Worst Diet Mantra EVER!

Thanks to Kate Moss we have been hearing it for years. To me it is like nails on a chalk board.

"Nothing tastes as good as thin feels"

Obviously she has never ate things such as a really good gelato, the first grilled sweet corn of the season ,baklava or a fresh tomato off the vine. I mean seriously.  Food tastes good.

I m not saying being thin doesn't feel good. Even with 15 more pounds to lose I am relatively a thin person now. Average. I have curves and muscles but I am not where I was and it feels great. The strength , energy, confidence and athleticism all feel amazing.

The thing is, when you have food issues, mantras like Ms. Moss’s ode to anorexic chain smokers do nothing but make us feel out of control, guilty and fatter than ever. The gorgeous supermodel is telling me I shouldn’t be enjoying this slice of cheesecake more than being a size six (or four, or two). WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?!?! Nothing – you enjoy food. How else do you think you ended up overweight, and Moss ended up an underweight poster child of the size zero revolution?

One of the biggest challenges — and breakthroughs — for me was to STOP FEELING GUILTY ABOUT EATING. Yes, I have will power to a certain extent, but the moments where it fails me doesn’t make me a failure. A certain self-awareness about eating is necessary – you can’t let yourself off the hook indulging all the time. But in the “everything in moderation” moments where you indulge and — God forbid! –  actually enjoy the taste of something MORE THAN YOU WANT TO BE THIN — if you guilt trip yourself? It becomes a negative-feedback loop of doom. Trying to police yourself on eating culminates in your eating more than you ever would if you had a healthier, less-guilty attitude towards food. It’s difficult to accept. It seems so wrong. Counter-intuitive. What do you mean, I shouldn’t feel guilty about eating ice cream? Ice cream is… bad.
Reprogram yourself. Eating ice cream is not bad. Eating a pint of ice cream in one sitting? Yeah, that’s probably bad (but even that you should be able to let go of, in time). But if you let go of the guilt of eating a normal serving, heck – maybe even TWO, of your favorite, super delicious “better than thin feels” ice cream and then actually eat that – normal serving size – on a regular basis, you may find your overwhelming, emotional need to devour an entire carton diminishes.

Then again, you also have to know yourself, and realize we don’t have an automatic reset button. You’re not going to go from being a Ben & Jerry’s pint-devouring monster to daintily eating four spoonfuls overnight. Sometimes you need to completely go cold turkey on a “red light” item/trigger food whilst you reprogram your guilt feelings away from the food. It works differently for everyone, but the fact remains: guilt over eating usually leads to MORE EATING.
Most importantly, once you admit to yourself that, dammit, some food IS worth it, it becomes easier to define how much food is NOT worth it. All food is not created equal, and the guilt complex that is foisted upon the unhappy fats for eating leads to this reverse landslide where you consume any and all food, desperately, because you’re bad anyway, so who cares what it tastes like? Though it may feel counter-intuitive, trust me on this: admit that you like eating some things more than the illustrious idea of being thin, deal with it, and then begin the long and arduous journey to dropping your food guilt. We may never approach food “normally,” but we sure as hell can approach it with less guilt.