let go of the diet mentality

But right now it’s not a priority… let’s see when i settle down again.

I know it may sound a bit contradictory, but… yes, I’m on a diet. And a strict one, for that matter.
The funny thing is that the goal of this diet is not losing weight, nor is health-related. Well, in a sense it is, but nothing implying cholesterol or such things.

It’s a sort of cognitive experiment, depriving myself of food to trigger some reactions, and then watch them.

Reactions so far: I started cooking like an army of Italian grandmothers, and I’m feeling something closely resembling to fury. Like, watch-out-people raging fury.
I’m really looking forward to the results of the experiment. If I (and those around me) survive it, that is.

• Getting rid of the scale (check)
  I haven’t used a scale in months. In the meanwhile I’ve been eating according to my cravings (both physical and emotional), led a very sedentary life (work, work, work: ie PC, PC, PC), and momentarily gave up every type of exercise (too tired to even think about it).
  When I stepped on the scale a couple of weeks ago I had lost two pounds. Of course this is not the lifestyle I’m advocating for myself or others, but getting rid of the scale was a huge step in overcoming food obsession, helping my body getting the real hunger cues (“I need some heavily dressed pasta today”, or “I need a salad”). And I can start telling the difference now between real hunger and emotional hunger. I’m very glad.

• Improving body image (on progress)
  This is going to be tough stuff. It’s such a vast area and the whole issue looks really overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like I could give up on the whole thing, feel fat for the rest of my days, and stop trying to even argue with people (the vast majority) and, of course, myself. I’ve tried some exercises found on books or on the web, but consistency’s not my main virtue. Next step is bringing the issue to therapy—we already talked about it, but evidently enough all my beautiful theories still have to sink in.

I was angry and disgusted at an entry I found on 43T, about someone wanting their kid to lose weight. Everything was nicely put, the concept of “wanting” was expressed with the term “helping”, and everything was about being healthy and having healthy habits and love and compassion and rules. Tons of cheers. Goose bumps.

I was about to scream, so I didn’t reply, because this is really about my own anger. It wouldn’t be much help if I showed up with an attitude. Not much help for this parent, the kid, many kids I’ve met in my life, and my child self as well, who’s screaming “let us alone!”. But what I read was something sadly familiar. I look at that kid’s face and wish him love and compassion whatever weight or shape he’s going to take. Wish I could help him now, though, and that makes me sad. Talking about projection.

... that I couldn’t find even one slightly similar goal on this site.
The fact that the all time most popular goal on 43T is “lose weight” should be telling enough, I guess.

Anyway, just an excerpt from a book I’m reading now:

This book is about women who lost their souls by becoming estranged from their passions, their truths, and their voices. It’s about women who have strayed far from their paths and have gotten onto journeys that have no soul and no ending—a circular path that gets them nowhere. It keeps them locked in a destructive pattern and there is no way to reach any place of power or forward movement. This is a familiar place for women in our culture since women have been stuck there for many, many years. Women who are struggling with weight and food issues stand at the threshold of an emerging new vision of what it means to be a woman in the twenty-first century. And as long as the issue of weight is treated as purely a behavioural issue, isolated from the cultural and spiritual oppression of women, it will never be healed and our society will never evolve from this dysfunctional place.
—Carol Emmery Normandi and Laurelee Roark

I’d love to share views on this. With men and women. Because it’s true that pression is just way harder on women, but this ever stronger attempt to destroy any sense of self-worth, by inducing the false belief that we are in control of our lives when we control our weight, is affecting an ever growing number of men as well.