The Sweet Witch

Whenever we go over to my inlaws, my mother-in-law makes enough food to feed an army. No, that's not a metaphor.

She's already cooked enough and packaged it up in Ziploc and Glad containers to feed an army for a week and put it into the fridge. That's for us to take home. That doesn't include the food she sets out on the table. It's always some sort of meat, usually red - prime rib, steak, ribs - plus at least one meat side dish, usually sausage. And there's always shrimp as an appetizer. Harley's a big meat eater, and it's clear she's cooking for him.

But there's plenty of carbs, too, don't get me wrong. Baked beans, cheesy potatoes, macaroni and cheese. Occasionally there's a vegetable - green bean casserole (the kind with fried onions on the top) or buttered carrots. Once in a while, a salad.


We went to my in-laws for my birthday yesterday. My mother-in-law likes to find reasons for us to come over at least once a month. My birthday is a good reason in January. We came home loaded down with food. Going there, for a food addict, is like asking an alcoholic to go to a New Year's Eve party at Cheers.


Of course, if you're going to meetings and doing what you need to do, it wouldn't matter if someone set a drink in front of you, right? You'd say no.

Me, I'm not so good at the "saying no" part. I clearly haven't gotten there yet. So my lunch today consisted of cheesy potatoes and baked beans. No protein in sight. And then there was leftover birthday cake. And she sent home two boxes of cookies. And a bag full of candy. And a gallon of ice cream, packed in ice. Of course she did.

Harley often likens her to the witch in the candy house in Hansel and Gretel. Sometimes I think he's right. And sometimes, when I'm lying in a stupid migraine-inducing sugar/carb coma after a trip to the in-laws, I wish we wouldn't keep leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that lead right back there again.

Say It Ain't So!

I adore Queen Latifah.



She is, after all, my namesake :)

I can't think of a more beautiful, stunning, strong, confident woman - of both color and size. She's always been someone I greatly admired, and I think she's an underrated actress, an amazing singer, and just an amazing human being.

Today, I saw her on television - a commercial.

For Jenny Craig.

*sigh*



So Queen Latifah is going to join the ranks of Sarah Ferguson



Kirstie Alley



and Valerie Bertinelli...





Once again making the implied if not direct statement: "I can't be beautiful or happy until I'm thin."


I'm just so sad. :(

Queen Bee - Weigh In

276

That was the number on the scale.

The last time we did low-carb the weight literally melted off without any effort. And I was eating cream cheese and salami and pork rinds and deviled eggs... and I still managed to lose forty-ish pounds.

We'll see what happens this time. I haven't been 100% on "plan" so to speak. There was that chocolate. And that box of macaroni and cheese. And birthday cake.

One day at a time, one bite at a time, I suppose. I haven't been perfect. Which usually means, it's time to give up and grab for the Doritos. But instead, I've just been picking myself up and trying again.

I suppose the scale is reflecting that. I'm a pound lighter than when I started out (and the scale started going in the wrong direction!)

Progress, not perfection. Isn't that what they say?

Thursday Thirteen #3: 13 Funny Diet Tips

13 Funny Diet Tips

1. If you eat something, but no one else sees you eat it, it has no calories.

2. When drinking a diet soda while eating a candy bar, the calories in the candy bar are cancelled by the diet soda.

3. Foods use for medicinal purposes NEVER count. e.g. hot chocolate, brandy, toast, Sara Lee Cheesecake

4. Movie-related foods do not have calories because they are part of the entertainment package and not part of one's personal fuel. e.g. milk duds, buttered popcorn, junior mints and Tootsie Rolls.

5. Cookie pieces contain no calories. The process of breaking the cookie causes calorie leakage.

6. Late-night snacks have no calories. The refrigerator light is not strong enough for the calories to see their way into the calorie counter.

7. If you are in the process of preparing something, food licked off knives and spoons have no calories. e.g. peanut butter on a knife, ice cream on a spoon.

8. Food of the same color have the same number of calories. Examples are spinach and pistachio ice cream, mushrooms and white chocolate.

9. Chocolate is a universal color and may be substituted for any other color.

10. 100 laughs a day is equal to 10 minutes of exercise!

