I’m with Robin and Glory on this one, too. That constant ‘all or nothing’ thinking is nerves-grating at best--isn’t there, oh, I dunno, quite a wide range or alternatives between a Krispy Kreme donut and fricking celeri? Why must it always have to be celeri anyway? And if our happiness n life must depend on whether we have that donut or not, well, sorry, but then our lives must be pretty dull and empty to start with. Evidently, with that kind of mindset, one cannot go very far.
I agree that we are different, if only in the way we here seem to be tackling the problem. And I know from first-hand experience, just like you all know it too, that I’ll never be able to eat like a never-fat person. My body is and was too different from the start, otherwise I would never have been overweight as a child. There’s a nother difference, too: people who maintain their weight loss, from what I can see here, are also different in their minds. They’ve acknowledged the fact, understood what to do to keep the weight at bay, and accepted that doing it is the only way to indeed keep it at bay. As I wrote in another post, what struck me in the book were the attitudes of the people taking part in the study. They are understandable, of course, since those were men and women who had already tried and failed several times. But not once has they struck me as having actually hope in themselves. It was always hope in the program, hope that they’d be on Atkins and not on LEARN, hope in the study... not in their own ability to ‘just do it’, if I may say so. And this contrasts a lot with the atitude of a Meg or of a Glory or of a Wyllenn here.
So, yeah, we are different.
But in a way, it’s alright.
I have to pay attention everyday of my life--so what? Maybe I can just stop wallowing on the pain of not having that donut, and focus instead on the fact that, hey, my body is actually forcing me to eat healthy foods and in not a huge quantity, at least I won’t be loading myself with junk. (Being thin doesn’t mean you’re in pretty good health if you eat at fast-food joints every day, eh?) I also have to focus on my studies every day, and will have to strive for other studies every day until my last day of work, since I want to teach and am thus bound ethically (in my book, I know, I'm a prefectionist
) to always keep sharp and acute to give the best I can to my students--whether they want it or not.
Is that obsession? I don’t know, but if it’s acceptable and praiseworthy to do that for a job, why couldn’t I pay attention to food and weight as well? I tend to consider this as I consider many other things in life: we don’t HAVE to do it, nobody’s forcing us, but if we don’t do it, then we’ll have to face the consequences. And looking old and frumpy in clothes the cut of which doesn’t suit a fat body anyway, feeling easily out of breath and unable to even run to catch my bus, or having to take meds later on because I’ve shot down my health with eating too much crap, the way I did before, isn’t something I’m looking forward to... So I guess I’ll just have that one cookie once a fortnight, it’ll do well enough for me. We’ve lived for ages on fruits and berries, I don’t see why these shoud suddenly become awful foods that will make us unhappy and deprived!