I started this blog last year, thinking it would be a sort of recipe archive. It was fun for a while, then got abandoned when I started (sporadically) writing about food on Examiner.com.
Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking a lot. About food. About weight. Really I’ve been thinking about these, fairly continuously, since puberty, but lately it’s had a new flavor.
Here are some of the thoughts that have been tumbling around:
Food has moral significance. Our food choices say a lot about who we are. I choose to be a vegetarian, but not a vegan. I choose to eat local and organic food some of the time, but not always. These are compromises I’ve arrived at, and they may well be temporary ones. The way I eat, and the way I spend money on food, are meaningful to who I am as a person.
Weight does not have moral significance. Before I try to explain, I should admit that I don’t always believe this. Intellectually I usually do. Emotionally I really want to, but don’t. So many negative traits have been stapled onto my idea of weight, so I struggle to think about it in isolation at all. But if you do, you strip those away the connotations of laziness or selfishness or refusal/inability to conform, and all that’s left are numbers, there’s clearly no moral value there. 5 pounds does not equal 5 years in purgatory. It just doesn’t. Those 5 pounds may or may not have an impact on my health or my appearance, but they certainly don’t impact my value as a person.
There’s so much more. So much has already been said by others – in books and blogs and workshops, etc, etc. For months I’ve been slowly absorbing it, turning it over, believing some parts on some days, other parts on others.
What I do know is that I don’t want to spend my whole life thinking about this. I think there are bigger things, but I need to get through this first.
I hate that I care so much. I hate that I need to convince myself that it’s ok to continue with my life in spite of my weight today, in spite of the prospect of gaining more in the future. But there it is. And pretending it isn’t a problem clearly hasn’t been working so far.
There it is.
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