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Mega yum.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Last week, I went to Re/Dress NYC (a plus size vintage clothing store here in New York City, a/k/a the happiest place on Earth) to finally use up my massive store credit.  I parked my car around the corner from the shop and noticed an Atomic Wings down the block.

Mmm, Atomic Wings.

I was clearly, clearly, quite hungry.  It was nearly 4PM, I hadn’t had lunch, and I was spacey from having just had acupuncture.  I knew I should eat something, but my brain was in shopping-induced override mode.  I just wanted to pick out some stuff, spend a little time with the Re/Dress shop gals, and get back to my apartment before the traffic got weird.

But my stomach had other plans.

As I tried on fabulous dress after fabulous dress in Re/Dress’s fabulously huge dressing rooms, I could hear my stomach growling.  In a moment of clothing indecision, I stepped out to chat with shopgirl extraordinaire, Bevin, who also had not eaten lunch.  She asked me, somewhat rhetorically, what she should have for lunch.  Almost before she could finish her sentence, I blurted, “Wings!”

But Bevin didn’t feel like getting wings.  She actually wanted a salad, so she got one.  And I, eventually, purchased my awesome Re/Dress clothes, put them in the trunk of my car, and hightailed it over to Atomic Wings.  Because that’s what I truly wanted.

And let me tell you, eating those wings was so incredibly satisfying.  I sat there by myself, chilled out, looked out the window, used way too many napkins, took my time, savored every bite, breathed, enjoyed. When I left, I felt just the right level of full.  To be honest, the new dresses and honey mustard wings combination is rather satisfying all around.

Which brings me to my point.  What if there had been a blip on the time-space continuum and my old, dieting self had talked with Bevin about lunch?  Probably, the minute she mentioned salad, I would have felt really guilty.  I probably would have counted up the Weight Watcher’s points or calories value of the wings, decided the wings weren’t on my plan, and gotten a salad after I finished shopping.

What’s so bad about that, you might ask?

Punishment of Tantalus, Gioacchino Assereto (1600 - 1649)

Well, because I didn’t freaking want the salad.  I wanted the wings.  And I probably would have gotten the salad and not felt satisfied.  I probably would have gotten home, felt sort of annoyed, and would have started looking for some low calorie, highly processed thing that I was “allowed” to eat, all the while feeling extremely frustrated at my choices. Later that night, I would dream that my apartment had turned into an Atomic Wings joint where the wings were just out of reach, as if I were Tantalus.*

And beyond that, I would have had the message hammered into my brain, once again, that I couldn’t have what I wanted to have.  I would get the message again that other people were allowed to have the things that I wanted, but that I wasn’t because I’m me, a horrendously temporary size 14/16 who could almost pass for “normal” and had to watch every morsel of food if she wanted to stay that way.

This is just one of the 87 million reasons why dieting is so dangerous.  It reinforces the message that you can never have what you want.  Once that message becomes truth to you, it naturally seeps into other areas of your life, from relationships to career and beyond.

So the next time you find yourself torn between what you want to eat and what you “should” eat, experiment with eating what you want to eat.  My only request is that you try to savor it and affirm to yourself that you are willing to give yourself what you want. See what effect this has on your food choices and your enjoyment of what you eat.

*I really did have dreams like this when I was dieting.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. To learn more about Golda and her work, click here.