Some junk food still tastes good to me (M&Ms) but some junk food really doesn't taste that great to me any more. It's kind of a texture thing - I find a lot of stuff filmy or waxy. Like "regular" peanut butter, it's like a crayon! Same with poptarts with frosting (waxy).

And I'm only saying this because I think it is interesting how foods I used to really love aren't as yummy anymore.

But yeah, a lot of stuff (McDonald's french fries, Pringles, etc) still tastes great. Which is the problem for ME - they taste so good I can't moderately eat them

For me, I still like some junk foods, but I'm finding it varies now based on the 'quality' of the junk, I guess. I had a bridal shower and a birthday party that I attended this past Saturday. At the bridal shower we had a two layer white sheet cake iced in that sugary icing from Publix, with the same icing between the layers. I ate a small amount of that cake, was immediately taken aback by the sweetness of the frosting and then promptly got nauseated and sick when I got home. For my mom's birthday party I picked up a three layer white chocolate cake from a local bakery - it was a very moist white cake with a completely different flavor from the white Publix cake, white chocolate spread between the layers and a homeade buttercream icing with pecans. That cake didn't taste overly sweet to me and didn't make me sick. I wondered all day yesterday why not. All I can figure is that it is based on the quality of the item - I've noticed the same thing with cheap chocolate v. Godiva or Lindor truffles. The cheap chocolate just doesn't taste as good, and thus doesn't feel as worth it to me to consume. Pizza Hut doesn't taste as good as the homeade pizza my mom made Saturday night. I ate a strawberry toaster strudel with my mother after my surgery and found it really overwhelming and disgusting, but then ate a piece of toast with peanut butter and nutella and thought it was great.

I used to not eat salad because of the texture, not so anymore. I still sometimes find it a little weird when food I used to love triggers that same reaction that I used to get with salad.

I do okay with eating in moderation most of the time. I have found that when I'm already a little off track, like this weekend with Olive Garden and cake and pizza and more cake, I want to eat more junk. Sunday I thought about the box of Mallomars in the pantry at least two dozen times. They have been there for a week and not entered my mind even once before that. It is going to be a struggle for me the next few days to get rid of the water I know I'm retaining from this weekends sugar-palooza. Or, I'm going to have to throw away DHs Mallomars and ask for forgiveness later.

No, disagreement isn't a terrible thing. But I actually agree with your main points about subtlety as I excerpted them above. If you had made an analogy between, say, a symphony vs rock and roll, or even a small independent or art film vs a blockbuster movie, I would have nodded my head and moved on.

But the comparison, that you continue and reaffirm is to porn. Regardless of our individual feelings about that, in this society, porn is a subject that implies questionable morals. And that part of the comparison is what I object too, strongly, on these grounds. Eating food of any sort, in almost any circumstance I can reasonably imagine, is not a moral issue, at least within the guidelines of a "diet of conscience" (vegetarian, vegan, Kosher, etc) to borrow a phase. Eating junk food may not be the best nutritional or caloric choice, but it doesn't make you a bad person. (It doesn't even necessarily make you an unenlightened or unsophisticated person, as your "straight to video" movie comparison would imply.) I think we cast enough guilt and shame on ourselves for our eating choices as it is. Thoughtfulness may be required, but moral judgment is not.

No it isn't the first time the porn comparison has been made, and we all constantly joke about "food porn." Perhaps lacking the moral implications, it is even true. But it still brings images of men in trench coats doing questionable things while their abandoning their families to my mind, and true or not, I think that image is a pretty harsh one to associate with eating junk food. I'm sure that was not your intent, but those are the images that get triggered in my brain when I hear these things, and I'm not especially conservative about this subject.

Anne

Glory's experience is similar to mine. And I am happy to read it because I've been reading many posts dedicated to changed taste buds and wondering sadly if my own "unchanged" likes and dislikes are indicative of my unlikely maintenance.

I prefer eating healthier food b/c I believe it improves my mental state as well as my physical being. But it is true that I do still VERY MUCH enjoy the taste of many, not all but many crap foods too.

This is kind of like watching a train wreck, because I get and agree with much of what you're saying, Anne, but I also know that one of the particular things kaplods often says, and which I love her for, is that what you eat is not a moral issue and does not make you a bad person.

