an eating disorder that she ultimately died from, which was so damned tragic and needless. She was so fun and smart and clever and witty and here she was so obsessed with her body that she actually destroyed it. This was back in the early 80′s. We all knew enough about anorexia back then because of Karen Carpenter dying from it. But no one knew about bulimia which was what Annie had. As far as we knew, she ate just fine. But we didn’t know that she was taking laxatives and likely also throwing up much of what she ate as well. She binge-ate but we actually laughed about it because we had NO idea this was something indicative of a far deeper–and deadly–secret. It wasn’t till she dropped out of school that we found packages of laxatives underneath her bed and started learning the truth.

But because of this I have been downright obsessive in teaching my kids to be happy with their bodies and to practice moderation in their lives. Last time I looked no one ever died from moderation. We’ve worked hard to try to get our kids to eat as healthily as possible (though with three kids with very different eating habits I am convinced much of what people are inclined to want to eat is predetermined and I know you can’t force-feed someone vegetables!).

When my kids were little one of the girls was friends with a girl across the street who was 10 years old and whose mother was OBSESSED with her body. She had a fabulous one and she flaunted it. But she was always going on these cabbage soup diets and fixating on her pencil thin daughter being skinny–so much so that this child would only drink diet sodas and would join her mother on her frequent cabbage soup diets. The girl was emaciated yet was dieting. Ridiculous.

Losing Weight

Jenny and I also talked about body image in general. I told that I wanted to write about Slim to None for my blog because the weight loss and body image topics it deals with are a constant battle and fixation for so many women. Abbie’s story resonated with me and I felt it would with other readers.  We shared our mutual significant weight losses over the past year with each other (60 pounds for Jenny!)

Cristina: What inspired you to lose the weight?

Jenny: I guess it’s sort of ironic that I had hit a bad spot in my life just like Abbie, shortly after Slim to None was released [in 2010]. It seemed that just about everything was imploding in on me last year and on top of that, I’d been super unhappy with my weight for ages. When I turned 40 I was in great shape and felt terrific but then I had a succession of injuries that waylaid me and kept me from going to the gym and I got so fat (I HAVE to work out or I gain weight so easily). So over the course of several years I’d put on so much weight and just felt so trapped that way.

Cristina: How did you go about losing the weight? Continue reading →

Interview With Jenny Gardiner (Author of Slim to None)-Part One

August 22, 2011 By in Books and Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

I was lucky enough to have the chance to talk to the smart and articulate author Jenny Gardiner about her great novel Slim to None, as well as to discuss body image issues, including her personal struggles and recent weight loss. You can get a sneak peak at the first chapter of Slim to None here.

Slim to None’s heroine Abbie Jennings is Manhattan’s restaurant critic, until her weight makes it impossible for her to visit the restaurants without being recognized. When she’s “outed” by a picture of herself in the New York Post, her editor puts her on a desk job and gives her six months to lose weight in order to get her job back. Abbie’s put in the unique position of eating for a living, then not eating for a living, in order to continue to eat for a living. She’s forced to deal with her own relationship with food, as a source of both pleasure and a way of dealing with her emotions.

Cristina: So what inspired you to write Slim to None?

Jenny: I wanted to write this novel for the same reason I wrote Sleeping With Ward Cleaver. I love to write about issues about which pretty much everyone has an opinion. I had enough conversations with married friends over the years to know that Ward would resonate with pretty much every woman who’d ever been in a relationship with a man for more than, oh, say, ten minutes. And I knew food issues and body image issues are something with which every woman struggles, no matter how entitled she is to have those issues (like no doubt Jennifer Anniston has these issues and she really ought not, ya know what I mean?!).

Cristina: As a fellow writer one of the things I most admired was how you presented with such grace a funny, engaging and likeable character dealing with so many life issues without making Abbie too whiny, depressed and feeling sorry for herself. How did you accomplish this?