11. Go to the paint store. You can get thinner there.

12. Relish today. Catchup tomorrow.

13. Carrot cake counts as a serving of vegetables.

Happy Birthday To Me

I feel incredibly old. I'm sure my body is much older than my years, actually. Which is rather depressing.

This day always meant a good excuse to eat cake. I miss cake. And frosting. God, I love frosting. Why would something exist in the world that's so incredibly bad for you?

I saw an Intervention the other night - the first one I'd seen with a food addict. A young man, over 500 lbs. The therapist said, "Being addicted to food is like being addicted to heroin. You take it to numb out. That's the goal."

Yep. That's about right. Food is my heroin.

Whenever I complain about having another birthday, Harley says, "Well, it's better than the alternative." Ha. But some days I wonder.

5 Sticky Notes On My Computer That I Want To Have Made Into Refrigerator Magnets

1. Life is hard.

2. I am not that important.

3. My life is not about me.

4. I am not in control.

5. You are going to die.

These strike me as true in my heart. They come from a man named Richard Rohr. He didn't invent them. They are timeless truths.

They sound harsh to many people when I tell them they are a code by which I strive to live. I don't know if they're harsh. If anyone would like to know how I understand them, how they apply to my challenges with food, eating, body, and addiction, please comment and ask. I would be glad to offer my 2 cents.

King Harley

Self-Preservation

Harley and I both have issues with scarcity - they just manifest in different ways. Harley prepares for the apocalpyse. He wants to be prepared for the End of Days, no two ways about it, and if that means making sure we have an alternate power source and canned food to last until 2080, so be it. A few months ago, we heard a town siren go off (we live in a very little town now) and didn't know what it was. We later discovered it was just a fire call (for the local volunteer fire department.) But Harley took it as a sign that we needed flashlights and a crank emergency radio and all sorts of various and sundry things.

Not that I wasn't grateful to have them when the power went out at 2 am a few weeks ago. But, of course, by the time he got them all powered up and ready and we listened to the weather, the power was back on again... and I could have been sleeping from two until four, instead of cranking the radio.

Harley's a planner. Me, I'm a worrier. He's preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. I'm worrying about the worst and putting my head in the sand in the meantime. I have to admit, his way it a bit more logical - and proactive.

When it comes to food, I'm a hoarder. Whatever I buy, I want to keep. Forever. Preserved so I know it's there when I want it. And I can't stand to see it disappear. Which is why junk food is so appealing to me. Twinkies have a shelf life of, what, a million years? Twinkies and a couple cockroaches, that's what would be around if we survived a nuclear blast. (And if Harley had anything to say about it, we certainly would!)

When it comes to produce, though, I freak out when it starts going bad. And produce, damnit, goes bad fast! So people have to eat it. Right away. And I can't hide it in my dresser drawers or in my secret cubbyhole hiding places. All week, I've been thinking about having my special strawberry-pecan salad. I love this salad, and I totally came to associate it with low-carbing, because it's deliciously sweet and yummy - and still low-carb, yay!

And all week long, my family has been eating strawberries. Like they grow on vines or something! :x So today, I finally made my salad, using the last of the strawberries - and it is, admittedly, just as good as I remembered it. Quite delicious. I'll give you the recipe.

But that's not my point.

The point is, I can't hoard low-carb food like I do junk food. I can't "save" it. The minute it comes out of the ground, it's on it's way to a sure death, either on my plate, or in the compost pile. If I try to "save" it, it will surely be the latter. And that seems like such a waste, especially considering the price of strawberries at the market this time of year!

But there's something to this idea that's hovering right at the edge of my awareness for the first time. I always knew I had a scarcity consciousness. But it never occurred to me that one of the great appeals of "junk" foods were that they were already preserved. I could save a box of Ho-Ho's for practically forever, and all the while carry around the secret knowledge that they were there for me. That seems important somehow.

I wonder if it will make a difference, when we're growing our own food, that I'll be able to go out and pick a quart of strawberries anytime I want? I won't have to worry about the price of fruit, whether California was having unusually cold weather this year, or whether or not Harley and the kids were going to eat them all before I get to make my yummy salad.

Anyway, here's the recipe... and if you have any more insights, I'd be glad to hear them! Sometimes we're so close to something, we can't really see what in the heck it really is...

