4 YO-YO SKILLS

It’s a math problem as old as time. If I eat three pounds of chocolate cake today, how does it become ten pounds on my body tomorrow? There has to be a biology class that I missed somewhere along the way. You know, I was a Bible college dropout, so maybe that’s where I was supposed to learn that lesson. Oh, wait, we didn’t learn science there, only creation.

Do you want to know how long it takes to lose eighty pounds of baby weight? I would like to know, too! I have been whittling away at these stubborn last few pounds since 2006, when my second child was born. And gosh, I am tired of whittling. My hands are stiff, my knife needs sharpening, and my spine is tired of being hunched over. I am about one diet away from trying crack. You?

When we were kids in the ’80s and ’90s, we learned about food in a pyramid. Eat a lot of the good stuff but only a little of that triangle at the top—the candy, soda, cake. Perhaps that food pyramid was all wrong, because I have been hanging out here at the bottom with all the bread and pasta, thinking that I am a real winner—me and Oprah. Then the jeans don’t fit, and I am back to black coffee and MiraLAX.

Now they say that the whole food pyramid is wrong. A whole generation of people are left out here wandering the grocery aisles. In 2020, I am so confused. I don’t know if milk is good for us or if it’s going to rot my intestines. Am I supposed to be fermenting my own kombucha now? My family comes from a long line of bootleggers, so the fermenting work should come natural to me. Wheat or no? Is fake sugar going to kill me? Should I just go straight juice all the time even if I start losing my hair? What about eggs, yay or nay? We all know guac is “good” fat, but too much gives you gout. Eat grapefruit for breakfast, drink cold water when you first wake up, shoot apple cider vinegar. Someone just please wake me up when potatoes make a comeback. For the love. No wonder we are all fat. We are just trying to keep up. We are just trying to get food on the table to feed our babies and bellies.

One thing that has changed since we were kids is the amount of food choices we have. Good Lord above. When I was growing up, there was one fast-food joint, and it came with a playground so that you burned calories while you ate. Or you would get salmonella from the ball pit, and that would help you keep your weight in check. There were no super-size options. There were no double burgers with bacon. My mom wouldn’t even let me get fries. Just a burger. Why do you think I snuck bologna sandwiches at midnight? Now we have 7,437,983 types of chips in the supermarket and any type of cuisine you want, ridden with salt and butter, delivered to your front door. Look, I haven’t cooked a thing in eight months, and I may never have to cook again. Praises.

Now Amazon is delivering food with drones. Next, I will be able to hire a tall, handsome man named Enrique to bring me dinner and feed it to me and tell me I am pretty while I lie on the couch. Can this please be my new reality? We can get what we want, how we want it, and when we want it. Totally healthy. Can I get chips and queso delivered at midnight when I’m already changed into my pajamas? Is late queso delivery a thing? If not, it totally should be. My friend lives in a college town that has a cookie delivery company that delivers warm cookies until three A.M. Look, I know that delivery service is catering to college kids who are staying up late cramming for finals, but I am a tired mom who binge-watches Sister Wives late at night like I am going to be tested on it. Just leave the queso on the doorstep and move along, delivery boy. Nothing to see here.

Oh, yeah, I am a pro at this yo-yo dieting thing. Oh, it’s not a diet? Thanks, Marie Osmond. It’s a lifestyle change. I get it, I’ve used that line before, too. I have read all the books and blogs, and seen all the infomercials. All it takes is one birthday dinner or girls’ night out to fall off and be totally under that wagon. I like to think that I am self-sacrifical—laying down my life (diet) for my community. Taking one for the team. Diet always starts again on Monday. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And repeat again. I am pretty sure my body is two parts Diet Coke, one part hot fudge sundae. I can go up and down on a scale so fast that it makes Usain Bolt jealous.

I once heard that there are two types of eaters: those who restrict and those who permit. I am a restricter. Kinda like my religious upbringing. We find the rules, lists, and calorie counting to be liberating. If I don’t see it or smell it, if I don’t buy it or keep it in the house, it won’t hurt me. So I restrict it all—everything. I can’t enjoy any good food because my body will betray me and I will surely gain weight with one whiff of that cereal aisle, so I will have none of it. I won’t even look in its direction. I will not even drive near the local Krispy Kreme, because I will be tempted. OK, yes, I will. I will do a U-turn in the middle of a seven-lane freeway when that “Hot Now” sign is blinking. It’s like a moth to a flame. It’s like an addict on Ambien. It’s like the red-light district blinking its lustful ways in my direction. That hot, soft donut is the bane of my existence and the bane of my bathing suit. And the reason I made it through the summer without putting on a bathing suit.

