a blog by Willie Hewes

Oh, man. Are we really going to have dinner at KFC? But that’s so unhealthy!

The Dave really likes his KFC. But I hadn’t had any in months, and what with me doing this mindful eating with douple plus vegetables thing and all that, having to order from their menu made me feel kind of panicky. Kind of oh no, unhealthy!. Kind of all my good work down the draaaaain, waaah!

Kind of completely irrational, once I thought about it.

It’s so easy to label certain foods or restaurants as “unhealthy” rather than thinking about whether someone’s diet is actually unhealthy. Certainly, if fried chicken is all you ever eat, you are likely to develop some health issues. But if all you eat is raw kale, you are not likely to be very healthy either. (I don’t even know if you can eat kale raw, but it sounds dreary. And I’m sure people have tried.)

The logic goes like this: being overweight puts you at greater risk of health complications like diabetes, heart problems and certain cancers. This is true. You get fat by eating lots of calories. Not disputing that either, in principle. Therefore, eating anything that contains lots of calories in one go, or calories but no vitamins or fibre, is actively harmful to you and you should never ever do it. And if you do, you’re doomed.

Um, no.

Remember how I hadn’t had fried chicken in months? And probably won’t have any for months? And have been eating more “healthily” for months? However much fat/salt/sugar/MSG/cyanide is in the KFC meal, I can probably handle it at this point.

We do not instantly shrink or balloon depending on what we’ve had to eat in the last half hour. Your weight right now is not the result of what you had to eat yesterday. It’s the result of what you’ve been eating for the past six months or so, at least. (Also, how much you’ve been moving around, your genetics, etc, but we’re talking about food right now.) And any one meal, however sinfully indulgent or enormous, is unlikely to harm your health.

Likewise, one day spent fasting is no way to make up for that bucket of chicken yesterday. The goddess of weight loss isn’t keeping a “sins and virtues” book for you. She doesn’t reduce your punishment because you’re willing to pay penance. She doesn’t exist. There’s only you here.

It makes perfect sense to say: “I’m going to stop buying ice cream and just have yoghurt for dessert to try to lose some weight.” That’s sensible. But I think we give certain types of foods too much power and significance when we decide that they are bad for us and should be avoided under any circumstances, not just by us but by everyone. Because they’re bad.

Bad food! Down!

Food is food. It isn’t bad. It might be more of fat/sugar/salt/caffeine than you need right now, but there’s nothing wrong with it. Make decisions on what you’re going to eat based on what you need, what would satisfy you, and what would make you feel good about yourself, rather than treating some foods as poison arbitrarily.

If you can trust yourself to make good decisions most of the time based on what you need and want, instead of trying to scare yourself straight by telling yourself how bad and harmful and unhealthy this food is, you may well rise to the challenge. Also, you’re actually treating yourself like an adult. Nice.

But how do you learn how to trust yourself? Well, that’s another post worth of stuff, but here’s a thought: you learn how to trust yourself the same way you learn to do anything else.

1. Start doing it.
2. Continue to practice.
3. If you waver or fall, go back to 1.

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