Strawberry-Pecan Salad

1/2 head of Romaine lettuce, chopped

1/2 quart of strawberries, sliced

1/2 cup pecans, chopped

Dressing: 2 TBSP lemon juice, 2 TBSP red wine vinegar, 1 TBSP sweetener (I prefer Splenda)

Drizzle 1 TBSP oil over salad, mix dressing, and pour over lettuce, strawberries, and pecans.

Easy peasy, and oh so yummy!

Fad Diets

I was watching a show last week about the dangers of various fad diets. Harley and I seem drawn like moths to a flame to all the shows about weight on the tube (wow, that's an inaccurate metaphor isn't it... there really aren't tubes inside televisions anymore, huh?) Whether it's shows about losing weight, anorexia, bulemia, obesity, it doesn't matter.

I was amazed at how many of the "diets" listed that I've tried over the years. I've highlighted in red the ones that the program mentioned that I've given the old college try:

Liquid diet

Atkins

Suzanne somers

Weight Watchers

Jenny Craig

Medical Weight Loss

Metabolife

Detox

Colonics

Juicing

Raw foods

Maple Syrup Diet

Astrology Diet

Blood Type Diet

Cookie Diet

Tapeworm

The cookie diet sounds good, but they're not talking real cookies. They're talking fake "whole meal" cookies. *sigh* If it sounds too good to be true...

Note that I have NOT tried using a tapeworm. Although, I remember when I was a teenager, learning about tapeworms, and thinking, "Hey! That would be a perfect solution!" Eat all you want... and still lose weight!?

Eek!

It's amazing the lengths we'll go to, isn't it? I once considered ingesting a parasite in order to make myself thin... wow. What's wrong with this picture?

Thursday Thirteen #2: 13 Refrigerator Magnets About Fat

13 Refrigerator Magnets About Fat

1. If we really are what we eat, I'm fast, cheap and easy.

2. I'm out of chocolate and I have a gun.

3. Eat, drink and be merry - for tomorrow they may cancel your Visa.

4. Everyone who diets gains in the end.

5. I am not fat, I am calorically gifted.

6. Life is unsure, so always eat your dessert first.

7. You are overweight if you are living beyond your seams.

8. Diet and exercise to fight hazardous waists.

9. The Joy of Not Cooking.

10. The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat are really good friends.

11. I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

12. I'm not overweight, I'm just undertall.

13. On a scale of 1 to 10......We'd weigh a lot less!

Check out Thursday Thirteen!

Sugar Cravings

Well the grocery shopping was successful. The boys went in, got what was on the list, and got out. I'm amazed by the masculine's ability to do that.

Of course, now I'm going through sugar withdrawal. Migraine-inducing sugar withdrawal. Hasn't even been twenty-four hours yet, for pete's sake! I know from experience this only lasts a short time, but man... it's killer. I want to crawl under a rock and die.

Or eat a Snickers.

Same difference, I suppose. *sigh*

Off to get bloodwork tomorrow at Dr. Evil's. Should be... fun. Not.

"Fast" Food

We had Arby's last night.

We rarely eat out, because 1) it's expensive 2) we're far away from places to eat out and 3) we know it's not good for us.

But we do, every once and a while, and somehow I always think fast food is going to taste better than it does. I remember it better, or something. I've learned that's true about places like McDonald and Burger King and I just avoid going there altogether, even when we decide to splurge. But Arby's sounds "better" to me for some reason. I thought it would taste good. It sounded good.

It wasn't good.

*sigh*

I don't know why I can't keep that in my head all the time. In fact, it gave me a migraine. Probably some sort of artificial something I ended up eating. Yuk.

We're going grocery shopping today. I was very organized this time - I planned the menus, I created the list, and I'm sending Harley and the teenager. Two masculine folks should be able to go into the store and just buy what's on the list right? As opposed to me... I wander, I put things in the cart that "look good" or "sound good"... so NOT good. So they're going to go into the grocery store and grab some REAL "fast" food.

We're heading back to doing lower carb, no refined sugars or bad carbs. Plus lower, unsaturated fats. So the Twix I had the day before yesterday was probably the last chocolate for a long time. If that had occurred to me at the time, I would have savored it more. *sigh*

I really can't wait until summer, when we can start growing our own veggies and fruits and can collect our own eggs from our own Omega-3-fed chickens... I'm even considering raising bees!

