For years, my excuse for continuing dieting was that “I had to”.

“I have to be healthy”.

I believed freedom just wasn’t in the cards for me. I knew too much about polyunsaturated fats. I knew too much about how all our food was slowly killing us. And my hormones are messed up. I HAVE to figure out this diet thing. It’s really important.

And so I kept putting off living. Because I thought I would finally let myself live once I’d finally figured out the perfect diet.

And also, y’know, I have to be healthy. Eating what I want will make me unhealthy. I KNOW sugar is unhealthy. I KNOW gluten is probably killing us all. I KNOW TOO MUCH.

Guess what:

…you don’t actually know what you think you know.

The things we think know about diets, the things we think we know about how horrible nearly every kind of food is, the things we think we know about obesity, weight, health, beauty and worth… for the most part those things are actually …wrong.

They were learned. Skewed “facts” that are perpetuated by an industry that is now spewing information as if it were law. “sugar is bad. diets are good. weight is bad. thin is good.”

But just like they were wrong about wheaties being the healthiest food, and wrong about low fat being the way, and wrong about thinking that arsenic was a health tonic… they’re wrong about diets and health now, too.

We diet rebels are slightly ahead of the curve here. But I really do think that in… 50 years (hopefully), the world will swing around. I really do.

So do yourself a favor, please. Read Health at Every Size. Read In Defense of Sugar. Empower yourself with the other side. Empower yourself with new information way closer to the truth.

The information we are being fed is not the whole story. In fact, it’s an incorrect story.

And you deserve better.

Become a rebel. Join us. Learn more.

If you are putting off the fuck it diet because you are afraid it’s not healthy, be willing to reconsider.

(Read Health at Every Size. Read In Defense of Sugar!)

I realized that I feel really, really ugly without makeup. And that is bullshit.

And even if I were ‘really ugly’ without makeup, that is ok.

But being “ugly”, and feeling ugly are two different things. In fact, being inherently ugly doesn’t need to even exist if we are realizing that beauty standards are subjective and morph and change through time, and from culture to culture.

Feeling ugly also doesn’t need to exist. But it does. And I want to eradicate it.

I have nothing against makeup. It is fine. It is great, even. Anyone should wear it, whenever and however they want and choose. Ideally organic makeup because that’s better for us all, but hey, I actually use waterproof mascara every day, and I don’t wash my face, and every morning I wake up with black stains under my eyes, so do as I say, not as I do.

But, makeup-wearing-wise, I want to choose. I want to wear it because I want to. I want to wear it because I am choosing to, not because I have come to default believe that I am disgusting without it.

And so, I will go around the city with bald, tired eyes, with my dark circles and straight eyelashes, and lip-colored lips. I will let my newish weird small burst blood vessel on my cheek breathe air (until I make a dermatologist appointment and have them zap it with their magical powers.)

I intend to become fully ok with looking in your eyes and ‘not looking my best’. Walking down the street smiling and not looking my best. Or walking down the street and not smiling cause, shut up.

There is nothing wrong with looking your best.

But there is also nothing wrong with not looking your best.

Do you understand me?

This is my new frontier, I will not attempt to make my face better than it inherently is on a daily basis, for the rest of July and maybe beyond. And I will get used to my eyes looking tired if they are tired, and to start to realize, myself, that this is what worthy people look like and feel like, too.

 

(This post is an excerpt from my personal site/comedy blog where I am trying to write every morning as a fun experiment this July. Read original, longer post.)

“What is the other side of this food thing like? What am I going towards while I’m trying to normalize food?”

I get asked this question often enough, so I’m going to tell you what it is like now for me.

For background, I have been obsessed with food since I can remember. At friend’s houses as a child, all I wanted to do was eat their snacks.

Then from 14-24, I dieted. Hard.

Bingeing. Repenting. Bingeing. Repenting. I thought my body was disgusting, and that my weight was the reason for all of my misery. I hated warm weather because it meant that I was supposed to wear shorts. I was constantly aware of what my body looked like, and what everyone else’s body looked like. And every time I couldn’t stay on a diet, I felt like the biggest, laziest, failure in the world.

I had dreams of my future when I would be very beautiful, skinny, blonde, and successfully only eat avocados.

I saw my entire life through the lens of weight. I saw the whole world through the lens of my weight. I can tell you about every period of my life from 14-24 based on what I weighed and what food I was eating (and bingeing on.)

Atkins, South Beach, a diet where I only ate shellfish and binged on jars of almond butter, the blood type diet, raw-veganism, the french women barely eat at all diet (which was a very caffeine and wine-heavy diet), GAPS, and Paleo.

