Diet, Interrupted

Remember my blog back in February, where I said that's it, I'm done with dieting for good?

Well, firstly...has it really been 8 months since I posted that?? Wow. I hadn't realized that much time had passed. Just wanted to share my little journey with any woman who's ever had a love/hate relationship with food, who's ever had body image issues, and--yes, I'm gonna go there--ever let a number on a scale ruin your day while obsessing over whether you had enough points/calories/carbs left over to eat a small salad for dinner.

Maybe it helps to go back further. I suspect my mom, easily one of the sweetest people I've ever known, had an eating disorder. They didn't call it that back then; you were just fat because you lacked the self-discipline to do anything about it. Back in the 1960s, well-meaning "friends", coworkers and even family members thought they were doing their part to help Mami by pointing out her compulsive eating so that she would be shamed into losing weight. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Over the years I watched my mom do things that today would send up red flags to any medical professional. My mom would actually hide food in strange places, including our dresser drawers. She would go against the advice of her doctors--including, in her later years, her cardiologist--and eat food that was unhealthy for a young woman who was already battling heart disease. When I was in my late teens and her closest confidante, Mami would tell me that food was to her what the bottle was to the alcoholic, and that people just didn't understand the control it had over her.

At the age of 47, my mother suffered a massive heart attack. One year later she had a stroke that cruelly took her life.

Suffice to say, besides the heartbreak of having lost my wonderful mother at a young age (I was 24), I inherited some of her food and weight issues. The media is a major culprit for most of us women, too. Apparently, according to the genuises in TV, the movies and marketing in general, a woman approaching 50 is supposed to be able to easily slip into the skimpy bikini that you'd find in a 20-year-old's closet. Because you can never be too rich or too thin, and everybody is supposed to be the perfect size 2, blah, blah, blah.

Fortunately there comes a point when you realize, You know, I think I'm opening my 5,000th can of diet soda, and I still haven't lost those pesky 10 pounds? That's sobering. Guys, come on, all that aspartame can NOT be good for you. There also comes a point where it finally dawns on you that maybe God didn't mean for us to count every single calorie or point or carb we put into our mouths FOREVER. And most of all, there comes a point when you decide that you are worth so much, much more than just a stupid number on a scale says you are.

So I've fallen off the wagon over the past 8 months. I started point-counting and relying on diet soda again.

But then I got serious again. I'm not dieting anymore; I'm just learning to trust myself to take good care of the person that I am, not who Madison Avenue thinks I should be. I am allowed to eat whatever I'd like, whenever I'd like to eat it, but I can't live on a diet of junk food when what I need is fuel, aka proper nutrition.

Instead of that once-a-week, oh-my-God-please-let-me-have-lost-something weigh-in, I started weighing myself every day. First of all, the pressure's off. There's no, "Oh, rats, I screwed up today, let me just keep nibbling for the rest of the week." There is no "rest of the week," it's just one day at a time. As I've done for many years, I continue to go to the gym and on my walks, bikerides and hikes, because I enjoy exercise, not because it'll make me look like the latest underfed waif on People magazine.

Something very interesting has happened: My weight has stabilized. It hasn't gone up; it hasn't gone down. It fluctuates between 128 and 130. Which, after all, is not fat. It may not be the number I'd like to see on the scale, the number I saw a few years ago. But it's a number I can live with. It sure seems to be the number that this 49-year-old body feels comfortable and healthy at.

I drink a soda--the real thing, not diet--three times a week or so rather than the 3 or 4 diet sodas I'd have daily. But who wants soda when you can have juice, which I drink more often now. Yes, there's natural sugar in juice. I wish that was my biggest problem in life, don't you??? Snacking can consist of a "normal" size bag of Raisinettes--and I refuse to feel guilty over that--or a small fat-free yogurt. Whatever I'm craving or need at the moment.

The best part? It's like I'm free. For the first time since I was a kid, when I equated being skinny with self-worth, I can devote my mental energy to other things besides stressing over having eaten one lone, evil cookie for dessert.

To keep things honest, I'll revisit this subject in a few months, just to see how this newfound freedom is going. For now, I'm grateful that I'm no longer Girl, Interrupted.

That 20-year-old can keep her size 2 bikini. It's so much more comfy in this, my own skin.

A Fond Farewell to Kate Duffy

This week I received word from a friend that Kate Duffy, the much-loved editorial director at Kensington Books, has died. All around the Internet you can find so many writers who were touched by her in some way. Even those who weren't published by her have very affectionate memories of her.

I'm one of those who was fortunate enough have been one of her writers (though she was not my direct editor). I wrote for both the Bouquet and the Encanto lines early on in my career. When I hear her name, what first comes to mind was how a friend and I greeted her in the hallway at a Romantic Times conference, and Kate ended up having a conversation with us that lasted about an hour! It was that conversation, and even more so the one right after September 11, when Kate called each individual Encanto author to tell us the publisher was ending the line, that revealed to me what a genuine and caring person she was. Kate was passionate about her work--the woman loved the romance genre--and she was genuine and honest and real, as we should all be.

My heart and prayers go out to her family, her coworkers, close friends, and her writers. And thank you, Kate! I will never forget you.