Guilt

If you’ve ever been overweight — especially if you’ve been extremely overweight — you’re probably familiar with guilt.  It has probably been your constant companion at times.  I know it has for me.

The guilt has taken various forms over the years.  When I was single, it was more of a self-loathing guilt, the kind that says, “It’s your fault no girl will ever find you attractive.”  As a teenager, it was, “There’s no one to blame but yourself that you’re not popular.”  (The saddest thing is, I actually was popular, but I didn’t know it.)  The worst, though, was as a husband and father.  As my weight crept up closer and closer to 400, everything I ate was accompanied by guilt.  The better it tasted, the guiltier I felt.

It was a bitter irony.  I was fat because I enjoy food too much, but I was never less happy than when I was eating delicious garbage.  Each bite was accompanied by a keen awareness of what I was doing to my body, and by extension to my wife and kids.

That’s no way to live.  But guilt and food are inseparably connected.  You see it all the time on magazine covers at the grocery store — “25 guilt-free holiday recipes!” etc. — the implication being that you always have to feel guilty for eating things that taste good.

Here is my declaration: there is nothing wrong with delicious food.  No matter how unhealthy something is, there is nothing inherently wrong with it.  Think of the most delicious, decadent, unhealthy dessert you’ve ever had, and tell me if this isn’t true: eating that dessert one time will not have any long-lasting negative effect on you.  It just won’t.

So let’s get that out of our systems right now.  Food itself is not bad.  People are not bad for eating food.

The problem is how much, how often.  Whatever dessert you thought of two paragraphs ago, if you eat that every night, you will not be healthy.

The key is moderation.  Unfortunately, if you’re anything like me, you got fat because you suck at moderation.  It’s like a baseball coach telling a mediocre hitter, as he comes to the plate against a great pitcher, “Just go up there, swing the bat, and hit the ball over the fence.  No biggie.”  “Eat yummy, unhealthy stuff in moderation” is pretty much the definition of easier-said-than-done.

But here’s my second declaration: moderation sure is easier than cold-turkey quitting.  As I’ve said before, I used to think the only way I would ever lose weight was if I stopped eating ice cream forever, and that thought literally filled me with hopelessness.  Partly because I knew I couldn’t do it, and partly because I didn’t even want to.  When I discovered a plan that allows me to eat ice cream every Saturday, I realized that I could actually be successful.

For me, moderation doesn’t mean, “Just eat a little bit.”  It means, “Eat as much as you want, but only once in a while.”  And when I do that, when the delicious foods I love are eaten within the parameters of the plan that is working wonders in my life, voila!  The guilt is gone.  These foods, the ones that made me miserable as they made me fat, are now part of the plan, and it’s a wonderful feeling to be able to eat guilt free.