Thursday Thirteen #1: 13 Annoying Euphemisms for Fat

13 Annoying Euphemisms for Fat

1. Fluffy
2. Big-boned
3. "Such a pretty face!"
4. BBW
5. Well Rounded
6. Rubenesque
7. Curvy
8. Large and In Charge
9. "Bear"
10. More to Love
11. Thick
12. Chubby
13. Cuddly

See More Thursday Thirteen Lists HERE.

Melting

I'm melting! MEEEEEEEEELLLLTING!

Okay, not me personally. (I wish! ha) But our huge snowstorm is melting into a gooey puddle of water and mud in a freak January thaw. Sixty degrees today. 6-0!

And we're still debating whether global warming is real?

Come on! I like to live my life in denial, but even I can't pretend I'm 5'8" and 110 lbs... which, seems to me, is pretty analogous.

And, as with global warming, my denial and wishful thinking instead of taking action is actually quite harmful.

Ouch. I hate it when I take my analogies all the way to their logical conclusion.

Ignorance really is bliss, isn't it?

Stuck

Watched Fried Green Tomatoes this morning while the kids went out to play in the snow that will disappear in a great flood this afternoon and tomorrow.

Great movie.

Kathy Bates character's sobbing into a handkerchief after some young kid called her a fat cow, and Jessica Tandy is patting her on the back and comforting her.

"I just wish I could get it over with and get really fat! I'm too young to be old and I'm too old to be young."

I hear ya, sister. I hear ya. (Has it really been fifteen years since this movie was released? God, I am getting old!) It takes courage to really eat your way toward death. Or to stop. I feel so caught in the middle, afraid to go forward, afraid to go back.

"One candy bar won't hurt ya," Tandy says.

"One, no. But ten or eleven?"

Yep, I hear ya.

I could eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tastes wayyyyy better than Lean Cuisine. (I'm watching the latest commercial - one woman eating a rice cake, the other drinking some frothy, scary-looking diet drink... and I'm supposed to believe the mouse-sized portion of chicken parts and freeze dried veggies tastes better? Feh!)

What is wrong with me?

I wish I knew. *sigh*

There's Always Room for Cello

Two hundred and eighty pounds.

Which means, I haven't lost anything (didn't expect to) but I didn't gain anything either.

The problem is, I feel crappy.

I am so unhealthy. It wasn't always this way. I was fat, yes, but I could still DO stuff. I could do yoga! Warrior I, II and III, for pete's sake! I could walk a mile on a treadmill, swim twenty laps. I could do a whole aerobics class at the gym.

Now... I can't walk up stairs without panting like a Siberian Husky pulling a sled in Mexico. I can't walk to the corner and back without feeling as tired as a narceleptic on heroin or sweating like a Coke bottle on a picnic table in August.

I'm so out of shape. Unless you count a rather squishy circle as a shape. Harley just said, "More like an ellipse... or like a cello."

The truth is, Yo-Yo Ma gets more exercise than I do just pulling a bow. I've elevated the role of couch potato beyond reason - like a deep fried Oreo Cookie - I'm redundantly sedentary. And the truth is, I so don't want to move. Newton's Law, wasn't it? An object in motion stays in motion... an object at rest stays at rest.

Gotta figure out a way to get myself moving again. I've got Nike sayings running through my head. "Just Do It!" Seems easier said than done, though...

Expert Advice

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions, but I did make a commitment to blog for the next 365 days.

What was I thinking!?

I did tell myself I wasn't going to give up. I wasn't going to abandon this blog, no matter what, even if I didn't find a way through the maze of my food and eating issues. My struggle and thoughts had to be useful, even if I failed... to me, to someone, somewhere.

As I'm writing this, the 2008 Nutrisystem ad is on TV: "I went from a size twelve to a size two!"

Feh. Lady, I'd love to be a size twelve. But I don't want to do it eating Nutrisystem food. Yuk.

Over the holidays, my sister said her new goal was to be 120 pounds by next Christmas. She's not that heavy - she has, perhaps, twenty pounds to lose. But that launched a discussion of weight, and eating, and diet (all while we were shoveling in dessert). She's been doing Weight Watchers - but not the meetings. Just counting her points.

