Tag: Healthy eating

Fighting will not solve anything: a pacifist’s view of obesity

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The UK Government appear to have noticed recently that there might be quite a lot of fat people in this country. This is a problem because one of the impacts obesity can have is making you more likely to suffer complications from Coronavirus. Therefore, it is now your moral duty to Lose Weight For Lizzie, England and Saint George! This sudden awakening has prompted ridicule, fear, anger, and frustration: partly because the headlines are very, very wrong; and partly because they are probably right.

Why are they wrong? The easy answer is that there is no easy answer to this complex situation. Just as there is no single way to exercise, worship God or decorate a home, there is no single reason that people are obese. There are many medications and health conditions that can result in weight gain; there are societal and cultural implications; there are lifestyle factors and financial involvement. To suggest that all of these can be overcome by stopping junk food adverts for children and providing bike maintenance is, to put it mildly, utterly missing the point. Instead, it is taking a cheap shot at a group that we as a country are already conditioned to demonise: an easy target for a quick headline, and don’t worry if it all goes wrong, it isn’t your fault these people are too lazy to help themselves.

Me on our last wedding anniversary. BMI: definitely in the red.

I am obese. I haven’t always been; for many years I was solidly overweight, unable to drop down into healthy, but equally able to keep my BMI below that scary red “you will die and it will all be your own fault” zone on the charts. I’m tall and in proportion with myself, so even health professionals didn’t always realise I had a problem. They used to look surprised and change tack abruptly when I stepped on the scales, looking slightly embarrassed and talking about the problems of “carrying a little extra” – like I’d just picked up one too many books at the library. I have most of a lifetime’s experience of hating the “little extra” I have grown used to carrying; but speaking about it as something separate to me, something inconvenient that can be put down as soon as possible and forgotten about, won’t help. These rolls of fat are as much a part of me as my greying hair, my automatic smile, my heart and my pancreas and my memories. They may stop me doing some things (fitting into old clothes and choosing the right sizes in charity shops, for example, or touching the floor instead of my toes) but so do my memories. So does my fear. So, for that matter, do my job and my family and my finances and all the other pressures that hold me here, for worse and for better.

Given all this, then, how can any of the current headlines about obesity be in any way right? Because, although the message is clumsy and temporary and turning a process of love into a glorification of violence, it is a message with truth at its heart. I do want to lead a more sustainable life, and that means changing the things that have helped to keep me, at least, obese. I don’t like buying more food than we need, and one reason for buying too much is because we are eating too much (or sometimes that we’re buying treats for our kids to get them through the craziest, scariest months of their lives so far and then eating them ourselves to get us through those crazy, scary months instead, and end up buying more). Food with fewer ingredients and less processing is in general more sustainable, likely to be produced more locally, is more linked to natural diets and more likely to keep us full for longer: better for the planet, better for our bodies, better for our minds. Making food at home and bringing it to work and picnics means less plastic, less food waste, less chocolate mysteriously finding it’s way into my shopping basket, my handbag, my bulging waistline. It’s not all about food, either. Sustainable school runs would mean scooting, cycling, starting a walking bus around our estate; not driving to school slightly over the speed limit, late and knowing that that will mean sitting in traffic as I continue on to work. Sustainable days would be activities that build relationships and boost oxytocin, having fun playing together, exploring together, working together; not only shopping, eating, watching TV together.

It sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? A lifestyle that is healthy, happy and reduces the risk of dying horribly while people explain to you how you could have avoided this if you had just taken a little more responsibility for your own choices. Why would anyone not choose that option? So why is it, then, that I, and so many like me, are still obese?

I don’t have the answers here. If I did, I’d be out there marketing how easy it is to do this: if I can, anyone can! Instead, all I can do is share the things I have learned so far. One is that blaming people who are overweight is about as helpful as a chocolate teapot, and likely to be swallowed just as easily. There are a few people who have made conscious choices to eat food that makes them fat. There aren’t many of them, and they’re not going to be paying attention to the advice given out by the government in contradiction of their life choices, so let’s not get caught up in that. Let’s assume instead that excess weight is usually the result of other influences, not a goal in itself.

