Do
Better
“Try
to do a little better. Try to be nicer to yourself and to your body. That’s
all.”
Anne
Lamott (Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, p.147; Riverhead Books, 2018)
Going
into the holidays, one of our major worries is how much weight we will gain,
especially after being at home and without gyms for almost a year. I’m speaking
for myself, of course. Because it’s winter and the weather is often more nasty
than nice, I tend to slack off on exercise, and being inside all the time puts
food constantly at my fingertips. It is a dangerous combination for me, and I’ll
bet it is for most of you. In Anne Lamott’s book, Almost Everything,
Chapter 11 is titled “Food.” It’s all about her relationship to her body
and to weight. It’s worth reading.
This is
Anne Lamott’s advice: “Just try to do a little better.” She does not recommend
any of the traditional diets, and I have to say, neither do I, with the caveat that
I am neither a nutritionist nor a dietician. I just know what works for me when
I put on extra pounds. I have watched my friends struggle with weight and go
from diet to diet. This seems to be the pattern: diet—lose weight—gain weight
back plus some—diet. It’s a never-ending hamster wheel of expectation, disappointment and shame.
After decades of Deepak,
Weil, Oz, Atkins, and Simmons, we all know what constitutes a healthy lifestyle
and what does not. Healthy involves eating and drinking in moderation,
exercising in moderation daily, and a diet made up mostly of fruits and
vegetables. Not gluten free, not carb-starving, not keto-inducing, not paleo—just
common-sense. That’s it. One of the things that makes it difficult for
Americans to lose weight, or to keep from gaining weight, is an essentially sedentary
lifestyle. In most other countries, people walk wherever they go. Their
transportation is their feet. Because we are so spread out and for the most
part have lousy public transportation, we keep a car twenty steps from the
front door and we use it for everything. I know I’m stating the obvious, but
there’s no magic pill on this and crash diets only work short-term.
Instead of hating our
bodies and putting ourselves through the torture of excessive deprivation, let’s
just agree to do a little bit better each day. Cut back on portions and make
dessert a bite of something sweet instead of a box of cookies or a molten lava
cake. Don’t have second helpings and keep it to one glass of wine. I find using
lunch-sized plates helps me to keep the portions smaller without depriving
myself of a bite of everything.
Most of all, we need to
love and appreciate our amazing bodies. Can you imagine what would happen to a
child who was excoriated and shamed as much as we shame ourselves for gaining a
pound? We would never do that to a child because it would warp them for life!
So, let’s stop doing it to ourselves. Let’s adopt Anne Lamott’s advice: Just
try to do a little better today.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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