This week I’m sharing a conversation that I have had with a lot of patients lately. They want to weigh less, they know that it’s better for their health, but they cannot figure out how to make it work. I tell them that making it work requires a frame shift, a change in the way you think about food. When we talk about what that means for them, I see the lights go on in their eyes and their expressions. It’s slightly magical, every time. They leave with renewed faith and self-confidence, not to mention relief. It was never about dieting. It was about the food.

Dieting means to restrict, to deny oneself. It is a logical consequence of the assumption that weight problems are due to overindulgence. But there is a big, fat fault line within this assumption: If it were true, then denial would be an effective and viable option for losing weight. It is not, of course, which is why you have probably noticed that diets don’t work.

People use the term “to lose weight”  as if they were the one turning the knob, clicking the button, spinning the dial. But weight loss is not like roulette; and the number on the scale is not something that anyone actually gets to pick.

Instead, what you weigh is a reflection. It’s a reflection of the sum total of the choices you make, or that are being made for you. Choices about food (eating patterns), movement (activity patterns), rest and relaxation patterns (hours of sleep, management of stressors). What would happen if people started saying that they “reflected” 10 pounds down instead of “lost” 10 pounds? Might that be helpful? Let’s think about it a little.

While you do not have control over what you weigh today, you do happen to have control over a lot of other things, like whether you choose Cap’n Crunch for breakfast, or leftovers from dinner, or a sweet potato with peanut butter. Or whether you wear a pedometer. But you don’t get to decide how much to weigh today. Or any day. 

Whenever a strategy doesn’t work, I think of it as an opportunity to step back and reexamine the fundamentals. What are my underlying  assumptions? Could it be that one or more of them is incorrect? When things are not going the way you thought they were going to, why not? If things are going haywire, a certain kind of question can help to sort it all out.

Questions like: Is overweight really due to overindulgence? No, it is not. It’s due to malnutrition. Then why do some obese people eat such large portions, so many calories? Why are they always so hungry? Because they’re starving! The solution to malnutrition is not to deny oneself further, it’s to eat. But not just any old thing that fits in your mouth.

Denial will never be the solution to malnutrition. That would just make things worse. And so it does. The solution to malnutrition is not to eat less. It’s to eat more. But not packaged, processed edible items of low nutritional quality. I’m referring specifically to eating more of the kinds of food that nourish you from the inside out. I mean fruits and vegetables, beans, tofu, eggs, avocados, olives, chicken, pickles, fish, dark chocolate. Especially more colorful foods. The more colors you eat, the more your cells benefit.  

Eating is meant to be a source of joy, satisfying as the sunrise.

Think about dancing. Backrubs. Listening to music. Talking with friends, and sitting together on a bench at the park. The wind at your back. Stretching. Hot showers. A book that takes you to the other side of the universe (Cloud Cockoo Land, Let the Great World Spin, Poisonwood Bible). Walking along the shore. Barefoot. These activities are deeply satisfying. They speak to your soul. And they are the polar opposite of punishment.

Now think about eating. Foods can be sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, umami. Crunchy, soft, toothy, smooth, silky, sticky. Beautiful, colorful, warm, cool, icy, bubbly. Expressive, imaginative. Fun, chaotic, quiet, or peaceful.

Want to reflect a lower weight? Fill your soup pot with any of the many recipes on these blog pages. Let that soup cook all day. Then enjoy it — slowly, slowly, slowly. Taste the ingredients and take in the temperature. Look at the faces of those who share it with you, and feel the satisfaction of having made it yourself. This is what it means to nourish yourself.