Sometimes it is lack of knowledge and education. Knowing that things with high calories are bad but never having been told why can lead to choices like eating Quavers instead of nuts or unlabelled, un-traffic-lighted carrot sticks as a snack. Never having eaten freshly cooked food can mean it is overwhelming to think about cooking yourself. Local council regulations that say that a microwave is essential in a kitchen but an oven is not can prevent many people from ever having the option of eating healthy food. Educating, discussing choices, changing priorities can change these things, but they will not change everything.

Living healthy also means living slow; dreaming slow; cooking, eating, shopping slow. It means having time to plan your shopping, to cook from scratch, to eat slowly enough to know when you are full and have time to stop eating. It means having time to walk or cycle, not drive in a race to squeeze everything in. It means having time to think and reflect and reject, not just react.

Changing shape means changing priorities. It means looking at where your energies are currently pointing and being able, and willing, to change direction if you need to. It may mean putting less energy into working and less value into financial gains. It may mean laying down commitments, hobbies, roles at church or, you know, Quaker Trusteeship (looking closely in the mirror) in order to have the headspace and diary freedom to be more active. It may mean letting go of good things as well as bad. And it may be – for me, it is – that these are not sacrifices that feel right at the moment. I’ve worked hard to get my priorities where they are now, balancing self and work and family and faith. It’s a nerve-wracking balancing act as it is, and if I add anything more in, however healthy that may be, the whole crazy caboodle will come crashing down in ruins.

If we’re agreed that headline-grabbing contradictions are not going to win the good fight and free us from obesity, what will? It has to be an entire lifestyle shift. A celebration of each of us as we are, without the blame and condemnation that lead so many into disordered eating. A commitment to ourselves and our finite energy and time, that lets us say no when we can fit no more into a day, that allows decent sleep patterns and prioritising care for ourselves and for others. A commitment to model good practise in cutting off the stresses and strains of work when we need to. If the government wants to fight this, let’s see real action. Let’s see legislation that encourages employers to allow their employees to take mental health days off. Let’s see rewards in the workplace for volunteering, so that you don’t have to sacrifice yourself in order to both do good for others and earn enough money to put healthy food on the table. Let’s see town planning that builds exercise into daily tasks; that put fun into routine activities; that makes love and loyalty more rewarded than individualism and self-promotion. Let’s celebrate who we are and how we look just as we are. And you know what? When we stop interfering and just let them get on with the process of living a good life, it’s possible that our bodies will end up sorting themselves out.

A normal city street with people walking and buildings in the background. In the bottom right are two people, waiting for a bus, swinging happily on the bus stop swings.
Bus stop swings in Montreal, Canada – activity and joy in the everyday

New year, same world: a million marvellous shades of grey

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New Year’s Day is at once mystical and terribly ordinary. It symbolises the endless possibilities of fresh starts and new horizons, stretching before us like an ocean of snow that no one has yet jumped through, or pinched all the deepest drifts of for their own snow sculptures. At exactly the same time, it is an ordinary, boring day, full of hungover, sleep deprived adults and children who have reached the end of their secret stashes of chocolate and are suffering their first sugar low for two weeks. Every year, I tell myself I won’t buy into the general hyperbole and hype of NYE. Every year, I am lying to myself.

I love New Year. I enter fully into the principle of fresh starts, New Me initiatives, plans and schemes to sort out the things that have been bugging me about myself since September. They usually start well, not least because I have been saving them up and planning for them, putting off doing anything about them until we have Survived Christmas, since about the middle of November. But, let’s face it, they do always peeter out (Exhibit A: my #Challenge2019). That too is a part of this season.