"It's a great way to keep track of your food!" she claimed. "I know, now, that I have 2 points left for twelve candy corn."

Harley raised an eyebrow and snorted. "Now that's a waste of two points."

Points shmoints. But then she pulled out the Dr. Phil book, telling us Dr. Phil had really helped her understand what "type" of person she was when it came to eating and diets. There was a little test inside. Both she and Harley turned out to be perfectionists. Me, I was in the middle - feeling helpless, powerless, as if I have no control.

But do I?

This morning I heard a doctor on a show talking about childhood obesity, saying our bodies are programmed to crave and like salt, sugar and fat.

Well, hell. Isn't there a reason for that? Because I know that's exactly what my body craves. Especially the sugar. Do I have control over that? I don't feel as if I do. Every time I try to stop, something, something drives me back to the white stuff. I gotta have my fix.

On the same show where the doctor was talking about what we crave was a twelve year old obese boy who said, "Food is comfort. It's always the same. It makes me feel good when I eat it. It doesn't make fun of me or hurt me."

Damn. If I'd had that insight at twelve? Where would I be today? I barely have that insight now. I don't even know what the feelings are underneath the food. I'm so out of touch with them... I can't even identify what they are. That's scary to me. No wonder I tested as feeling hopeless, helpless, powerless. I feel caught. Can't go forward, can't go back.

So Dr. Phil had a show yesterday I happened to catch about New Year's resolutions. I don't usually watch him - his "Just say No!" worldview makes me insane. And this show wasn't any different. There was a 400 pound fast food addict eating McDonalds three times a day, like some real life "Supersize Me," and Dr. Phil is saying, "You just need to stop eating so much and exercise more."

This is the answer??

This is the answer.

Damn.

It hit me. That really IS the answer.

And then Dr. Phil said something that made me really sit up and take notice. "Your lifestyle is set up to support what you do. If you had a different lifestyle, things would be different."

He's not wrong. It really made sense, all of a sudden.

Harley and I keep talking about how, come spring, we want to raise chickens (for eggs) and grow our own organic garden. Ultimately, we'd like to be living off the grid somewhere in a sustainable community, but it's baby steps, for now. A garden and some chickens. Which means Harley needs to build a coop and plow a field. I need to plant and hoe and weed and water. And then we need to reap what we sow.

Change your lifestyle, change your life. That makes sense. I think I see a glimmer of hope sparkling somewhere in the distance that doesn't have to do with diets or denial. It has to do with moving our lives into a different space, a different place. For me, it's always seemed like a strange, impossible step, as if we were trying to find the way into another dimension. But now... it feels real. It feels possible.

That's exciting. Maybe I WILL have something to blog about this year.

Promise Land?

There's a post on Chewing The Fatz today titled Diets Don't Work - Or Do They? It illustrates an interesting point about the blogosphere that I'm discovering as I take this journey - it's fairly polarized along the "diet" and "nondiet" lines. There are those who insist that "Diets Don't Work!" - those are in the Fat Acceptance crowd. And then there are those who are trying the diet thing, whether it's Weight Watchers (who lately claim they aren't a diet) or South Beach or Dr. Phil or even getting weight loss surgery, and blogging about their success (or failure.) And some are succeeding (or have succeeded.)

The latter pretty much proves the point, doesn't it? Diets work. Eat less, exercise more, and you lose weight. Maybe not as much as you want to, as fast as you want to, but it does eventually work. Create a calorie deficit, and your body mass goes down. Which seems to imply that the problem doesn't lie in the question "Do diets work or not?" - it goes much deeper than that.

At the risk of alienating one side or the other (and that there are lines drawn between them at all seems silly to me to begin with) I'm going to speak up about this. It seems to me that the root of dieting and the root of giving up on diets altogether is actually the same. There's really no difference between actively dieting or actively "not dieting." Seems strange, but stay with me... it's true. The root of both of these is fear.

Dieting is the fear of being fat, getting fatter, not being accepted - ultimately, it's the fear of dying. Actively NOT dieting on the other hand is simply a denial, and it's the fear of failure and rejection (accept me as I am!) Ultimately it's the fear of the self, of finding who is underneath it all, of discovering what's hidden. (Which is ironic, since the fat acceptance movement is all about loving "what is." Really, it's nothing but loving the denial...)

