I love food. Everything about food. Its my favorite topic of conversation, favorite past time and even a favorite subject for scholarship. My best meals are accompanied by plans for the next meal or memories of past meals. I do not plan to jettison that love. Nor do I need to.
Here's the difference between loving food and mindlessly eating. (More or less the difference between the evil macho-industrial diet complex and a healthy change like Weight Watchers):
On a diet, you wake up and think, "Everything I manage NOT to eat today will get me to my goal." It's a disciplinary practice of self-deprivation. Its a goal charted around a negative space--what I DON'T eat. Before you've even stepped out of bed, you're doomed.
When you love food, you wake up and think, "Everything I WILL eat today will get me to my goal." Its about the energy of choosing well and loving food. About choosing well to fuel my runs. Its a goal charted around positive space--the geography of cuisine, the joy of what I DO eat. Before you even step out of bed, you've succeeded.
I learned from feminism ages ago that diets are evil. They are sexist disciplinary practices that create self-policing, self-hating docile bodies--aimed at making women, in particular, take up less cultural space (literally and metaphorically.) I don't do diets. That's why I've really found Weight Watchers to be an interesting experience. Its not a diet. Its a lifestyle. And its no accident that my foray into running coincides with that change.
Now I eat to run and run to eat. I don't run from eating.
I can't tell you what a difference this makes.
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