I was a self-proclaimed food addict. And really, I was, because that is what restriction does to you. It was all I thought about.

I thought that people who said they “forgot to eat” were lying. Or anorexic. Because that is what I would have to be to “forget to eat”.

96% of every thought I had was about food and my weight.

Fast forward 3 years through allowing myself to gain whatever weight I would, eating anything and everything that I wanted, having a very strong sense that deep down I was helping my metabolism and health even though nearly every mainstream source of diet advice said otherwise, buying all new, bigger clothes, eating sooooo much granola in cream (like cereal in milk, only… denser), eating ice cream every night (that is why my pen name is Caroline Haagen.), becoming a fat activist and Health at Every Size activist, and going through some pretty transformative, nearly coincidentally-timed creative recovery: finding a much stronger sense of worth and self, both unconditionally, and based in the things I now care about, do, and create (as opposed to weight, looks and perfectionism).

And now…

I genuinely don’t think about food anymore. Only when I’m hungry. And I can go many hours not thinking about food at all and them bam, “oh man, I need to eat.” (During the recovery, while I was initially allowing, I thought about food a lot. You have to, it is all part of it.)

But I am now one of those people who forgets about food because it is not a big deal at all anymore, and I am genuinely more excited by the other things I am doing or thinking about. (God I thought those people were SO ANNOYING before!)

I know I will eat whenever and whatever I want. And I know that, at this point, no matter what I eat, my weight stays the same. And, if it changes, I’m pretty damn accepting of that, too. The only actual caveat is the money spent on new clothes.

I am still a food snob. Meaning: I want the best stuff, because it tastes better and makes me feel better. But I eat what’s there if I am out and hungry.

I often find that I eat less during the day, and eat a lot at night, just because it is easier.

I still often eat right before I go to bed.

Last year right around this time, I gained some weight, maybe 5 lbs, I don’t know because I didn’t weigh myself. It was the first time I said, “Eh, this is either how I am now, or it’ll pass.” I didn’t change one thing I was doing, and the weight came off again naturally during the summer.

Since then, my weight hasn’t changed much.

I recently had to buy all smaller pants, realizing the ones I bought during my recovery are all too baggy looking now. I am fully aware that next year they might not fit again. I can buy all new clothes if that happens. That’s what Old Navy is forrrrrrr.

During the recovery I would sometimes count up calories to see if I’d eaten enough, I tried to get to at least 2500-3000, because anything less than that I was really hungry. I don’t do that anymore, ever.

Sometimes I’ll step on a friend’s scale in their bathroom, and revel at how the number means nothing to me.

I don’t exercise formally. Sometimes yoga, lots of walking (I live in NYC). I actually crave it and want to add in something more regular to move and stretch my body. Who knows if and when I will.

I do not intensely focus on – or meditate on – my food while I am eating. And, the entire time I was recovering I didn’t either. I followed the motto: “Eating should be easy.” I was sick of the rules of intuitive eating. You don’t really have to focus on it, your body WILL tell you when you’re finished. I ONLY focused on it in the beginning when I was in “binge-y” modes, I sat down and ate it slowly allowing as much as I wanted and enjoyed it (“feasting”), but that passed in a few months because I allowed it.

I eat a lot of smoothies recently because it is an easy way to get a lot of calories in quickly. …Imagine that.

What did I eat today? Today has been a weird day of traveling for me. I hesitate to mention what I ate in case it seems like some kind of manifesto, or whether people think I am trying to tell them I am “doing it right.” No. There is not right way to eat, ever. It just is what it is.

I was home with my parents to go with my mom to my cousin’s bridal shower. I woke up, drank coffee and cream (I always do) while I talked to my dad. My mom and I stopped by another coffee shop on the way to the party so she could get her coffee, I got a banana and we split a quiche in the car. At the party I had a some mimosas (this is not a normal day for me…), ham, pasta, chicken salad sandwich, salad. I remember I ate a bite of another piece of bread but it was weird and sweet and I was already full. And later, cake.

A few hours later I ate chicken as my dad drove me into the city to stay with my friends tonight, I just went to the drug store and bought a toothbrush and some snacks for the night: popcorn, yogurt, green smoothie, chocolate. As I type this, I am realizing I didn’t really eat a real dinner, so I’ll probably remedy on my way to my drummer friend’s house to record a jingle for a jingle contest she is entering.

That was my day of food.

Also, I’m wearing shorts right now.

Food is just food now. Delicious, nourishing, sometimes shitty, usually wonderful, sometimes I forget about it, sometimes I probably eat 3,000 calories in one sitting, food.

I’m going to go find some dinner somewhere on my walk.

Rememberrrrrr, Fuck It.