2006-09-13 - 11:00 a.m.
If it's all-natural and good for me, why does it suck?
I've been spending some time reading about various diets, because it's been a while since I immersed myself in a crazy diet philosophy, and I'm getting withdrawal symptoms. The perennially self-obsessed (like me, and possibly every other person on the 'net who has managed to sustain a regular blog for more than three months) are all about the weird diets; like religion, they provide a means for worship (food, health, thinness), self-punishment (fasting, restrictive eating), and redemption (weight-loss, managing to follow the diet properly, thereby attaining moral and physical superiority). It's when you actually make the mistake of taking it *seriously* that you can run into trouble. I'm mildly obsessive-compulsive; without that drive for order and fulfillment through completion, I'd never have been able to do half the sewing projects I feature on my site. The darker side to that compulsion is the urge to create stricter and stricter formats for everyday activities. Since I'm thoroughly self-absorbed, but lucky enough to be able to master most of the things I attempt, I tend to turn on the one thing I've never been able to control to my satisfaction - namely, my weight. At a cursory glance, you may think I have it all together, despite the pain thing. I manage to look reasonably well-turned out most of the time, I'm reasonably in shape, most of my outfit matches (admittedly, when 90% of your wardrobe is black, this isn't hard to do). Sadly, underneath, as long-term readers of my diary know, is a seething mass of insecurity, anger, and self-hatred. When the self-hatred gets on top, I go out and read up on diets, because most of my self-hatred centers around my weight for entirely boring and predictable reasons that have everything to do with my upbringing and very little to do with the modeling and diet industry, though Kiera Knightley in "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" does give me slight pangs of feeling entirely too whale-like for words. But she's one of those mutants who's blessed/cursed with perfectly thin molecules that don't even think casually about retaining any fat; such aliens are not really there for self-comparison, they're there so we can go "wow - she's really thin" when she turns up at the BAFTAs wearing a really rather unflattering designer shroud that shows off quite how little natural boobage she actually has. I rather like my boobs (36C, for those who are wondering, Kevin), and wouldn't trade them for anything smaller. No, like most women of my philosophical proclivities, it's not about the thin, it's about what the thin means: Control. Control over such messy things as weight, and fat, and wanting to eat an entire stuffed-crust Hawaiian pizza. If I achieve it with diet, the thinking goes, then the control will spread into all areas of my life - work, love, other people. About there in that line of thinking is where the magical mind-control powers start appearing, and I control the entire world. Alas, such control is not to be found in one's lunch, no matter how lo-fat the dressing, nor organic the escarole. I've tried some pretty wacky diets, but the thing that's always stopped me with the all-organic, all-raw, possibly vegetarian diets that I've been perusing lately is the texture. Yes, I'm a picky eater, and I'm okay with that. For me, the most distressing thing about the herbivorous diets so beloved by people who frequent the sites I investigate in the search for symptomatic relief from my pain (they all claim miraculous benefits from vegan/all-raw/instinctive/paleolithic diets, and I'm only in so much pain because I'm addicted to Twinkies and pizza) is the disturbing frequency of such foodstuffs such as flax seed. I've eaten (well, I've *tried*) flax seed, and it's dreadful. Ditto for half the seeds and nuts and non-wheat things I've tried. I don't like bitter foods, and I even get tired of fruit. My jaw gets exhausted from all the chewing. Wheat grass juice? Don't get me started. And I had a bad childhood scare with meusli, and I've never been able to look it in the face since. I have a fatal flaw when it comes to diet as religion - I actually like food. I don't like overeating it, because then I feel sick, but I do rather like food. Cheese, for instance. And steak (sometimes). Chili. Pasta (I've even found a gluten-free one that's decent). The Chinese buffet on route 40. And, of course, pizza. When I consider going on an all-natural diet, all I can think of is the taste of the really terrible all-organic, hemp/flax seed "nutrition" bar I tried last week. Or the flax-seed "crackers" that were wads of flattened whole flax seed with dried banana slices that even the squirrels refused to eat. The taste of raw broccoli *without* any kind of dip. Mung beans. Sprouts. Soy cheese. What's the use of having perfect control if it sucks all the time? Until I find the all-you-can-eat-and-still-lose-weight pizza diet, I guess I'm hosed.
Dorsal - Ventral
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