Okay, I know that sounds harsh. It probably is. But both camps seem to be missing something, don't they? They're at extremes. Which is a famous marker of those who are addicts. Addicts love extremes. Are you a dieter? Then you're going to diet, you may lose weight, but ultimately, you're going to fail. Because diets don't deal with the root cause of your addiction (your fear). It will return once you've stopped "dieting." Are you a non-dieter? Someone who insists diets don't work, I'll never be thin, I'm genetically pre-disposed to be like this, and you should accept me as I am? Then you've simply stuck dug heels in, turned your head, and are denying what's coming. It doesn't make you any less afraid, underneath. It doesn't make death any less imminent.

Nothing does.

And that's the truth that both extremes seem to miss. Neither path leads anywhere different. They're both going to the same place. Different paths, same destination. Which makes them both look sort of silly. Restricting your calories to the point of pain, spending hours on an exercise bike, becoming obsessive about the numbers on the scale... What sense does it make? Or the opposite, living in denial acceptance... how different is that than a heroin addict saying, "I can't change who I am, I can't stop what I'm doing, so you're going to just have to make heroin legal and accept my addiction... until I'm dead."

What kind of life do either of those make? The pain and suffering remain. Maybe those who follow the fat acceptance belief are a little happier than the constant dieters, if they can come to some sort of self-acceptance. Maybe. But on the surface, it's still a denial, and underneath, the pain and the addiction still exist. It doesn't go away simply because you say you don't want to see it anymore.

There has to be a way to live life in between these two extremes, where weight loss and a healthy body image is possible, where activity doesn't have to mean mindless hours on some machine, where food doesn't have to be a constant battleground or a complete denial. That's what I long for. A life that isn't about "diet," but that doesn't exist in denial either. Not the Weight Watchers version of a lifestyle change, where you count food points and exercise points, and not the fat acceptance journey which seems simply deny the pain of addiction.

I want a life that's about living... not one that's a denial or fear of death. I want a life that is joyous, moment to moment. I don't expect pain to disappear, but I'm tired of covering it up, stuffing it, hiding it, swallowing it. I'm tired of swallowing all of my emotion or drowning it in food instead of feeling it, painful or not. And yes, I'm still afraid of what's under there, too. It's big, it's lurking, and it's been buried under carbs for the past thirty-something years. And I think it's mad.

But there comes a point... there has to come a point. As Anais Nin once said, "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." I'm praying to come to that point. I'm not there yet, I know, and it's frustrating and painful to feel it, to want it, and not be able to access or reach it. But it is good to know that place exists... that there is a solution that doesn't involve surgery or diets or denial.

Time For a Cat Nap

Okay, are we all so enamored with the bio-medical model of the universe that we really believe this crap?

Honestly, if I could sleep my way to thinness… I’d be ninety-nine pounds by now! I sleep ten hours a night. And can sleep twelve if I want to. And could STILL take a nap mid-afternoon - no problem. Harley says I’m part cat. And considering my general aloofness, dislike of water, and sharp claws, I tend to think he’s right.

Meow.

Well I’m off to make a Banana Split cake. And a Nieman Marcus cake. And Jello. And our Christmas cookies for Santa.

Then, I think, I’ll take a nap!

Shrunk

My new jeans shrank.

Dryers are evil.

I don't want to entertain the thought that I've gained any weight. I've decided I'm not stepping on a scale until after the New Year. That's my Merry Christmas gift to me. Not a denial, not an avoidance... just a break from the stress of the numbers.

Of course, my jeans have decided to remind me anyway. Grr.

Denim sucks.

Toto, We're Not In Kansas Anymore...

This whole "diet" thing is messing with my head. Not that it hasn't been messing with my head for years. Since before I can remember, really. Has it become such a complete part of my psyche that I'm never going to be able to get rid of it? I hope not... but I can't seem to get the mentality out of my mind, no matter what I do.

Diets are based on scarcity, restriction, and deprivation. They talk about accountability to some authority that isn't your own. They want you to spend your life counting, recording, writing it all down. It's all about the numbers, the scales, weighing and measuring, counting steps, counting calories, counting the minutes until you die...