Jenny: Thanks! I just wrote a character I’d like to hang out with. She’s flawed, but who isn’t it? She’s got a big heart, she wouldn’t hurt a fly, and she means well. She’s just lost her way in the woods, and I wanted to help her find her way out.

Cristina: Abbie tries to balance her love of food and the place it has had in her life with her need to be healthy, deal with her emotions, and find other things to replace food in her life.  What has she learned and how has she changed by the end of the novel?

Jenny: Abbie did what a lot of people do: she buried emotions in food for comfort’s sake. It became a habit for her. She really knew no other way. What she needed was this cattle prod to force her to wake up and figure out a better way to exist. She learned that food isn’t her salvation, although it can certainly be a source of pleasure. But she had to find happiness from within, and realized she had taken for granted, such as her relationship with her husband. And she sort of took herself for granted as well. By the end Abbie had found a much healthier balance in her life, to the point that what she thought was most important (her career) ended up not being all that important after all.

Cristina: Do you think Abbie would have lost weight if not for it being a requirement to save her job? Why do you think her job was so important to her?

Jenny: I fear she’d have slogged along just doing what she did. I mean, she lived a kind, understated fine-enough life but she was stagnant. I think her job was important to her because it was something she thought she had total control over. It was something she’d worked so hard to get and she thought it was the answer to her problems. Only it wasn’t. Continue reading →

Sangria and Nachos: Essential Weight Loss Tools

August 9, 2011 By in Body Image and Self Esteem, Weight Loss and Weight Loss Surgery Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

I went to a sangria tasting last night. Fig sangria? It wasn’t bad. Who knew?  I also split an order of nachos and ate a dinner that included french fries.

Yes, I’m on a diet. It’s been a year now. I’ve lost nearly 90 lbs. And if I didn’t do things like the sangria tasting, dinner with friends, wine & cheese classes, and eat my mother’s Thanksgiving stuffing, I don’t think I would have lost that much. Or even if I had, I don’t think I’d have as good of a chance at keeping it off.

Here’s why. In the past when I went on diets losing similar amounts of weight, I executed them with military precision. There were “good” foods and there were “bad” foods. I feared holidays and social occasions, and did extensive pre-planning, trying to figure out what I could eat that would do the least damage. Eat as little as I could beforehand to conserve calories.

So then it was a toss-up as to whether I’d be “good” or “bad.” I’d either come home proud of my resolve or chasticizing myself for my failure. Sometimes I’d be so hungry at the event from not eating, or simply had cravings for the food before me, that I’d throw caution to the wind. Eat as much as I could, perhaps lubricated with alcohol to loosen up and give myself permission. Afterwards I’d try to make up for it, eating as little as possible, hoping to balance things out.

But you can’t live like that forever. Once I’d lost weight I didn’t have a goal to aspire towards. Just maintenance. Just trying to tread water. The binges and the resentment intensified and became more frequent. I felt myself slipping, and then I just let go. Continue reading →

What If You Lost Half Your Body Weight Only To Be Traded In For Someone Twice Your Size?

August 2, 2011 By in Books and Media, Friends, Family and Romance Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

What would you do if after losing half your body weight, your husband left you for a woman twice your size? In Stacey Ballis’ latest novel, Good Enough to Eat, main character Melanie Hoffman finds herself in this position. She gave up her long-hour, fast food-fueled attorney position to take care of her health, study nutrition and cooking, and open up a health food café only to find herself replaced by a larger model.

Melanie is forced to ask herself the question: What does it mean to finally become a “thin person”?  To those struggling with their weight, Melanie’s accomplishment appears to be the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, as I know all too well (and am still learning) through my own weight losses and subsequent gains, getting rid of the weight is just the beginning. Continue reading →

The Weight Loss Food Chain

June 12, 2011 By in Body Image and Self Esteem, Friends, Family and Romance, Weight Loss and Weight Loss Surgery Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I attended Weight Watchers meetings weekly for at least a year and a half when I was around twenty-nine. I had a positive experience with Weight Watchers and was very successful (at least temporarily). I was a card-carrying Lifetime Member, meaning I‘d met my goal weight and didn’t have to pay for future missed meetings as long as I weighed in monthly and stayed with two pounds of my goal weight. Weight Watchers recommends attending meetings for life to keep you honest. As I gained weight, I tried to return to meetings, but life and competing priorities got in the way.

