Should we be counting blessings instead of calories?

As a skinny kid, I was known to take a spoon to a gallon of chocolate ice cream and not stop until I hit the bottom. As a size 3, 17-inch waist, 99-pound teenager, my favorite foods were french fries, gravy, and potato salad — the last two most often eaten together. I loved food and enjoyed eating never having to think about any consequences of my food choices. Flash forward four children and fifty years later, and all the foods I love have become the enemy!  

“I think I am one of many women who has spent a lifetime trying to be something we are not or something we used to be: thin. Really coming to terms with my size and my weight has been a major endeavor for me. ”

After the birth of my first child, I weighed 120 pounds and, as my mother and I agreed, thought myself F-A-T! I wore girdles to hold in all that jiggly stuff and started depriving myself. After my third pregnancy — with twins — I found myself forty pounds heavier and began the yo-yo dieting that marked my existence for the next twenty years. I tried every means of losing weight, from machines that were supposed to shake the pounds off, to being wrapped in saran wrap for hours to sweat it away.  

I did lose most of the weight once: when I was a single mom with little money for groceries, I would arrive home from work after the caregiver had fed my four children —  only to discover there was nothing left for me to eat. At 30, I quickly succumbed to a severe case of mono, thanks in part to taking poor care of myself. Hearing the doctor remind me of the importance of eating three meals a day was a wake-up call and music to my ears. I complied, and there came the weight again. Nineteen years later, another doctor would tell me that the yo-yo dieting I’d been doing for most of my life wasn’t good for my health. He insisted I needed to accept my size and live with it. 

I stabilized my weight for about twenty years by being conscious of what I ate, but not stressing over it. Then came 2018, and I suddenly gained twenty pounds over six months. I blamed the fact that a friend lived with us for about three weeks after going through a serious tragedy. I cooked full meals for her and eating them pushed me beyond my normal diet of one to two meals a day. For the first time, my doctor (yet another one) said: “You need to lose weight.” Historically, my numbers have always been good, so this was the first time I had to lose weight under medical advice. 

Thus, began my Year of the Diet. I started eating cottage cheese and crushed pineapple (in unsweetened juice of course), yogurt and boiled eggs, and drinking SlimFast. I joined a gym and began going to classes three times a week including meeting with a trainer twice a week. I got off sugar and bread (except on very rare occasions) and ate one normal meal a day high in vegetables. The end result: I lost three pounds.

I don’t care what the studies say: some people have a slower (or faster) metabolism than others, and genetics is a factor in weight. My father’s mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were all big women. As my father used to say, when his grandfather went to hug his wife, he put his arms around once, marked his place with chalk and then hugged the other side. 

My husband has always seen no point in depriving himself — or anyone else — of the joy of enjoying treats that you love. If there is a specific medical reason that’s different, but deprivation just to achieve a certain number seems needless to him. I’ve defended my dieting to him as wanting to make my doctor happy, but lately, that just doesn’t seem enough. 

I think I am one of many women who has spent a lifetime trying to be something we are not or something we used to be: thin. Really coming to terms with my size and my weight has been a major endeavor for me. 

We are so caught up in the commercial image of what a woman should look like that we spend untold energy trying to achieve an elusive goal. Of course, we must be concerned about our health and can’t allow pure gluttony to take over our lives, but are we supposed to agonize over every morsel that goes into our mouths? Food is a blessing; not a curse.

What are we going to do about it?