Weight Watchers Core: Mom's Old Skool Diet

Weight Watchers Core plan is still the way I believe our bodies were meant to be fed. Whole, natural foods, a diet not centered on white flour and sugar. But our culture here in America, centered around consumerism, keeps pressing on us foods that are cheap to produce and have an extremely long shelf life.

This interesting TEDtalk on diet and lifestyle choices by Dean Ornish in 2006 gives me the same old feelings of guilt and shame; my own lack of willpower is the problem. If I would just eat this diet and exercise regularly, my body would thrive, heal itself.

A comment featured under the video makes a point I find interesting. Fiora Alite said:

This talk doesn't deal honestly with what I think is the fundamental barrier to healthy living and eating. When copious high fat food is readily available despite a sedentary lifestyle, how can you fight years of cognitive evolution that tells us to enjoy fat immensely?

I've often thought something similar. I think fat isn't the biggest source of evil in the American diet, but that white flours and sugars are worse. But I take her point.

Am I just being a spoiled American wanting to blame my laziness and lack of self-discipline on the food industry and the power of advertising?

• 1979. Cholesterol is identified as the culprit for heart disease. Eggs are declared bad for you. Eggs?!
• 1990. Fat-free everything starts to appear on the shelves. Fat-free cookies, though a tempting idea, seem like a really bad idea to this dieter. Fat-free cream cheese and butter, hmm, they don't appear to be related to real food in any way.
• 1997. Coworkers on Atkins begin to drop weight, fairly readily. They have bad breath; I remember that ketosis thing from the liquid protein diet I followed in the late 1970s, but instead of fasting and drinking only disgusting liquid made from rawhides, they're having bacon and caesar salads. I know the body is an amazing thing, and it will heal itself if given the opportunity. Is that what is happening to the people on Atkins? People are so terrified that Atkins dieters will drop dead from all the fat and cholesterol. Some of my health-savvy friends adopt an Atkinsesque diet. Hmm.
• 2004. Weight Watchers Core plan introduced. I get excited and adopt it, it resonates as the right way to eat. I do well on the plan in the first flush, when I make time to plan meals, shop, attend WW meetings, cook and exercise.
• 2004, later. I run up against my own overextended lifestyle. I fail to make enough time in my days for planning, shopping, attending meetings, cooking and exercising. I feel guilty. The only thing I feel I have time for is eating convenience foods. I notice that other overextended people - the ones who step up and do for others - are often the most overweight.
• Yesterday. I find myself remembering what I ate when I was growing up. My Mom was one of those Home Ec majors who dropped out of college when she got her Mrs. degree, and she had studied nutrition. We ate bacon and eggs, red meat, fried chicken. I used to think Mom was fat, but compared with today's standards, she was not "clinically obese" -- probably a size 12 or 14, a size I'd love to be again right now. I experiment with fixing my family some of the old Mom favorites; chicken and dumplings, steak, mashed potatoes and salad. This food comforts me, my panicky food obsession fades back a bit.
• Today. After a few months just not worrying about diet, eating what I seem to want, when I want, I'm amazed to find that my weight has remained stable. When I was trying hard on the diet, my weight was stable. I stop trying, and it has remained stable. I'm beginning to feel that familiar feeling of being ripped off.

So - what I do know is:

• Being in the panicky, obsessive place about food isn't healthy.
• Eating more whole, unprocessed foods is healthy.
• I need to make space in my life for things like planning, cooking and recreating. When I'm emotionally healthy, I get into a wonderful positive feedback loop of happiness and balance.

I find a lot of inspiration in Caroline Myss's Self Esteem series, also Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. They both take TIME to do. But I need to make time for them. "Not making time for this" is my big sin, I believe. I take on anything and everything but the stuff that pertains to JUST ME.

So maybe what I need to go on a DIET for is, limiting my commitments. Stop believing the myth that I can have it all, and there's no price to pay for not setting limits, either on my food or other people's expectations and demands of me. A time diet, if you will. Only so much of my time promised to others. Only so much for work, so much for Mothering, so much for Wife. And leave more time for me and my own agenda.