How to lose weight: I've used the 'grow up and stop eating' diet

In middle age comes moderation -- my inner voice finally says "less" instead of "more"

I recently started listening to a food coach named Cookie. Cookie Rosenblum.

Yes, really.

Luckily, I don’t have a sweet tooth so the word cookie does not produce a Pavlovian response that sends me heading to the fridge. If her name was Pizza or Cheese Plate Rosenblum, I would have had to find someone else to talk me through this.

“This” being weight loss. For the first time in my life, I have set myself a weight loss goal and, three weeks in, I am sticking to it. 

Like many middle-aged humans, I started in recent months to feel bloated and heavy and I looked terrible. Suddenly, my eyes had lost their sparkle as they were encircled by puffy eyelids, sitting atop puffy cheeks. I was retaining water to the extent that I could no longer wear rings. My knees hurt going up stairs — even though I’m quite active, and spent the better part of a year doing burpees and yoga and walking five or more days a week. 

I make a point of exercising regularly because, and I cannot overstate this, I live to eat. And cook. And drink wine while I’m eating and cooking. It is my only hobby, my first true love, and my happy place. 

This was greatly fostered by my family situation, having a mother who loved to cook delicious meals every night, a father who became an amateur wine expert, and an extended family filled with bakers and restauranteurs and truly talented home cooks who were always getting together for feasts. When I was 10, my parents moved us to Italy, a food paradise if there ever was one. Of course I had considerable trepidation at the prospect of leaving Brooklyn and starting a new life in a foreign country. I wrote in my diary a list of pros and cons. In the cons column, leaving friends, my family, my pet guinea pigs, changing schools, and not speaking Italian. 

In the pros column? Pizza and pasta.

Shovelling food into my mouth — especially pasta — has long been my favourite activity.

When Cookie the food coach asked on her podcast “Do you use food as a reward?” I asked back, genuinely dumbfounded: “um, what other kind of reward IS THERE?” I still haven’t figured out the answer.

One really good thing about getting older, amid all the bad things, is that you get to a point where you can just stop. You can be moderate. One day at the beginning of this year, I just heard my inner voice saying: you are reading to tackle your last remaining vice. That was at the beginning of February and the following day, I began fasting. 

For a month, I did long fasts several days a week but ate whatever I wanted when I wasn’t fasting. Then I bought a scale and for the first time in years I weighed myself. After I got over my shock and horror at seeing I weighed as much as I did at nine months pregnant 12 years ago, I realised that I would have to do more. I did a three day juice fast, the only time since infancy — outside sickness or childbirth —  that I went more than 20 hours without chewing food. Then, I began pre-planning my meals, not just eating whatever took my fancy. 

I’m now two weeks in and have lost 10 pounds and logged 229 fasting hours. But even more importantly, I have set myself a specific goal and given myself a realistic timeframe to achieve it. This is a radical departure from my normal modus operandi. I am not normally a goal-setter, I’m more of a go with the flow, live for the moment kinda chick. I like spontaneity and change. I’m a restless Sagittarius and I love surprises. Committing to an outcome really makes me uncomfortable. A few years ago, when Jordan Peterson was beginning his rise to fame, I listened to him talk a lot about the importance of setting a course for yourself so you have something to aim at, a direction of travel. I was never able to do that. 

I think I might be ready now. 

The brutal truth of the matter is that being thinner is — for me, anyway — categorically better. I lost a huge amount of weight 8 years ago (on the divorce diet, I don’t recommend it) and I felt so good about how I looked that it actually saved me from being emotionally devastated over the end of my marriage. Even though I was going through hell, I felt great about myself. Being able to slip on a pair of jeans with no resistance from my thighs was the most free I’ve ever felt. Growing up female in an image-saturated culture inevitably means a complex emotional relationship with how you look in the harsh light of a dressing room cubicle. Being thin releases you from that age-old fear.

But even though I looked great, my mind was not squared away. I still had many adversities ahead of me and unlike in past times, when I could move away to escape them, this time I was stuck. These travails could not be run away from and I coped with food and wine. My boyfriend and I started a ramen business. That did not help. A bakery near our shop started making the most fabulous sourdough bread and really good bagels. That did not help either. I discovered a decent bottle of red wine for under £10 that I could easily down in one night, perfect for sloughing off the stress of the daily grind. 

Needless to say, my freedom jeans are now packed away in a bag.

Even as I comfort ate my way through the difficulties of the last few years, I was seeking out and absorbing information that would eventually serve me and lead me to where I am now. People’s stories of recovering from addiction, going from crackhead to ultra-marathoner. Stories of transformation from broke, people-pleasing, allergy-ridden, nervous wreck to a successful, healthy, independent woman. Stories of self-determination and change, making something great out of yourself even if you started off in darkness and adversity.

Soon I saw that there is a thread connecting stories of weight loss and fitness, recovery from alcohol, drugs or co-dependency, and entrepreneurialism and wealth creation. That thread is personal sovereignty, accountability and effort. Keep pulling on that thread, and you soon end up in a place where woke ideology is not just bad for politics, it’s bad for the soul. 

We all become attached to our weaknesses and failures. The longer we carry them with us, the more significance they take on, to the point were we almost treasure them and want to keep them close. I’m like that with food. The thought of calorie counting makes me feel real anger, even as I miss the feeling of being thin. Woke ideology tells us that our weaknesses and failures are the fault of systems and society — factors outside of us that we cannot control. Trying to become better is therefore pointless.

Gina Florio, a conservative who is prominent on social media, said in an interview: “Sports and fitness are almost inherently conservative, they’re based on merit, hard work, tangible results. If you work hard enough, you can lose 20 pounds.”

Personally, I still reject the label of conservative. But if I am forced to chose between conservatives who take responsibility for their lives, health and thoughts, and liberals who blame “the system” — then I’ll side with the conservatives every time. 

But putting labels like “conservative” “liberal” or “woke” on our political/personal beliefs is now a huge obstruction to dialogue. So if you, like me, are struggling under these labels, ask yourself: do you believe in your personal sovereignty or not? Because therein lies liberation.