As I blogged about yesterday, I have the same biological instincts as my cavewoman ancestors. These instincts are embedded in my DNA. One of those instincts is: EAT ALL THE SUGAR.
Sugar was a valuable but limited source of calories before the agricultural revolution (and that revolution only happened 10,000 years ago). Our ancestors only got to eat sugar when trees were loaded with ripe fruit. That’s why, when they found a ripe fig tree, they ATE ALL THE FIGS. They did not hem and haw and feel guilty about wanting to eat the figs because they ate some berries yesterday and were planning to have a big mammoth burger for dinner. They needed calories; they saw figs; figs have calories; so they ATE ALL THE FIGS.
I still have this biological instinct to eat all the figs. And all the Snickers. And all the cake. My biological instincts do not discriminate between sugars, and my biological instincts do not care that I can go to the grocery store whenever I want and buy all the ingredients and treats my heart desires. My body is just programmed with a simple mandate to EAT ALL THE SUGAR. I have a lot of thoughts about this, but today, I want to write about diets.
I have done a lot of diets. Diets that count calories or points. Diets that restrict the types of foods I can eat. Diets that sell prepackaged meals or smoothies. I have been dieting since high school, and every time, I was convinced that at last, I had found the diet that would help me lose all the weight forever. And yet here I am, forty-two years old, 5’5″ and 200.8 pounds.
(Look, we can talk about self-love, self-esteem and beauty some other time. I know that I weigh too much for my body and that it’s not healthy for me. I want to lose the excess weight that is keeping me from being my healthiest self.)
For years and years, actually decades, I have felt like a failure because I could not keep off the weight. Lose the weight? Yes, I can lose weight. I’ve probably lost several hundred pounds by now. I am an expert at losing weight. But I’m also an expert at regaining the weight.
But as I think about my biological instincts to EAT ALL THE SUGAR, I am starting to realize that I am not the one who has failed. The diets have failed me.
I would have kicked ass as a cavewoman. I would have been very accomplished at finding and devouring all the ripe fruit within a ten mile radius of my cave. I would have thrown rocks at any baboons who tried to interfere with my sugar lust. I would have been the cavewoman who survived during times of drought and famine. My ancestors passed on some ass-kicking EAT ALL THE SUGAR genes. Thanks to them, I get to be alive today in the 21st century in Pasadena, California with all sorts of grocery stores and restaurants.
I would like to take this opportunity to send out a big THANK YOU to my ancestors who ATE ALL THE FIGS and wooly mammoth burgers.
All the diets I have tried failed to take into account that I have the biology of a cavewoman while being a denizen of the 21st century in an affluent city. Their rules and restrictions – don’t eat carbs; don’t eat more than 1,200 calories; don’t exceed your weekly points; only eat these smoothies for breakfast and lunch; don’t eat after 7 p.m. – completely ignore my biological instincts.
The basic underlying premise of all the diets I have sampled is this: if you have enough willpower and self-control to follow these rules, then you will lose weight.
So I have tried to follow the various rules. I have tried to use self-control to limit my calories and avoid carbs, etc. etc. And when I have failed to lose weight, or regained weight I already lost, I have felt like a pathetic piece of crap.
I, however, am not a piece of pathetic crap. I just happen to live in a country with a diet culture that completely ignores my biological instincts.
Diets fail because they expect willpower and self-control to be enough.
Diets fail because they ignore biological instincts.
Diets fail because they do not take into account that we are basically cave people programmed to eat ALL THE FIGS except now the fig trees have an infinite supply of figs.
I am not a failure. I am not weak or pathetic. I have just placed too much faith in diet culture. Now I need to learn how to live in a world with infinite figs.