Out of the Game

The world wants us to diet, they believe it is their right to advise us to do so on the premise that we'll be healthier, more attractive and above all happier.  Every advert flogs us the The Fantasy of Being Thin like it's going out of fashion (while we pray that it is) - just tonight I've been told that being thin will enable me to be a catwalk model, afford boating holidays and destroy fad diet books with golf clubs (well, I already do that...).  The implication is that being thin is so wonderful that any sacrifice used to obtain it will be paid back tenfold because what could be wrong when you're a single digit dress size?

I'm not playing that game any more.  Not because I don't want to strut my stuff on the catwalk, dive off sailboats or beat the sit out of another crappy diet book - none of these things are conditional on being thin (especially not the last one, in fact if you've not burned all your dieting books on a ceremonial pyre, I'd recommend it).  I won't play because it's not worth it.


Being thin is not worth spending hours, weeks, days, years of your finite existence counting calories.  Being thin is not worth rationing chocolate to once-monthly binges.  Being thin is not worth having nothing to talk about but tricks to avoid food.  Being thin is not worth being constantly hungry.  It's not worth feeling tired, miserable, cold and irritable for the rest of your life.  A life of constant hunger will never be a life fulfilled.

Being thin wont make you all those things they tell you it will.  You'll still be you, but smaller.  Whatever it is that you really want be it a dazzling career, a loving relationship or a happy family - it's not going to magically appear if you lose a few pounds.  Don't you think your time and energy would be better spent working towards your goals rather than a smaller waist size?  I do.

Years of my life have been spent in self-inflicted hunger.  I've made myself literally sick of it, and I've grown tired of it.  I hope never to have to spend another day hungry.  And if I ever have to it won't be through choice.  My health and my happiness are too important to me, my life is too important to me to put myself through this.

I raise my middle finger to the diet industry and their cronies.  You want me to go hungry because of your arbitrary standard?  The answer is NO.