I'd like to eat normally.
But with all the "tips for health," diet strategies, forbidden foods and weight loss prescriptions, I have no idea what normal is. But I am to find out.
I’ve come across some statistics. According to the National Association for Eating Disorders:
•46% of 9-11 year-olds are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets, as are 82 percent of their families.
•91 percent of girls on a college campus had dieted.
•95 percent of all dieters will regain their lost weight in 1-5 years and those who diet frequently are 12 times as likely to binge as those who don’t diet.
Dieting is not normal eating. And eating disorders experts will tell me, dieting is unhealthy, certainly for a person like me with a history of anorexia nervosa.
<strong>So what IS Normal Eating?</strong>
Dietician Ellen Satter takes a stab at the question in her book, Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family
Normal eating is:
•Being able to eat when hungry and continue eating until satisfied.
•Leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have them again tomorrow.
•Aiming for happiness rather than thinness.
For me, normal means trying lamb at a cookout because, as a vegetarian, I haven’t allowed myself to eat meat in over 20 years. Normal is partaking of a meal with my boyfriend and his French friends, not thinking about the health value or fat content of the spread before us. Just enjoying the good food and good people. Normal means enjoying that food so much I eat until I feel stuffed -- because I I know that I can tolerate that feeling. And understanding that the bathroom scale never measures my worth.
For you, "normal" will be just as personal. You know your habits. Terry Bravender, M.D., director of Duke University’s Eating Disorders program, tells me that, at it’s core, eating normally means breaking a moral code as in: I should eat only “good” foods like spinach and stop eating “bad” foods like Haagen Dazs Double Chocolate. All foods are good, sometimes, in the right proportions for you.
We know how to do this. As toddlers, we never thought to say, “I was so bad today,” because we ate two chocolate brownies. We knew instinctively how to eat, based on our body’s cues for hunger and fullness. But then, we grew up into a culture of “Losing 10 Pounds: the Gateway to a New You.” Most of us tried the diet and exercise schemes. Some of us went overboard. And we lost the best relationship, the one between our plates and ourselves.
But we can find normal again, like an old friend. A good start is to tune out the advertisements and tune into our own bodies. They will bring us true happiness. But only if we’re willing to listen.