To us restricters, diet is the name of the game.

DIET = Did I Eat That?

DIET = Do I Eat Today?

DIET = Don’t Indulge Every Time

Every Monday we start one. I will not go to that birthday party because… cake. What’s that you say? Celery juice will rid me of all my body’s transgressions and launch my metabolism into outer space? Grab my helmet. Cabbage soup is the weight-loss secret of the stars? Mmmmm, gas… count me in. I will consume nothing but. Only eating one meal a day at 2:30 P.M. will change my life? Done. Setting my clock now. Tell me what I need to cut out, and I will do it now. Give me rules. Give me a chart. Give me a five-gallon drum of apple cider vinegar and a straw. Give me vials that I have to pee in to measure ketosis. Restriction works. It’s like holding that raging bull in a pen at the rodeo. We know that if and when the gate opens, the wild energy is out, and the beast is holding back nothing. That is what happens when I pass a Chick-fil-A, and then, well, you know the rest. The sauce. The frozen lemonade. Diet starts again on Monday.

Atkins, Weight Watchers, Paleo, keto, vegan, South Beach. I’ve done Whole30, and it only took a whole thirty minutes before I realized I wasn’t going to chop all those fruits and vegetables required. I even made up my own “Heather Land Diet”:

Breakfast: Black coffee and one egg

Midmorning: Diet Coke

Lunch: Sliced turkey and celery, Diet Coke

Afternoon snack: Coffee

Dinner: 483 slices of pizza

I have gone from counting fat grams to counting carbs to counting steps. What I really need to be counting is sheep—the only way to keep it off is just to stay asleep.

I am never satisfied with this ol’ body of mine, always needing to lose. Always. It is exhausting. But yet… still not willing to go to the gym. I have boundaries, people. I can’t do it all. I went to Zumba once, and all that Latin music had me craving enchiladas before I was outta there. So I restrict the exercise, too. No need to try to be all things.

And yet I agree with Julia Child: people who love to eat are typically the best people. Standing around a kitchen with a glass of wine and a charcuterie board is my favorite pastime. It is where we share life. In the kitchen. It’s the heart of all of our homes. When a new home is built, the kitchen is the most important room in the house. When we share a meal, we enter into community with one another. Inviting someone over to your home for a meal is a genuine invitation to share life. Over a plate of food is where we get to know one another. Sharing a meal is how we show we care to those who are hurting or in need. Setting aside time for a meal, around a table without distractions, is a genuine way to live and love your people. Sharing a meal is the most intimate act you can participate in with your clothes on. Relationships begin when you share a dish together. It’s why potlucks and dinners on the ground endure; it’s why an apron is a sex symbol, why two people serving themselves out of the same carton of Chinese counts as togetherness and ordering one dessert with two spoons feels like romance.

We grieve, we eat. We celebrate, we eat. We work too much, we eat. We are lonely, we eat. We are happy, we eat. Food is tied to so many emotional things for us. It is our drug of choice. It satisfies for the moment. It feels good. It can become a companion when we are lonely. And it is not just for us Southern folks who grew up believing that hash-brown casserole is a vegetable. Food is the cultural norm for celebration and sadness all around the globe.

But now our daughters are learning how to read food labels and order sugar-free macchiatos. Our daughters first hear the word “fat” coming out of our mouths to describe our own bodies. They don’t have a fighting chance in this mean ol’ world. And then we all dread the day our daughters come home from school with hurt feelings because someone made fun of them for their appearance. Yet they have heard us criticize and diet and critique in our own home. Now they hear it from someone on the playground, and it begins to take root in their view of themselves. They start to believe this is the normal way to view their bodies.

In sixth-grade math class, the boy behind me leaned over and whispered, “You’re so fat you could roll over a dollar and make four quarters.” Thirty-two years later, I still remember like it was yesterday. I’ve never felt beautiful enough. I’ve never felt skinny enough, as if skinny is the metric. If someone called me a liar it wouldn’t affect me, because I know that is not who I am. But call me fat, and you have just attacked my value. Why? Because as women our value is tied to our appearance. Sticks and stones may break my bones. But tell me I am fluffy, and I will surely die.

It is all around us, the pressure to look good. The pressure to match the competition. The pressure to satisfy a standard. The unattainable. And if striving to look a certain way isn’t the particular thorn in your side, perhaps that next WOD goal or the next Ultra Marathon is. (Eye roll.)

We have tied our souls to shame and guilt that have us trapped, not food. It was never the food’s fault. So we binge and purge in different ways. There are times I have been at my thinnest but still felt like the fattest woman in the room. And that, my friends, has NOTHING to do with the scale. That kind of perception comes from the inside. From the deepest guts of my identity and value and worth.