I would agree that eating in large part is not a moral issue for you unless you choose for it to be so.

If you wanted to, you could just eat fritos and nothing else. That wouldn't be a moral issue, it may be a health issue but a moral issue it would not be.

For the record, I have been known to go off, over-react, or what have you from time to time, especially on a bad day when one of my weight management hot spots gets tweaked. While I did (and do) have issue with one particular idea or at least the way it was expressed, in one particular post, I respect and admire kaplods greatly, and do not want this one nit largely about one phrase in one post to be construed as anything other than that. I apologize if that has in fact happened, as that was not my intent.

Anne

No need to apologize at all Anne,

You shared your passionate opinion articulately and made some very good points without being rude or nasty. Personally, I find there no need to justify or apologize for passion.

You do have a point about the moral spin, but I suppose my low brow roots and personal morality were just showing. I have a masters' degree in psychology, and consider myself well-educated and some of my tastes even sophisticated (but not many) but I was raised in a lower middle class family (one generation removed from abject poverty). None of my grandparents finished middle school let alone high school and I was the first in my family to get a bachelor's degree). My mother's sisters were very critical of eduction for women, and asked my mother why on earth I was getting my masters' degree as it would only make me unmarriageable - men don't like women who are smarter or more educated than they are (apparently my husband is the rarest of exceptions). Women going on to higher education was actually seen as somewhat scandalous in my mother's family. Ultimately, despite my education, I am a child of the lower middle class. A symphony or independent art film was just not the first metaphor my mind grasped.

It's very obvious that the connotation we each have of not only junk food, and porn, but also symphonies and art films are very different. I would disagree that porn has a society wide connotation of immorality. It's a subculture thing, really. I'm not saying my folks had porn lying around the house when I was a kid (though in high school, I did babysit for a couple who did. They had five kids under 10 and the oldest would thumb through the magazines and "chat" about what his parents had taught them about sex and the human body, from the magazines. I found it creepy, as my parents were never quite that nonchallant about sex. And I remember thinking at the time that the "big jugs" type women magazines were not the best role model of human sexuality for young children. Being only about 15 myself, I suppose I didn't realize that my view and understanding of sexuality, passed on by my parents, was nearly as age-inappropriate to many eyes).

My parents did not have loose morals, they just viewed sex and nudity as mundane, a family friendly topic even (though not as friendly as the family described above). We were taught the basics young (with a children's book How Babies are Made) and were taught that sex was a natural and good part of adult married people's lives and that violence was far more immoral than sex. Even before we were old enough to be interested in sex, we were taught that sex was "for marriage," but were also encouraged to come to them and not panic if "something happened" and teen pregnancy ensued. We went to "Blue Lagoon" as a family (I was 14 and my brother was 12), but my parents wouldn't let us watch blood and slasher films. When I was working in a group home for troubled boys, the kids could see R movies that staff had screened, and I was horrified when one woman assured (reassured, really) the rest of the staff that a particular movie was appropriate (again for troubled, some violent boys) because it had "no sex, just a bunch of killing." Now THAT shocked and offended me, the concept that graphic violence could be seen as less objectionable than a nude scene or two.

On my brother's first trip home from the navy, he rented two porn movies for the family to watch - and we all did (I was in college) after my younger sisters went to bed. He had rented "real" movies too, but the porn was a "practical joke" on my parents, and he didn't really expect them to watch them (but they accepted his dare). It wasn't hardcore, and my mother was embarassed (at first, not of the film but of watching it with her adult children) and then we all started laughing at about how incredibly funny it all was. We weren't in trench coats, and we didn't find it arousing, we found it silly and funny. All I remember was the first was about nurses and the second was a cartoon where the main character was a well-endowed cat. So you can see how a person who watched porn (even only two softcore porn movies, one a cartoon) with her brother and parents might not consider it offensive or sinister, just "mildly naughty". Junk food for the mind and libido, even.

