I’m obsessed? Is that bad?
Posted by Lois Anne on January 8th, 2008
I read this today here in response to this entry about “Weight Watchers co-opting Fat Lib rhetoric” :
…If you’re on weight watchers, you basically come so obsessed with food. Most of the people I know who have done it become really annoying and obnoxious because they’re constantly figuring out their points and talking about what they’re eating.
The problem is, probably the easiest way to eat better is to actually STOP obsessing about your meals.
Spoken like someone who has never had to lose a pound in his life!
I agree, it’s not cool to constantly talk about how many points are in everything - most people aren’t interested, and that’s okay. I understand how it can get on your nerves after a while, and I don’t want to be that girl. That’s why I come here - to get it out of my system.
But I think to achieve my goal I need to obsess over every bite. I know what happens when I don’t obsess over every bite - I end up 5′ 3″ and 161lbs!
People who say things like the quote above don’t understand how easily some of us can inhale an entire bag of potato chips or Reese’s cups when we’re not intently focused on each bite and constantly evaluating, “Do I really need this? Am I really hungry, or just bored?” Hopefully one day it’ll be a no-brainer, and I’ll be so used to making good choices that I’ll do it automatically. But I’m sure it’s going to take a lot of obsessing to retrain myself after a lifetime of being overweight. And I’m going to do that. I’m going to put that much effort into watching what I eat - hopefully without annoying the skinny people around me. 
January 8th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Good post and you are so right!
In fact, I have not ever met someone who is fighting an addiction like we are talk and assess, whether it is food or even cigarette smoking. I have yet to meat a person trying to quit cigarettes that wasn’t obsessing and fighting the next pull to take a drag.
Food to overweight people can be the same thing, so happily obsess away!. I know I will, because if I don’t, I fall backwards.
And doing these blogs is definitely the way to go, I am totally hooked already. If I forget or start to lose focus, I pull it up and read my own throughts and words again and it helps me remember my goals. And while I have just started this journey again on my own, I have tried WW 3 times before and failed because I did not obsess enough and wrote things off when I should not have.
Abby
January 8th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
oh gosh, sorry, I need to check for spelling errors before posting a comment! LMAO!
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
obsessing over food only makes it that much easier to get stuck in unhealthy eating patterns. i’ve gone through prolonged stints of binge eating and anorexia — if food is a drug to you, you know what i mean. the way out is not to fixate on every single detail of one’s diet; it’s to get a life and eat what and when one’s body needs to. diets train you to focus on numbers, books, pamphlets, and other people’s opinions to tell you when to eat, instead of learning to hear your body telling you what it needs. the trickiest part is shutting out all the noise, including the junk we’ve internalized and the patterns it’s spawned, and just eating what seems good for real.
take your smoking example. you do not become an ex-smoker by sitting in a blank room day after day, a pack of cigarettes on the table just outside, and obsessing over when you can have your next one or when you’re allowed to have some more gum. you do it by doing other worthwhile things that do not involve smoking. the initial physical addiction eventually lets go.
you need to eat. your body will never get over its initial attachment to food because you need it to live. develop a balanced life that doesn’t revolve around what you do or don’t eat, and you’ll be off your obsessive diet and living instead. (and unless chocolate is a major binge trigger food for you — mine include glazed donuts and dried fruit — it can definitely have a place.)
February 6th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Hi Libby. I guess not obsessing about food works for some people. Ellen DeGeneres was just saying that a few weeks ago on her show, and it makes sense, sort of. But weight loss is not “one size fits all”. Like I said, I know what happens when I, personally, don’t obsess about food.
And I actually have a life. You wouldn’t know it from reading this one post, but really, I do! I don’t talk about the details of my life too much here because this is a weight loss blog, so I try to keep it focused on just that. But I am out living my life - I’m not a morbidly obese hermit like you’d see on TLC’s “Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic”. I’m just plain old overweight and want to be healthier to keep up with my boys.