We always blame the media for bombarding our minds with unrealistic images and photoshopped bodies. But I dare say that this is a self-perpetuating problem within our gender and within our homes. Moms casting their own insecurity and weight-loss burdens onto their children without knowing it. Speaking words of shame when Mom sees herself in a picture. Those little ears are listening. Those little perceptions are being shaped about their purpose. Shaming a young boy for wanting another bag of cookies when his body is growing so fast that he burns 9 million calories in a day. He could eat the entire pantry and still be hungry. We are telling little girls how pretty they are and never complimenting a little girl on the five-hundred-piece puzzle she just completed or the second-grade science fair she just won. We have made a woman’s entire existence and purpose about the way she looks. And if the world tells us we look good, then that must mean the world has taken notice of us. We have been seen.

The truth is, I can only name about five women in my life who have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies. I have thin friends who are obsessed with losing weight, living their life as if “I have to look this way or no one will love me.” Body image is no respecter of persons.

It’s all the same. We are all in the same sinking shame boat. My only role here is to be pretty and lovely. Without an acceptable physical appearance I have nothing to offer, and I am nothing of value. I am pretty sure this is NOT what our mother’s generation had in mind when they burned their bras. We have to change the narrative on this. For the sake of our daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters. And for our sons and grandsons and great-grandsons.

We have to stop our friends when they shame themselves before they take the first bite. We have to stop the shaming in the dressing room, dead in its tracks. We have to stop the thoughts before the words are formed about our own appearance. We have to stop the cellulite shaming at the pool. Stop it. I will hear none of it. And I hope you will shut down my shaming, too.

Perhaps the weight we need to lose isn’t on our body. Fact. The weight we need to lose is the fear of being unlovable. The fear of loneliness. The fear of abandonment. The weight of broken relationships and the impasse of unforgiveness. The weight of a wound that you have hidden away in your junk drawer. The weight of dreams gone unfulfilled. The weight of the voice inside you that is dying to be heard. The weight of everyone else’s problems that you have carried for too long.

Instead of a new fad diet, what if we started the right kind of diet?

DIET = Determined, Intentional, Encouraging, Trailblazing

DIET = Disciplined, Intelligent, Empowered, Truthful

DIET = Deliberate, Insightful, Extraordinary, Transparent

For once, let’s focus on fattening up our values. Chew on some good meat. Restrict the bad, and only consume the good. “Trim the fat” of the unnecessary stuff. Let’s focus on restricting the things that are really hurting us. Imagine the damage done by the carbohydrates of toxic people in our lives. A warm loaf of homemade bread covered in butter. Those carbs seem fluffy and good at first but just leave you feeling fluffy and bad the day after. They are deceivingly tasty but filled with hidden junk that brings you down. If we could just get rid of the bread, then we would slim right up. Count all the calories in your unhealed wounds. Sure the higher the calories, the better it tastes, but the bigger the wound, the more it takes to burn off. What about the fat grams in the shame you’re toting around? That shame buries itself deep in your veins, and you sometimes forget it’s there. If your heart is the sum of all the trans-fat you’ve eaten, one day it will show the signs of wear and tear of shame—the invisible killer. The widow maker. Maybe we all need a new body-mass-index number after shedding the mom guilt? Pressure to measure up to Pinterest’s definition of a good mom. I don’t know about you, but that pressure is accomplishing nothing in my home, just making a bunch of women cray.

If we eat for any reason other than hunger, food will not be what satisfies us. Should I get an infomercial going on this? I just high-fived myself for a nugget of truth. Weight loss is not the key to weight loss. Loving ourselves is. Being present in our bodies and spirits, being fully alive, informs us of what to eat and when. When we value ourselves more than the guy sitting behind us in math class, we can believe in ourselves. When we stop struggling, hiding, faking, manipulating, and controlling, we learn to be OK in our own skin. We have to reteach ourselves about our loveliness. We have to retrain our minds and hearts to handle our bodies with grace. When the shape of your body no longer shapes your existence, the weight will disappear—physically and emotionally.

I think the key to weight loss isn’t a diet at all. It doesn’t look like restriction. It looks like generosity and mercy. I dare say this might be your (our) most important work. It requires humility, honesty, and a teachable spirit. If you need help with this, get help. If you need medical intervention, it is 2020—go get it. If you need a friend on this journey, find one who can speak wisdom to you.

Give yourself room to love yourself, not punish. I want this, don’t you? It’s a daily decision, and I am not there yet. I know that I am not where I used to be, but every day I make strides to show up and see my body, my weight, and my health as a gift. I hope you can, too.