If you don’t have access to the NYT, allow me to summarize the important points:
I am not a failure because I failed at intermittent fasting.
Really, that IS the important point. It’s supported with a bunch of sciency studies and facts and big words and numbers. But if you lost weight because of a structured intermittent fasting schedule, you pretty much lost weight because you just ate fewer calories overall. Those potato chips have the same number of calories at 3 pm as they do at 9pm.
But that’s all diet stuff. And not actually my point. In fact, I will say it again. The IMPORTANT POINT IS THIS:
I am not a failure because I failed at intermittent fasting.
And really, it’s only the first five words that matter.
And this is where I get into the meat (hah) of the story. Not THEIR story, MY story.
Years and years ago, when I was the size of your average NFL linebacker (yes, the big guys, not those cute little runner guys), and on day 5,345,146 of a diet (any diet, pick one, I tried them all), I read a book by Gina Kolata. If that name sounds familiar, it should, because she happens to also be the author of the article in this post.
The book was Rethinking Thin, and it was an analysis of diets — all the diets — which worked, which didn’t, and why.
And the most important idea in that book, to me, was when she said that if you have a lot of weight to lose (in the 3-digit category, not the 2), you could lose it, but your body will be fighting you to keep it off, and your body does not fight fair. And most people who lose more than 100 pounds eventually gain it back.
Your body likes the new number. Your body LOVES the new number. It looks at that extra squish the same way I look at a freshly stocked thrift store: “OH MY GOD LOOK AT ALL THAT GOOD STUFF! I COULD USE THAT SOMEDAY! I MUST FIND A WAY TO KEEP IT ALL!!” Yeah, your body is kind of a hoarder. And it will find ways to keep everything. And to get it back after it’s taken away. It will tweak its metabolism. It will send you ghrelin, SO MUCH GHRELIN. It will fire off dopamine at the merest scent of fresh bread, with the promise of more if you take one bite, just one bite. Come on, you know you want it. It’s soooo gooood.
Your body does not fight fair. It LIKES your softness. It LIKES having emergency stores. It hoards energy because it KNOWS that someday, you’re going to be running from a saber-tooth tiger, or trapped in a cave. Or maybe stuck in your home in an apocalypse with no access to a drive-through. Something. Your body is also kinda dumb. It doesn’t know about Doordash, clearly. It doesn’t know I have a credit card and a regular hankering for dumplings. Go ahead. Stick me in a cave. Trust me, if you ask nicely and tip well, Panda Cafe will go the extra step.
ANYWAY.
What the book said, what Kolata concluded, was that the only thing that really helped long-term, with massive weight loss, is surgery. And not even all of them. But some of them worked. Not because of the initial loss, but because afterwards, when your body is trying so hard to to re-pad those thighs, you’ve given it a weapon that it didn’t already know how to defeat.
And that was when I, personally, accepted that I was totally failing at the exercising and dieting, and gave surgery a shot.
Spoiler: It worked for me.
Spoiler part 2: I could still survive an extended period in a cave with my extra energy stores. Because it’s just a tool. It’s not the answer. it’s not a cure. It’s a tool. And those last 30 pounds, the ones that keep me from my “goal weight” (*We shall get to that in a minute.), are the ones that come from dumplings. And chips. And pasta. And salads. (Vegetables still have calories — especially with blue cheese dressing on them!)
But now, instead of struggling to walk the two blocks to my kid’s school, instead of thinking I might die from diabetes, I can rest easy, knowing it will probably be from the chronic anemia I’ve had forever (and not related to my weight, and OH MY GOD I could write a book on things people blame on weight and not just being human. Seriously. That will DEFINITELY be another story someday.)
Losing weight for me, was definitely a health issue. Because I was in a dangerous zone. And now I’m not. But I’m not skinny. Not by any means. I’m still at the end of the chart where the doctor looks at me and sighs while they decide if they should say something. Again. I’m still soft and squishy and don’t love how I look in a bathing suit.
I still diet. Sort of.
I mostly don’t. Because I really like food. I like everything about it. Growing it. Making it. Eating it. Sharing it. It is one of the greatest pleasures in life, and if you don’t think so, it’s because you are not actually human.
And I’ve hit my “goal weight”. Because it’s a different kind of goal. Sure I would LOVE to be 125. Well, maybe. I don’t know. Never been there. But not if I have to give up pasta. My goal weight is, “Can I walk around a new town for a couple hours, can I shop for clothes in the same stores as my friends, can I survive an exercise class? Or at least napping yoga? And can I still eat pasta in a group of people and not feel like everyone is thinking, “She’s got such a pretty face. If only she didn’t eat so much pasta.”
Oooh, I can do those things. And I’m sure there are some Judgy McJudgersons out there who do still think that last part. But I don’t care. Because my “goal weight” wasn’t for them. It’s for me.
And sometimes I do diet, because sometimes I get a little squishier than I want to be. And I’ve tried them all, and pretty much the only one that works for me is “Less junk food, less alcohol, less pasta”. (Plus that surgery 10 years ago, let’s give credit where credit is due!)
I tried the intermittent fasting. And I failed at it.
But that doesn’t make me a failure. It makes me the same as pretty much everyone else. Because it’s just another diet. And sometimes they work while they work. And then they don’t. And that doesn’t make you a failure. It makes you a human with a human body that thinks it’s so clever, but YOU are more clever, because you are not, in fact, being chased by a tiger, trapped in a cave, or floating in space after the planet blew up.
The most important part of all of this is knowing that diets fail. Sometimes. Sometimes they doh’t. If you can find a way to lose weight and keep it off, by burning or restricting calories, either by what you eat, when you eat, how you eat, then you are outsmarting your body and you are a rockstar.
But if you can’t, it’s the diet that failed you. YOU did not fail.
You are not a failure. You are just not being chased by a tiger on a regular basis.
And that brings us back to this article. Gina Kolata, Diet Researcher Extraordinaire, is just confirming that point. Again.
And also, you DO have a pretty face. There is no “If only” that follows that. You radiate joy and beauty and happiness and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