I know that for many folks, an openness to sexuality is seen as "progressive," "sophisticated" even, but that's not necessarily true either. My folks, descended from farm folks, viewed sex pretty practically. Animals do it, people do it, and it's all pretty mundane, boring even most of the time. I suppose when you're artificially inseminating cows at 12 years old, as my dad did, it gives you a unique perspective on sex that you pass on to your children. My brother and I were adopted too, and I think that had an affect on how my parents raised us to think of sex. We always knew we were adopted from earliest memory, and I guess in explaining adoption to a small child, the issue of sex may naturally come up a little earlier than for most children in explaining how wer were "different." Being told we didn't grow in mommy's tummy made us curious as to why not, I suppose. I do know that when I was about 4 or 5, I envisioned some sort of baby store where my parents got to pick me out. My youngest sister (both younger sisters are my parents bio-kids 12 and 14 years younger than I) apparently had a similar impression, because in learning the difference, she stomped her foot and said that SHE wanted to be adopted too like my brother and me, because Mommy and Daddy had gotten to pick us out from all the other babies (she was too young to realize that adoption doesn't work that way, and that the baby is usually nearly as much a surprise to an adopted parent as a biochild).


I'm not ashamed of my unsophisticated (even crude sometimes) family, or my unsophisticated husband nor my mostly unsophisticated self. In fact, in some circles of my world I would be laughed at or ridiculed (or thought to be incredibly condescending) to have used a symphony or art film in a metaphor. "High tuned" my husband's great grandmother would have said - and it wouldn't have been a compliment, but a way to say "well don't you think you're fancier than the rest of us."

If there's one thing I did learn in college and in the social service jobs I worked (where I once met a woman who didn't know how to use an alarm clock because her family had never owned one), and my interest in social anthropology is that there is little to no "universal experience," particularly in our diverse culture. What one person finds offensive or rude, another person, because of their unique upbringing and experiences, will find perfectly normal even mundane. There's really no way you can always avoid offending someone, somewhere unless you never have anything interesting or important to say. Don't get me wrong, diplomacy is usually a good thing, but there are never any guarantees that someone won't find what you say offensive in some way.

Interesting discussion!

Just as an aside, these are the "seven deadly sins" of the early Catholic church:

Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

Hmmm. Gluttony...

Jay

I admit it I'm a junk food addict, I have to plan all my food intake since I seems to be unable to stay away from fries and pizza and dark chocolate. So now I have made adjustments to allow myself a pita pizza on friday - which is the healthier version and once in a while I get myself a New York fry. I still have dark chocolate but instead of of a whole bar I get the real good stuff at the Chocolaterie and have a piece every second day or so. I also play this little game for every "junk food" item I have to add more veggie to my daily menu. Hope this helps.

I'm going to pop in here and just say that everyone in this thread is to be commended for disagreeing (even passionately) and talking about strongly felt topics (like food morality!) that can inspire arguments, but while being courteous and friendly.

Reading this thread made my day for that reason.

Hey guys, it's me again. In case anyone's wondering, it's working!!!! I've lost 6 pounds in a month, 7 if you count the week before I officially started, when I was just trying to stop grazing. This is fantastic for me. I didn't expect to lose more than 3 or 4, tops. AND it's been totally doable. I'm only hungry for a little while before meals, as it should be. I knew 1500 was the right calorie level for me, but I always stopped losing after 2 weeks or so. This time I haven't plateaued yet, and I think it's because I eat more on Saturdays (around 1800 calories). I'm very optimistic, but I confess I'm afraid of reaching a plateau because I ALWAYS give up when that happens. I just have to keep repeating to myself that at least I'm not gaining and that the weight will come off eventually, right?

Anyway, just thought I'd give you an update. It's starting to look like I might be joining you one day in the not-so-remote future!

PS: I still like junk food. Not burgers and the like, because I never cared much for those, but sweet junk? Oh yeah.

Clara, join us NOW!

And never give up. Never ever ever.
And I'm glad it's working for you!!

But remember, you do not have to be at goal to be a maintainer...you just have to want to NOT regain the weight you have already lost.

Seriously, I think more and more these days that this is the essential part of it. And I wonder, how come I didn't understand it sooner...

"I don't like dieting, therefore I avoid gaining weight"?

Midwife, thanks for the words of encouragement! Well, I *have* been a maintainer for years, it's just that in the last 7 years I'd been maintaining at 10-14 pounds above goal. But yeah, focusing on not gaining what I've already lost is a great start!