What strikes me thinking back is the different “types”of women at the meetings. They came in all shapes and sizes and at various stages of their weight loss journeys.    

Newbie: The Newbie wanders in, not quite sure where to go and if she wants to be there.  She examines boxes of bars and shakes, cookbooks, pedometers and food scales—paraphernalia to ensure her weight loss success.  She fills her arms with one of everything.

A lady behind a table tells the Newbie to step on a scale, and hands her a white card with the date and her weight etched in ink. The Newbie gulps at what her weight should be based on the BMI chart (the Bible-equivalent in the weight loss world). She takes her seat and looks around, trying to measure the likelihood of success based on the appearances of the other members around her.

Some of the group members murmur encouraging words to the Newbie, while others take bets on how long she’ll last.

Gung-Ho Overachiever: The Gung-Ho Overachiever is on a mission. She sits in the front row, laughing, nodding and hanging onto the meeting leader’s every word. She’s tried every new low-calorie, low-fat recipe out there and has the food manufacturers on speed dial, ready to report any new diet food in development and the date it’ll hit the shelf.

When the meeting leader asks who lost weight that week, the Gung-Ho Overachiever’s hand shoots up in pride. She gets applause from the group and racks up gold stars, bookmarks, and other tokens for hitting the five pound weight loss mark, ten-pound weight loss mark and so on.

The Gung-Ho Overachiever has a secret sense of superiority towards those around her who haven’t accomplished as much as she has. She cringes a little hearing about those who have backslided, cheated, gained.  She wouldn’t, couldn’t be that person.

Some less-accomplished group members have the urge to smack her and force feed her a box of doughnuts.

Skinny Girl: The Skinny Girl’s life would be perfect if she could just lose fifteen pounds. Or ten. Or five. Some of the other women might be satisfied with less, she thinks. They might not even look so bad. But that just won’t do for her.

Many group members think Skinny Girl looks just fine the way she is. She doesn’t need to come to the meetings, nor does she belong. They think Skinny Girl should stop whining and jog on out of the meeting.

Lifetime Member: The Lifetime Member has seen it all and done it all. She’s lost, gained and plateau-ed. She nods at members’ tales of their struggles. Talk to me when you’ve been at this as long as I have, she thinks. I’ve got seniority over all of you. The Lifetime Member may have slipped and is looking to get back on track, or she may be at her goal weight and is trying to hang on, hands clenching onto the meetings for dear life.

I’m not going to have to struggle like that forever, other members of the group think. I hope I don’t have to struggle like that forever.

Underachiever: The Underachiever wants to be inspired by the success stories around her. But really, she’s a little bit sick of the people around her. If you’ve reached your goal, go home. All the clapping and cheerleading is starting to hurt her ears.

I did everything right, she thinks. What do they have that I don’t? I’m wearing lighter clothes next week for the weigh-in. And I’m definitely not eating before the meeting.

The Danger of Stereotypes

All of these stereotypes are just that, of course. None of us can be put into boxes, and we don’t know what is in other women’s’ heads.

But there’s a common thread that ties the stereotypes together, as well as women who struggle with their weight and/or body image issues in the “outside world”:

  • Jealousy-Assumptions that it’s easier for other women to be thinner than you.
  • Envy-Assumptions that women thinner than you couldn’t, or shouldn’t, worry about how they look.
  • Fear-Fear that you won’t be able to lose the weight, or be able to keep it off. Fear that you don’t have the discipline and willpower that other women seem to have.

Losing weight and maintaining weight loss can be tough. And we are all so tough on ourselves. We don’t always see our bodies the way other people do. Self-loathing and judgment of other women accomplish nothing but to tear all of us down.

Support others and respect where they are at. Go easier on them. And yourself.

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