Please Stop Talking About Your Diet

I don't want to be rude. I just wish you would cease discussing your no-carb, no-fat, gluten-free, low-salt, no-fun diet. Nor do I want to hear about the "snob" diet, or the one where you eat certain foods only during certain times of the day, or the raw diet, or how you get all your slimming meals delivered. Do not speak to me of Weight Watchers or Overeaters Anonymous, Jenny Craig or the Dr. Perricone salmon skin cult. Mention not the regime where you don't consume anything until you're about to pass out, and then you eat a single cube of cheese.  I really don't want to hear about your cleanse, your juice fast, or how much energy you have now that you disdain all solid food. Do your skinny jeans fit? Is your skin glowing? Are you retaining water? I didn't just ask that, because I don't give a crap. Don't tell me your goal, current, or ideal weight, your set point, how much you have lost or gained or that you've reached a plateau. You're worse than boring me. You're torturing me.

I am desperate for a new conversation. There is mounting evidence that dieting doesn't work, and the majority of people who lose weight gain it back and end up with a slower metabolism. It's an exercise in futility; I see you go up and down, and up and down. I want to scream: "Let your body be!" But I know that's not my decision. So diet if you must, but please do shut up about it. Though it is hard to think about other topics when you are starving yourself, I beg of you to try. Suggestion: get a new hobby, such as gardening, snow boarding, poker, bridge; anything other than the manipulation of your figure.

I especially demand that you not talk about your diet in front of my daughter. I am addressing you, person who informed her that too much cheese will make a person fat. She doesn't need this information. It's a rule, and it's non-negotiable. I don't want you to replace the dreams in my baby's heart with an automatic calorie counter. While you're at it, please stop talking about your diet in front of your daughter. Mothers who obsessively diet can end up with anorexic daughters. It's not just about you anymore.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It sure has been a while since I blogged, as a friend remarked to me yesterday. Honestly,  I was just too depressed to ever write another word. I was also painfully embarrassed by everything I had ever written.

Over that now, but it's been sort of hectic with my daughter spraining her ankle and a million other things I won't bore you with just now (maybe later), so I still have not written anything new. I thought I'd direct you to the post I wrote last year to honor St. Patrick's Day. I'm wearing my Everyone Loves an Irish Girl t-shirt tomorrow. It confused my yoga teacher last year.