Photo by joeb

All I remember is staring at the open box in shock. Did I really just eat 3/4 of a large cheese pizza by myself?

One. Two. Yep, only two slices left.

I was a sophomore in high school and my parents were out of town for one of my brother’s sporting tournaments. I was old enough to be left home alone to work and study.

Normally this meant a free pass for me to subsist on coffee and Frosted Flakes for a few days (remember when dieters were scared of fat instead of sugar?). But this evening something got to me.

Looking back on everything I had going on at the time it was probably stress and anxiety from juggling my daily ballet lessons, teaching at the studio to pay the bills, and getting up before dawn to start my rigorous course work at school.

Or maybe I was just hungry.

I didn’t know what to do for dinner so I called the pizza delivery place that my family loved. I knew this wasn’t good behavior for a ballerina and chronic dieter who still desperately wanted to lose weight, but something compelled me.

It took several minutes after I stopped eating before the sick, bloated, oily feeling took over. The lingering smell of cheese in the house made me feel nauseous, so I took the remaining pizza and box to the trash outside and pushed it as far into the bin as I could manage.

What had I done? I was so ashamed. I told no one.

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For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

This week NY Times takes on industrial food, protein is more than just protein, and low fat gets an unlikely thumbs up.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

This week a major magazine vows to stop fat shaming, mental badassery, and the horrors of the pork industry.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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Vacation stats

Last week I wrote about the 5 Things I Always Do When I Want to Lose Weight. It is about how I handle it when I come home from vacation and feel uncomfortable in my clothes.

In general people loved it and it performed really well. But a couple of people took issue with it, claiming that it came off as too “obsessive.”

They said that I shouldn’t be spending vacation time in the gym and shouldn’t care so much about getting healthy when I return home. The implication being that these actions were somehow emotionally unhealthy.

At first I was really confused. For nearly 6 years here at Summer Tomato I’ve been writing about the dangers of dieting, paying special attention to the psychology of food, health and body image. I even wrote a book about it.

Do these guys seriously think I have an unhealthy obsession with weight loss after all that? That I don’t know the value of taking breaks and enjoying vacation? That I feel guilty about indulging in delicious food? That I don’t realize that intentional self-restriction is a terrible idea?

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Photo by Pavel P.

I had my first SlimFast shake when I was 11 years old and spent the next 15 years struggling my way through every diet under the sun.

Through all of high school and college I suffered from body image issues, fatigue, bad skin and thinning hair, all for a body I was embarrassed of.

If anyone knows how dangerous dieting can be for your mind, body and spirit it’s me.

At Summer Tomato my number one mission for the last five and half years has been to get people to stop dieting. Not only does it not work, it actually makes it harder to become fit and healthy.

Dieting also makes your life suck, and that is unacceptable.

I know this. But that doesn’t mean I believe you should give up on trying to look your best.

Far from it.

As strongly as I believe the word “diet” should be banished from our health lexicon, I feel equally that our bodies should be part of what makes life awesome. And that includes how we feel when we look in the mirror, and how others see us.

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I have always had tremendous pride in everything I do. If something has my name on it, I go the extra mile (or 10 miles if necessary) to make it excellent. Even the thought of sending an unedited email or a sloppy text message makes me cringe.

Call it pride, call it self-respect. Whatever it is, I was born with it. My dad always tells me about how he and my mom would spy on me in my crib practicing the alphabet or reciting days of the week. But as soon as I knew they were there I’d stop and wouldn’t show them what I was working on. I wanted to make sure I had it right before anyone could see. I did this in my crib.

Naturally I had a similar pride about my appearance. Sadly, women in this country are taught at a young age that we will be judged (harshly) by how we look. I saw it in my own family as my aunts gossiped about each other’s “Pino thighs,” at school where overweight children were teased and tormented, and on TV where thin, beautiful women got all the attention.

Although I could write a book on how despicable this is, it isn’t realistic to believe our value system is going to change anytime soon. Instead, today I want to focus on one of the consequences of this mindset and what we can do to combat the negative impact it has on our behavior.

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For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

This week wheat is let off the hook, you’re still not eating enough egg yolks, and happiness slows aging.

Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).

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