Diets and diet culture are an inseparable part of our modern world. Women can’t be thin enough, or fit enough. They’re meant to chase the perfect body, any imperfection has to be battled, be it by rigorous exercise, make-up, or even plastic surgery. Any and every method is acceptable striving for the perfect body, the perfect look.
Women are meant to look beautiful, but not too beautiful, a sentiment echoed in the current Barbie movie. Be thin, be fit, be beautiful.
We’re not stopping to question why someone looks the way they look. We don’t care about the stories behind the people we encounter in our everyday life, be it the mother of five, who simply doesn’t have the time or money to maintain the body society tells her to have. Or maybe a sickness makes it impossible for that body to be achievable.
Whatever it is, we’re quick and easy to judge, because society tells us this is what pretty looks like. This is what you’re supposed to look like. It doesn’t matter if it is attainable for your genetics or not. Conform or you’re not considered pretty.
I am by no account considered pretty. At 206 lbs I am well into the overweight category. People don’t stop to wonder why I weigh in at that or what happened for me to gain that weight. I was considered normal weight at 19 years old. At 33 things are different. Between then and now is a lot of life and a lot of pure survival.
And there were a whole lot of diets. And yet I am here. Again. Because none of them were sustainable. All of them had one thing in common: The premise of cutting out something you love in order to create that calorie deficit that is so essential to losing weight.
Creating a calorie deficit. If it was that easy, why isn’t everyone doing it? Because life happens. Life doesn’t care for beauty standards. Your body doesn’t care either. It’s primed to do one thing: Store any surplus of calories in the form of fat in case a famine happens. It never had the chance to adjust to our high-calorie diets of highly processed and overly tasty food. A lot of us grew up on treats that taste delicious, designed to hook us to a taste that makes it so very hard to abstain.
And the problem isn’t willpower: Our biology is designed to want the calories, the food is designed to make us want more.
“Lose weight” still is one of the first things a doctor will tell an overweight person. It doesn’t even matter if the issue can even be related to the weight. As unfair as it is, it has been proven that a diet (the type of food you eat, not the diet designed to lose weight) that benefits your health typically also benefits the proper nutrition of your body. And maybe even weight loss.
I am starting on the journey of The Last Diet and I am taking you along the ride. The Last Diet is my weight loss journey. I will be honest with you every step of the way. I will not hold back any setback, any issue, any craving. I will introduce you to the science behind weight loss and let you walk with me.
The goal is to create sustainable weight loss, to be happy in a body that society currently rejects, and to be honest with you all: So do I. It’s not easy living in a body that is judged at every step. Society’s judgment is a current motivator to lose weight. I guess you can say I am a victim of diet culture. But I am willing to change that.
Day 1
Weight: 206 lbs
Motivation: High