There is something definitely both backwards and forwards facing, Janus in January (hey, could that be deliberate?) about this time of year, a thinness and honesty that can creep through the mugginess and unexpected nothingness of the weather and the atmosphere around today. We look back at what was different this time last year, or, in decades with a 0 at the end, at what we were doing this time a decade ago. And we prove that, once again, the French were onto something with the idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

  • Family life has to have seen both the most and the least changes over the last decade. I now have two children instead of none (hooray!) and, as of last week, one cat instead of two (sob). I have the same husband, who I love in whole new ways. We have developed and strengthened how we listen to and support each other, and aggravate each other in all the same old ways.
  • Church life was in a village church I only fully appreciated when we moved away (so typical). We have moved on from the church we moved on to, moved on and into a new new Quaker community too. We are established and have even pencilled our way onto the tea rota. Those shoots and roots that come only from a worshipping community are deepening, slowly, painfully sometimes, gaining nutrients from the darkness and the dampness of being unobserved.
  • Politics ten years ago was infinitely different. We had a government no one liked, an NHS no one thought would see out the decade, and people on the far right and the far left both had megaphones and visions that had no recognition within the mainstream. Oh, wait…

So the mystical nature of New Year encourages us to look back and marvel at the things we have done, the things we have created and sustained and quit, the things that have changed us and hardened us and tempered us. And shimmering, mirage-like through the mysticism, is that same pile of dirty washing up you didn’t quite get around to yesterday; the same reading from the scales (if you’re lucky); the same unfinished to do lists and unmarked assignments (speaking for a friend, naturally). And, at your core, under the resolutions, the intentions and the incomplete Forth Bridge nature of the household chores, is the same person. Same hopes. Same inconsistencies. Same drive and same stumbling blocks. And that is a good thing.

It’s a good thing because the times that have gone past are entirely necessary to the stories of our lives. The mistakes and almost-misses are frequently the bases of our favourite stories, the ones that get told year after year until they have a life of their own and are part of our shared community. (My personal favourite is a story from my wedding day, involving a mysteriously missing taxi, replaced with a decrepit old Nissan Micra, uncomfortably squished full of my hooped wedding dress – with a train, elvish sleeves, and a cape, because if you can’t dress like that on your wedding day, when can you? My husband assures me it could not have happened as I tell it; but I point to the number of people over the years who have heard it, laughed at it, retold it. If that doesn’t make it part of the story of that day, what would?)

The stories I tell and the actions I take are so often stark, with crystal-sharp outlines, black and white. My job is incredible, or it’s killing me. Dieting is awesome or the work of the devil. My children give me life or drain their energy directly from my soul. But life isn’t really like that, is it? It can be a rainy day with an afternoon of laughter and board games and baking and petty arguments and everything else that makes up the best, most forgettable, parts of family life. Depression isn’t limited to the winter. It is, I’m told, possible to eat a chocolate digestive and not write off the whole day as a breakdown in healthy living. So that is my challenge to myself for 2020: to look beyond black and white, and see the glorious technicolour embodied within a million shades of grey.

Clouds shadow a face - an angel, a goddess, an inanimate stone figure? - who gazes beyond the middle distance. Behind her, a clock spirals into oblivion.

https://pixabay.com/photos/fantasy-clock-statue-light-spiral-2879946/

Waste not; want a lot

Simply Messy2 Comments

I have just come back from a little time at the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. It’s hard to explain what this means to people who have never experienced it, but here’s my current best attempt. Over 1000 Quakers from all over Britain (and a fair few visitors from all over the world) gather in one building in central London for 3 days, and worship and work together to discern where we are at the moment, and where God needs us to be, in ourselves, our community, and the world. It is the very definition of organised chaos – there are never going to be enough toilets for that number of people to use in a 20 minute session break – with a lot of hugging (not a fan) and a lot of gin (bit too much of a fan). Before this year, I would have described the group as fairly homogeneous, but I wouldn’t do that now. Although it is not yet close to being the embodiment of diversity in action that we would like it to be, I think as a Society we will be healthier, happier and able to welcome others more sincerely if we continue and deepen the work done so far, speaking as clearly about how we are already different as we do about how we are the same.

“Quakers Meeting” by Thomas Rowlandson is licensed under CC CC0 1.0

As part of a wider exploration of Privilege and Power, we were also thinking about sustainability in the face of the climate emergency. The words currently ringing through my mind, pushing me out of my comfort zone in all the right ways, are “I need to do everything I can do. Then I need to do a little bit more.” But I don’t want to do a little bit more. I feel like a lot of the time I’m at breaking point already. How can I do more?