Is this really the way I want to live?

I seem to exist in two states: dieting and waiting to diet. Dieting doesn't last very long, I admit. A few weeks. Months at most. I certainly haven't ever done it long enough to call it a "way of life" or a "lifestyle." Most of my time has been spent dreading the upcoming diet, shoving all those "forbidden" foods into my mouth I know I can't have when I'm dieting, and hoping that I'll get some fabled call from the governor at the last moment, saving me from the electric chair Monday - diet day.

I've done all sorts of "diets." I've paid lots of money to be weighed and measured, to weigh and measure my food, to listen to skinny folks who used to be fat talk about how they did it, one celery stick at a time. I've eaten loads of processed crap that didn't taste much better than the box they came in. Eventually, even Twiggy would get sick of miniature portions of freeze dried broccoli and salisbury steak.

I know what a "diet" is, I know what it feels like, I know what it looks like. I know what waiting to diet feels like - the sense of impending doom, the voracious journey toward restriction, the guilt and denial and avoidance. Is there a middle ground somewhere, or am I looking for the fairy tale? Is there a yellow brick road I'm missing?

This morning I watched Valerie Bertinelli get all choked up on my television and tell me that for the first time, she was going to wake up on New Year's day and not make a resolution to lose weight - because she already had. "That could be you next year!" she tearfully insisted. "So call now!" (And while you're at it, will someone please drop a house on Jenny Craig?) I thought, hmmm... I wonder if Valerie's going to be fat again next January, or if she's going to keep up with the whole "diet" thing? Is she going to still be eating red boxes full of fake food next year? And come to think of it... why is it we never see Jenny Craig? Is it because she got fat again, I wonder, after years of depriving herself?

Not to pick on Jenny. She doesn't corner the market on diets or anything - (not that she doesn't want to.) She's got lots of competition from Florine, Suzanne Somers (and whatever happened to poor Susan Powter who wanted us to all stop the insanity by signing on to her version of it? Did she get fat again? No, wait, I wiki-ed her... she's still around!) Jillian Michaels, and Denise Austin. And not to be outdone by the women, there are endless rows of doctors - from Atkins to Ornish - out there pimping their programs, too. And let's not forget Ho-prah's protege, Bob Greene, doing his thang. And poor Richard Simmons - one of the few I think who are truly sincere. And don't forget all those programs not necessarily associated with a face, like Medifast, Nutrisystem, Slimfast, South Beach, the Cavemen... etc. etc. etc.

A diet is a diet is a diet is a diet...

Unless it claims it isn't?

Ha. Right.

That rationalization works... until you fall off the wagon and you're not doing the program anymore. I was reading Cranky Fitness yesterday, who referred to Sarah and Weetabix at Elastic Waist debating about Weight Watchers' new claim that they're "not a diet."

Huh?

I'm sorry, that must be my bad ear, what did you say?

Weight Watchers isn't a diet?

Feh! Right.

And George Bush isn't an idiot...

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck - it's a big, fat duck.

Do you know how many people I know who have joined Weight Watchers and lost weight... and then gone off it and gained it back... and joined again and lost weight... and gone off it and gained it back...? Lather, rinse, repeat. This isn't a permanent solution any more than the others. It's designed to do one thing, and one thing only: make a profit. That's the bottom line with any of these diets. In fact, I'd venture to say WW makes a majority of its profit from re-joiners, not first time members. I could be wrong - but I bet I'm not.

I'm tired of diets... even those that claim they aren't what they really are. I don't want to buy or eat another box of crappy, overpriced, processed food. Why should I trust some outer authority to tell me what to do, how to do it, and what quantities I'm allowed to do it in? How is that any different than the rest of the sheeple yo-yo-ing up and down the diet scale and paying big bucks for the privilege?

I want to wipe the slate completely clean and start from scratch. Is there a deprogramming program for the diet programs we've been fed over the years? How do I get out of this maze of dead ends? Can I click my heels together and say "There's no place like home?"

Have I had the power all along, Dorothy?

Because when you let go of the idea of relying on someone else's authority... you have nothing but your own. Now that's some serious responsibility. And some serious independence.