This Food is Simply Not Good Enough for Me

Yesterday was a perfect summer day. The sun was shining and a cool breeze was blowing. I was making my way to my car after shopping and passed a woman sitting in her parked car. I glanced her way mildly curious why she would be sitting in her car on such a beautiful day only to notice she was eating from a large bag of fast food. I quickly looked away to avoid embarrassing her. It made me sad to take in the whole picture of a middle age woman that was very overweight and eating bad food, alone. It occurred to me that many of us are doing this regularly and feeling ashamed. The time has come to stop this frustrating cycle.

Surprisingly, many overweight women tend to know a lot about nutrition. They are smart enough to realize that if you eat high calorie food with very low nutritional value without any exercise at all you will gain weight. Also, chances are that they have tried everynew or old diet gimmick going and are still overweight. Self loathing and feelings of worthlessness contribute to developing low self esteem. Every single diet attempt ends in failure. Is this because we are lazy? Is it because we are undisciplined? No, we are neither and the truth is diets don’t work. Very few people can sustain the rigors of a diet without creating the yo-yo diet phenomenon. We lose weight only to gain all of it back and maybe more as well. Diets generally begin to fall apart after approximately 2 months and are complete failures at the 1-year mark.

Now we reach a point were we can actually self medicate in order to gain some psychological balance. We overeat for many reasons. We feel emotionally filled when we are physically stuffed. We are comforted yet we are hiding in our cars or apartments /houses eating food that was thoughtlessly prepared and unworthy of us. Any food that is sitting around under warming lamps that has been prepared in 2.5 minutes has got to go.

I would like to propose a new idea. Next time you are hungry plan to get out of your car and walk into a decent place and order yourself something wonderful. Let the people who are making your food know exactly how you like it and treat yourself to good things. Whole grain bread toasted with roast beef, lettuce tomato onion with Dijon mustard. Maybe a bag of baked potato chips and fresh brewed ice tea with lemon.

I am willing to bet that by the end of the day you will not have the same feeling of regret and self-loathing. Your energy level will be higher because you didn’t feed yourself a 2000-calorie non-nutritional meal that your body is trying to metabolize and can’t use anything from that retched meal to give you strength. Instead what you have consumed is useless calorie that will collect in adipose tissue (fat) and make you feel empty. However, your whole grain roast beef lunch will be converted into energy and will replenish your muscle with protein.

Today you can start your new life by making a very big change. Forget the diets and calorie counting and think of value. The first and most important thing to value is you. You are plenty worthy, smart and you have spent too many years denying yourself the better things in life. You need to ask for good things and you will get them. If you have spent a lifetime settling for scraps from the table then that is your destiny. Life will change when you ask for more. Start by never eating alone in your car again. Put on your lipstick and walk into that restaurant and after you have decided if it is good enough for you, look your waiter in the eye and order a great sandwich just the way you like it. Good ingredients that are carefully prepared. Let it spill over into other aspects of your life. Put yourself at the top of the list on a regular basis. Isn’t it time?