But, of course, I can. No, it won’t be easy, or I would have done it before. But as the same speaker said, I can’t look my children in the eye and say, in 30 years time, that I’m sorry I didn’t love them enough to leave them a world they can enjoy with their own children, in the way I can enjoy this world with mine. How can I deprive them of sharing the thrill of rolling headlong down hills covered in wildflowers (and plenty of things we all pretend are not hiding under the grasses); of counting the spots on ladybirds; of always knowing there will be enough food in the cupboards to keep them safe from hunger (even when half a loaf of bread has once more gone fluffy in the bread bin)?

So I need to do more. What can I do? How am I being called to change my life, and through that, help to make being more sustainable part of the collective default?

A phrase that I always associate with my grandmother (who was born into extreme poverty, lived in London through both World Wars and lost her parents-in-law to the Blitz) is “waste not, want not”. She also loved “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” In my head, whenever I hear that, I hear it in my own mother’s voice, with that slightly horrified tone of “did I just turn into my mother?” When I say it (and I do), I would imagine I say it with exactly the same inflection…

Waste not, want not. It has a visceral memory of rationing running clear through it. And it is in direct opposition to most of the way that things are made and marketed in modern society. But what does it mean to me?

The main areas of unquestionable waste in my daily habits are buying clothes I do not need, and eating too much. And in both of these areas, saying no to wasteful habits means saying no to things that I really, really want, if only in that moment. Saying no to consuming more than I need, more than is healthy, more than is right, is saying no to waste. It is also saying that I have to learn to resist the yearning that floods through me for that moment of indulgence and zoning out when tucking into a doughnut or three in the gasp between lessons; or the siren call of inhabiting that body and luxuriating in that lifestyle slithering its way into my subconscious as I dash into town for pens or the chemist.

I am a firm lover of lists and making plans (and usually slightly weaker at actually actioning those plans), and so I have been thinking about how I can create ways around me of reducing waste, and in particular, of stopping throwing away so much spoiled food, and eating so much food that I really don’t need – ways that are sustainable long term, by not adding straws to our already-creaking camels’ backs. I started this year intending to do something different and sustainable every month, a lifestyle change I called #Challenge2019. This (admittedly quite overdue now) is its next installment. So here we go.

I have said before that food waste in our household happens for a number of reasons. I buy healthy food and then don’t have the energy to cook it, so it goes off. (I’m not talking about going past its sell by date here, incidentally – I’m talking liquid cucumbers and green yogurt). I buy chocolate and crisps as occasional treats, and we all end up eating them as the satsumas go hard and brown in the fruit bowl. I cook what feels like the right amount of food, and put too much on our plates, so that we all end up either throwing some away (The Paleontologist) or eating until our tummies hurt (both The Cowgirl and me). I come home from work or days out, full of good intentions, and then snack on cheese because I need a quick boost and everything else takes effort. Then I put too much food on my plate when tea is finally ready and the cycle continues.

Working on all these things at once is impossible for me. Trust me – I’ve tried it I don’t know how many times, and it has never worked. Small changes, embedded one by one and built on slowly, is the only way I can see this working. This week, we’re looking at 5 a day. As a family, our challenge is to eat 5 portions of fruit or veg a day. If we do, we each get to put a cork (reused, of course 😉) into a pot. When there are a full week’s corks in there, we get a family treat.

How does this help sustainability, I hear you ask? I’m hoping, in lots of ways. It will mean snacking on the short-lived fruit and veg already in the house, instead of crisps and sweets. It will encourage me to incorporate more veg into meals, and hopefully give the girls the incentive to eat them instead of them going straight from the pan into the food waste canister. As we all get better at adding daily corks to the family total, I’m also hoping to bring in ideas about where our fruit, in particular, was grown, and how it reached us. And yes, it’s also about encouraging us all to eat more healthily, which might also help me to fit into more of my old clothes, meaning I don’t have to buy more when I have a whole wardrobe of clothes already that I don’t want to admit I may never be able to zip up again. Wouldn’t it be great to address both areas of waste in my life at once?

Is this going to save the world? Clearly not, with just me on my own, saying the same thing over and over to my nuclear family. Is it going to help? Yes. It will help me, but it is also a way of living my faith and my conviction, making the choices and sacrifices I can right now, helping my children and myself see I mean what I say, and that hard choices for me can look everyday and commonplace for others around me. And that’s ok. They may have their own hard decisions which I can support them with, which if we’re all lucky may be something that someone else they know has already overcome, and can show them the way around.

