THE LAMOTT ANTI-DIET PROGRAM

Here is a version of the anti-diet piece I publish every year just before New Year’s Day:

We need to have the same little talk we have every year at this time: You want to feel healthier and that is an excellent goal, but I know many of you are secretly planning to start a New Year's diet. I don’t want to be a buzzkill but this newest one won’t work, either. I used to start diets, too. I hated to mention this to my then-therapist. She would say cheerfully, "Oh, that's great, honey. How much weight are you hoping to gain?"

I got rid of her. No one talks to me that way.

Well, okay, maybe it was 10 years later, after she had helped lead me back home, to myself, to radical self-care, to friendship with my own heart and body, to a glade that had always existed deep inside me, to (mostly) healthy eating, but that I'd avoided all those years by over-achieving, dieting, binging, people-pleasing and so on.

Now when I decide to go on a diet, I say it to myself: "Great, honey. How much weight are you hoping to gain?" Here is what's true: Diets make you gain weight, 95 percent of the time. We gain it back, plus five pounds. We lose it, it finds us again and brings a few friends.

I may have mentioned several hundred times that I have had the tiniest, tiniest struggle with food and body image for the last - well, lifetime. Hardly worth mentioning. It is a long story, having to do with childhood injuries to my sense of self, terrible anxiety, and my parents weirdness around food and weight. So starving, or counting carbs, and chastising myself for slipping up and eating a banana, probably cannot heal this.

I hate to say it, but only profound self-love will work, union with that scared breath-holding self, and not a diet that forbids apples or avocado. Horribly, but as usual, only kindness and grace , which is spiritual WD-40, can save us.

Can you put the scale away for a week? Okay, then how about four days? I have been addicted to the scale, too, which is like needing Roy Cohn to weigh in every morning on my value as a human being.

Can you put away your tight pants, that hurt. Wear forgiving pants! The world is too hard as it is, without letting your pants have an opinion on how you are doing. I struggle with enough esteem issues without letting my jeans get in on the act with random thoughts about my butt.

By the same token, it feels great to be healthy. Some of you need to be under a doctor's care. None of you need to join Jenny Craig. It won't work. You will lose tons of weight quickly, and gain it all back, plus five, at best.

By the same token,  I have a serious love for and problem with sugar: If I start eating it, I sometimes can't stop. I don't have an off switch, any more than I do with alcohol. Given a choice, I will eat Raisinets until the cows come home, and then those cows will be tense, and bitter, because I will have gotten lipstick on the straps of their feed bags.

But you crave what you eat and I was in craving sweets all the time, so I stopped eating sugar. It’s been relatively easy. I eat a lot of fruit most days and don’t at all miss hiding in my room or car with one pound bags of so-called Fun Sized candy bars, or, in one case, an entire carrot cake.

It's really okay, though, to have (or pray for) an awakening around your body. It's okay to stop hitting the snooze button, and to pay attention to what makes you feel great about yourself, one meal and walk (or too) at a time. Unfortunately, it's another inside job. If you are not okay with yourself at 185 pounds, you will not be okay at 150, or even 135, although America’s $72 billion diet industry says otherwise. The self-respect and peace of mind you long for is not out there. It's within. I hate that. I resent that more than I can say. But it's true.

There are ways to improve your health that do not harm your soul. Eat as healthfully as you can, and maybe exercise a bit more, and make sure to wear pants that do not hurt our thighs or your feelings. Doing a three-minute meditation every day won’t hurt. Naps are nice.

I'll leave you with this: I've helped some of the sturdier women at my church get healthy, by suggesting they prepare each meal as if they had asked our beloved pastor to lunch or dinner. They wouldn't say, "Here Pastor, let's eat standing up in the kitchen. This tube of barbecue Pringles is all for you. I have my own," and then stand there gobbling from their own tubular container. No, they'd get out pretty dishes, and arrange wonderful foods on the plates, and set plates at the table, plates filled with love, pride and connection. That's what we have longed for, our whole lives, and get to create. Wow.

Yes to health and radical self-care. Boo to the lying scum diet industry. Love and Cheers!