Exasperation

You need at least 2000 calories a day for your body to function properly.

Exercise can be fun. It doesn't have to be obsessive to be affective.

Dietary fat isn't evil.

Bodily fat isn't evil, either.

Carbohydrates are essential.

So is protein.

You can eat chocolate if you want to.

You can eat anything you want to.

If you give it a chance, your body will remember how to eat normally. Like a child who will stop eating when she's full, even if there is still half an ice cream cone left.

These things make perfect sense to me now. Why does the diet industry have to muck it all up, making everything so confusing and difficult to understand? At the Barnes and Noble near my house there is an section of diet books. Each of them different, many of them contridicting each other. None of them telling the truth. That if you stop eating when you're full, you'll lose weight. If you stop denying yourself 'good' foods, all foods become equal and you'll actually crave nutritious foods.

I've done tons of online reading the past two months, and nearly every personal site I log on to uses the words 'good' and 'bad.' I've had to conciously stop myself from doing that here. Women especially are brainwashed by society, the media, men, Hollywood--everywhere we turn around--into believing that fat is 'bad.' That women aren't supposed to weigh more than 150 pounds or wear more than a size 8. That our thighs aren't supposed to touch and our bellies should be concave.

So we beat ourselves up--killing ourselves to meet an unmeetable cultural standard. Trading happiness for waspish waists and skinny thighs. Or for the hope of them. Because since diets don't work in the long run 95 percent of the time, all the misery and work is for nothing. Maybe its even for fatter thighs and a thicker waist.

Kevin fit into a pair of pants this morning that were too small a couple of months ago. He can't believe that he's lost about 15 pounds, since he hasn't done anything to make that happen. Except he has. He's stopped binging, in support of me. He isn't bringing bags of chips and candy and Little Debbies home, because he loves me. Since he's eating more normally, his weight is sliding down with no other effort.

Okay. My rant is over :)