YOU, Me and Everyone Else is ON A DIET

While few of you admitted to subjecting yourselves to torture methods to lose weight, many people in America are already lining up for miracle cures. Weight loss products and surgeries that do everything from stapling your stomach to making you crap in your pants if you eat too much are selling like crazy. When looking at the voting on the poll it was hard to imagine there were people out there who were perfectly happy as they were. My friends, relatives and colleagues are costantly worrying about their weight, figure, and image in a way that not only borders obsessive, but makes me question what it means to have a healthy body image in a day when the only healthy mindset is on a diet.

There are people who struggle with their weight because they have to but there are even more who struggle with their weight because they want to. As someone who has recently joined the ranks of the image conscious weight loss obsessives, I have noticed that as soon as I mention my desire to lose weight every woman in the room echoes my statements. No longer do people act as if my weight loss proposal is ridiculous but become enthralled with my methods and plans for achieving my goals. Not too long ago it was taboo to talk to someone about how they need to lose weight, whereas now if you don't think you need to-- well what will you have to talk about?

Truthfully I have not met a woman who does not worry about her weight. Perhaps this issue is pertinent for men as well, but it is not pervasive. In my emails to friends and family, weight loss is a common subject that can relate to anyone. There is an entire social network in dieting. Do you do Weight Watchers? If so, can you make a pizza that is only three points, because I created one. I also created a way to make one point brownies, while my friend has created three point muffins and my mother can bake four point lemon squares. My aunt is on South Beach and relies on nuts for snacks, but frankly, they are too many points for me so we have trouble sharing ideas, but try anyway. We are all on a diet, but losing the diet would be losing a topic of conversastion as socially acceptable and common as the weather. Therefore, perhaps what we really need to lose is the weight of our diets.

I have gained a substantial amount of weight since I went abroad to study, and have found a million reasons to fixate on losing it. The real issue, though, is not how I gained the weight, but why. After a devastating break-up, adjusting to a new place, struggling to keep up with school, friends, etc. food was something that filled a void in my life. Now, I continue to postpone acknowleding my real struggles by obsessing with the struggles of my diet. Why do I keep gaining weight? Why can't I lose the pounds? I only ate three points today! My friends comfort me with statements like, have you tried olive oil? Dieting is a roller coaster? You exercise, it is muscle weight...don't worry. But the truth is, what we should really be saying to each other is, why do you care so much? Why do you take the time to worry so much about what you weigh? That is the real problem. I know how to lose weight, but I do not always know how to find myself.

I think that everyone can have a healthy concern about their body. Perhaps I do not look fat to others, but if I am unhappy with my body it is perfectly appropriate that I try to fix it. The problem is that we are so comfortable worrying about diets that we have stopped worrying about each other. While we all struggle to lose weight, we should also be working toward stronger emotional relationships and topics of converstaion that reflect positive aspects of their life instead of their struggles toward various levels of starvation. I'm not going to stop counting my points, setting personal goals or worrying about my appearance--but I am going to try to stop making my food decisions form my relationships. Thanks for the recipies, motivation and ideas, but lets not all be on diets when it comes to losing our burdens or our weight.

We're Just Not That Into You Lesson: It is important to support your friends and family in weight-loss efforts. I love hearing progress reports from friends and family who are successful and help those in need of a boost. The problem is that diets become consuming. We look skeptically at someone eating a candy bar or cake who we know is "on a diet" and we never wonder why people eat the way they do, or feel compelled to diet the way they do. Perhaps we can be better supporters of weight loss if we try to talk about other things a little more often.