This is me doing everything I can, and then a little bit more. When this is normal, I will do a little bit more of the little bits more. What do you do that is a little bit more? And what can I do to help?

A delicious minefield

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I have just completed the first big food shop since before Christmas, much to the relief of the entire family. This means that we should no longer be forced to eat pasta with a sauce spiced up with leftover salsa in an attempt to put the shopping off for as long as possible use up all our leftovers.

My shopping basket was about as stereotypical as it is possible to be in January, apart from the fact that it did not contain celery. It was filled with fresh vegetables, supplemented with whole-wheat pasta, and contained no alcohol or caffeine – though that’s mostly because we topped those up a lot more recently than Christmas.

As someone with a minor obsession with list-making, I plan the food shopping in our household, mapping out what we are going to eat through the week, and buying the ingredients accordingly. Like drinking black coffee, it’s a habit I’ve carried over from my student days, when £10 had to feed me for the week. Any number of websites will tell you that doing this will help you to cut down on your food waste and the amount you spend on shopping. I wish they could see our fridge at the end of a bad week, is all I can say.

The cupboards are bulging as much as our waistlines after Christmas…
… As is the fridge!

Food has to be one of the most complex minefields in today’s society, knocking me sideways every time I sit down to plan a meal. If it contains nutrients of any description, and any form of protein other than chicken nuggets, The Paleontologist is likely to gag over it and eat no more than three mouthfuls. On the other hand, if it has cheese or some form of carbohydrates, The Cowgirl will eat it until she makes herself sick (I really wish I was speaking metaphorically there…) Trying to be more conscious of food waste and the energy used in food production means I want to cook food that will be eaten, and give us all the energy we need for the day, but also that I don’t want too much instant food. On the other hand, after a day of teaching with lunch shovelled down at my desk, I need meals that can be cooked in half an hour or less. I would love to eat more plant-based proteins, but I’m married to someone who will only eat lentils if they are heavily disguised, preferably as a steak.

As if that wasn’t enough, you then get into the dilemmas of trying to raise body positive girls. Reducing our impact on the climate means eating more local, unprocessed food, and not wasting it by throwing half of it away at the end of the meal. So I find myself encouraging The Paleontologist to eat – and then remembering I promised myself to never tell my children that they have to clear their plates, or use pudding as bribery, as that can lead them to being unable to tell whether they are full for themselves or not. What happens if she is actually full, and I’m making her overeat? But what if she isn’t, she’s just being fussy, and I’m wasting food by throwing it away? Add into all of this the fact that I am, as one observer put it, of “Traditional Build”, and the dilemmas increase. I have spent my lifetime disappointed by my physical appearance; hang-ups I am struggling not to pass on to my children. I don’t want them feeling that dieting is something you have to do, as a woman, to fit in with society. But they’re already taking selfies better than I can (The Paleontologist has the pout down perfectly) and I didn’t teach her that – I don’t know how to do it myself. So how much control do I have over any of this anyway?

What is the solution to all of this? How can you balance the messages about the risk of obesity with wanting children who are body confident? How do you balance teaching them to listen to their own appetites and the needs of their bodies with reducing food waste – including that wasted by eating it when we don’t need to? And how do you do it all whilst knowing that at least once a week, the food plan will go out the window and you’ll be doing chicken nuggets and chips, as that is, despite all the careful planning, all you actually have the energy for?

So far, the best I’ve come up with is to muddle through with a mish-mash of every theory in moderation – which is, incidentally, my approach to every other parenting choice too. There are times I encourage them to eat, and times I encourage them to stop. We talk about food waste, and listening to our own bodies. We talk about eating because it’s habit (yes, even The Cowgirl is old enough to be doing that already) and knowing when to stop. We talk about the kinds of food you need to make you big and strong and fast and help your brain to work, and we pig out on chocolate in front of a film when that’s all any of us are up to. It’s not the best of any solution, but for now, we seem to be muddling through. If you have any better ideas, though, I would love to hear them!

art broken explosion glass
Photo by Stokpic on Pexels.com