My New Diet Plan

I have been thinking quite a lot about food and diet lately. Partly because we have noticed that in Italy, it is impossible to get any other type of cuisine other than Italian. No Chinese, Thai, pub, American (whatever that is!), Indian…nothing.

Apparently, Italians just have no desire to eat anything other than Italian food, and when they travel abroad, they only want to eat at Italian restaurants!

I find this hard to grasp, since one of the great things about travel is getting to eat local food. More than that, though, is the idea of variety. I don’t want to eat the exact same type of food day in and day out. No matter how much I may love pasta or pizza or risotto, I just can’t eat it all day every day. After a while I want something that tastes totally different: sushi, or stir-fried noodles with tofu and broccoli, or steamed dumplings with soy sauce. Yum…

The other reason I have been thinking about food and diet is because of all the weight I have lost since starting this trip. I have been thinking about gaining and losing weight, and why at some times it is easier to lose weight than at others.

As I have already mentioned, I am sure that a lot of my weight loss has to do with no longer taking the anti-anxiety medication. I really believe that another reason why I have lost so much weight, is that I just don’t care about it right now.

We are always talking about the mind-body connection, and I think there is a lot to be said about the idea of “letting go” when it comes to weight loss, mentally more than physically.

In the US we are so obsessed with being thin, with losing weight, with not eating one food item or another. The guilt and shame so many of us feel when we eat something “bad” for us is astounding, and I think those bad feelings cause our bodies to clench, to clamp down, to hold onto weight.

How many times have I been out to dinner or lunch with friends and had the ordering and eating process become a discussion of what we shouldn’t order, shouldn’t have eaten. How often have you yourself been to a restaurant and agonized over what you “should” order vs. what you really wanted to order?

So often it seems that we feel we need to be punished for eating, for enjoying any food other than lettuce? For me. Certainly, this feeling like I have done something wrong when eat pasta only gets me on a loop of eating something, feeling bad about it, and then eating more because that is how I cope with my bad feelings! I know I’m not alone in getting stuck on that loop.

Right now, and indeed for this whole trip, I just don’t care about what I weigh, or how much I eat. If I want gelato, I eat gelato. If I want pasta, I have pasta. I eat what I want when I want . And there is something about this mental letting go that I think has allowed my body to let go as well, to regulate my cravings and body weight in a more natural, balanced way.

It used to be that I couldn’t have a jar of Nutella at home because I would sit by myself and eat the whole jar in two days, with a spoon, I kid you not. And the guilt I felt doing that….monumental. I felt like the worst person in the world; a fat, greedy, no will-power person. I would feel like I had just done one of the worst things a person could do.

Now, I have had a Nutella jar around for ever, and it is only partially eaten. Somehow, I have managed to remove all judgment of what I eat and how much I eat of it, and it’s like I have therefore removed the temptation. I have suddenly made the Forbidden Fruit unforbidden. Want Nutella? Then eat Nutella, who cares?! And as a result, I don’t really want the Nutella so much anymore. Or I can have a little taste and be satisfied, and not feel that I have just done something terrible by eating it.

Here food is life, it is community, it is social, it is family, and there is no shame in the consumption of it. Shame made me heavy, freedom from that shame has made me lighter, literally.

That in and of itself could be the most valuable insight gleaned from this trip, and I hope with all my heart that I can hold onto this mentality, because if I can, it will change my life.