Tag: dieting

Dear people who I go out to dinner with:

I really like salads.  I love cucumbers, and I love vinaigrette dressing, and I love croutons, and I love crunchy lettuce.  For a while last year I ate a small salad with almost every meal.

I eat salads because I really like them.  I’m not trying to be healthy.  I’m not trying to avoid fat.  I would still eat salads even if they didn’t have vitamins and minerals.  Since I eat my salads with lots of oily dressing, they aren’t terribly low-fat, anyway.

Sometimes I decide not to get a salad, even though I’d like one, because I don’t want to get you all started on how healthy salads are and how unhealthy your food is.  Because I don’t believe that, and I wish none of you did either.

Is there any chance we could agree to not talk like this about food?  I just want to eat my salad.

Okay so I have unreasonably strong feelings about diets, you guys.

RDG just said on Facebook that she’s starting a cleanse-type thing.  It involves not eating any carbs or sugar, among other things, for a couple of weeks.  Her mom is doing it with her.  Normally she hates it when her mom talks to her about diet stuff, because her mom likes to guilt her about her weight and make her feel insecure about what she eats.  Fuck. 

It’s not my place to tell her what to do but fuck I hate the idea of cleanses and I am also suspicious of any idea about food that comes from her mom.

I know I don’t really get her point of view because I’ve never been as big as she is, but the more I see the more I’m convinced that I seriously dodged a bullet by never really getting involved in dieting, and I’m scared for her.  It’s so easy to get into messed-up thinking about food.  There are so many awful ideas floating around dressed up as cool healthy things to do.