The Stages of Dieting

The first week of dieting is similar to exactly the same as the five stages of grief. It's an emotional seven days of terrifying your husband and desperately searching for any crumbs of baked sweet potato that might have fallen on the floor. I've been told that the first seven days are the hardest and since I've gone through the first seven days approximately five million times in my 28 years on this Earth, I would have to agree.

Denial

The Denial stage begins at the very point you decide you're setting out to do this. You start to fill your head with ideas of daily routines and lifestyle changes and watch countless episodes of Extreme Weight Loss Makeover Edition. (I love you Chris Powell.)You put a miniature white board on the wall in your room and write inspiring quotes on it next to your goal weight. You go in uncharacteristically optimistic despite any evidence that you will be able to accomplish this. You feel invincible within 20 minutes of brainstorming about dieting and order just one last pizza for old times sake. You tell yourself it actually doesn't taste as good as you thought it did, but still eat it all.


You tell yourself you're going to learn how to cook. You Google recipes that require a minimum five hours of time and close to 153 ingredients. You look at the nonfat, organic, gluten-free, low-carb, reduced sodium Beef Wellington recipe and think, 'I can do this.'

When your friends talk about how amazing vegetables taste, you enthusiastically agree. Yes, vegetables do taste awesome; far better than pizza or french fries or cake. Those things are super gross and unhealthy, and you can't believe you ever shoved them in your face with the ravenous energy of a starving banshee. Eight slices of pizza? How could I have ever eaten that much? This floret of broccoli and 2 oz chicken breast makes me SOOOOO FULLLLL.

            "I already feel so amazing."

 

Anger

Around day three, you realize you've made a horrible mistake. Vegetables suck donkey dick. Your friends invite you out for drinks and you set the bar on fire because IF YOU CAN'T DRINK NO ONE CAN!! Every time you have to wake up at 5 in the morning to make your pitiful, insubstantial lunch, you fling the salad into the Tupperware with as much force as possible when flinging lettuce. You get pissed that you can't fling it hard enough so you make your husband wake up even though he doesn't need to get up for another two hours.

Your work place becomes a field of land mines and co-workers begin walking on eggshells around you. If one more person gasps in shock when they find out you are exercising, you will Jerry McGuire the fucking place. You watch in disdain as they gleefully pound back piles of empty carbs and eat gorengan (literal translation: fried shit). When someone comes over to your desk to offer you a Hershey's Kiss, you breathe fire and engulf their entire body in flames as a warning to the other office staff.

A particularly bitter realization creeps its way in as you come to understand that cooking is already

awful, and atrocious after a long day at work. You cook anyway, and then eat your monstrous creations because you fucking paid for this health food and you're not about to throw it away.

The white board on your wall has been broken across your knee. You feel hungry every moment of the day and anytime someone asks how you are you respond with LAY OFF ME I'M STARVING!

Bargaining 

You've gotten used to the calorie deficit but you are desperately trying to find substitutions for your favorite foods. You make pizza with cauliflower crust and even though you're a devout atheist, you say a prayer: "Dear God, if you make this taste like pizza, I will never yell at my husband again."

"Dear God, please eliminate carbs from all foods and I promise to tell people I go to church."

You try it. You chew slowly.

For fuck's sake.

It tastes like cauliflower.

You blame your husband.




You buy a special kitchen appliance that slices vegetables into the form of noodles, because they will definitely taste the same as real noddles.

MAYBE...

NO! 

 

You say one more silent prayer of desperation and then succumb to the emptiness that is your poor, obese existence.

Depression

You've realized that you will never again be able to enjoy food the way you used to and that much of your time spent at restaurants will be devoted to calorie counting and guessing nutrient values.  You know deep down in the pits of your black little heart that for the rest of your life, you will have to watch slim women eat as much as they want and never exercise without the repercussions of being shamed by all of society.

You clutch the white board in your arms and sob quiet tears of desperation. The next day and half is devoted to browsing for pictures of good food on the internet and smelling your old fast food delivery menus.

My primary emotion is hunger.

Acceptance

I currently have nothing to report on this stage.