I grew up in a household where Cheetos and Twinkies were less welcome in the house than spiders. The spiders served a purpose - they ate all of the other unwanted bugs - whereas the junk food filled with “high-fructose corn crap”, as my mom referred to it, would only bring us heart disease and diabetes.
The cupboards in that house were filled with assorted organic snacks, the fridge with fruits and veggies galore. We had Goldfish for a short while, but those days have long since faded. As did the milk, which has now been replaced with an almond imitation-milk. My siblings and I bonded over the lack of comfort food, and our friends became all too accustomed to bringing their own munchies to movie nights and sleepovers.
For years I held quite the grudge against my mother for starving me of salty and delicious treats, one that grew every time I begged for just one box of Cookie Crisp cereal only to have her shake her head no and say “You’ll thank me one day.”
With a spoonful of sugar to help the pride go down, I admit that I have reached that very day.
In this day and age, dieting is all the rage. Companies are making fortunes off of diet pills that can make that extra jelly disappear in only a matter of time. Fitness trainers are profiting off of 60 minute workout videos (more accurately described as 60 minutes of pure hell) as well as 30 day diet schedules (aka 30 days of eating dog shit). There are three-day juice cleanses and ten-day liquid detoxes, which to me seems like anorexia in disguise.
What should be noted about all of these is they all have an end date. Diet pills have a prescription period, P90X workouts last 90 days, and detoxes end after those three, ten, or however many days. Herein lies the danger of using such agents of weight loss; they are money makers for businesses. No matter what the outside of the box may read in its flashy fonts next to the skinny, photoshopped model, the dilemma lies in the price tag on the underside of the box. As soon as that diet is up, unless you have some kind of superhuman willpower, it’s right back to the fast food pit stops and dessert after dinner, the quadruple stack of pancakes for breakfast followed by the double-patty burger later that day.
You’ll tell yourself it’s all a reward for those months of hard work and careful dieting, that you’ve earned day of indulgence. But that day turns into a week, that week turns into a month, and pretty soon it’s all habit again. Those 10, 20, or however many pounds are all back, as are the baggy clothes and oversized sweatshirts. Yet again, the prospect of wearing a bathing suit is worse than reliving your teenage years. It’s back to square one, which means going out and buying yet another guide to getting that beach bod.
Shrink your stomach. Complete this challenge. Work for that hourglass shape. Be a better you. They all say similar things that only remind us why we shouldn’t be happy with ourselves and how we need to change. They pose daunting tasks, as dieting and exercising have become synonymous with eating a crumb a day and running weekly marathons.
Additionally, these diets and fitness challenges may not work for everyone, for you only ever hear about the success stories. We all lose weight differently, and because of this, the frustration can lead to one of the many eating disorders of today. Such spur from the idea that weight loss comes from eating less, which could not be more wrong. In fact, when we try to live off of minimal food, it triggers a “starvation mode” in our bodies that causes us to burn calories slower in an attempt to conserve energy. It also makes you crave more foods and become much lazier. In turn, these things only push you to relapse back into your old diet, which often means gaining back any weight you may have lost.
Such is why I have finally reached a point where I am thankful for the way my mom taught me to eat. Having been raised to eat organic, healthy food has made being “healthy” a habit, not something to consciously plan out. I am luckier in that aspect, because I’m a step ahead than most in reforming the way I approach eating. Sure, I had my fair share of experimenting with dieting plans and workout schedules, but what has always proven to be the best method is to treat it as a lifestyle, not a seasonal punishment.
Instead of fighting a war against food, we need to simply ditch the junk and embrace what’s good (for us, not our tastebuds). This doesn’t mean we all need to become earthy-crunchy vegan hippies, although if that works for you, than by all means go for it. However, the superfoods that have recently become all the craze deserve a place in our daily meals. We should be shaping our recipes around foods like this and getting back to the roots of our diets. Though it’s going to take a while to replace all of the delicious, fatty delicacies we’re used to, it takes subbing an apple for a Twinkie one day, a few carrots for a few Cheetos the next, until sooner or later we recognize the bright side of the food.
