My aunt posted this article about why diets don't work. I read the whole thing because a) my family is size obsessed and b) I could easily substitute "food" for alcohol or underwear shopping or opiods or caramel apple Sugar Babies.

There are physiological reasons why diets fail: dieting, like drinking a bottle of wine a day or shooting heroin regularly, changes your body's regulators so that you don't know what you need except for MORE MORE MORE. (I am not a scientist or smart even and this is a gross oversimplification.) However, her solution, the one she imparts to clients seeking help for disordered eating, is to start being mindful about eating, helping clients identify if he or she is eating because of hunger or something else. Many clients are so removed from their bodies (and emotions) that they have a hard time knowing what real hunger feels like. I could relate to this idea of being detached. This particular addict/alcoholic couldn't tease out of my white noise of emotions what I was feeling--anxiety? fear? happiness?--just that I needed something RIGHT NOW! to assuage them.

She doesn't ask her clients to stop or alter their eating, just to think. No judgments are attached. (This is where our programs differ; I had to stop with the wine.) Her goal is not to make her clients skinny; in fact, she debunks the "research" that says that Americans are dropping dead from being overweight; that it isn't, as most people believe, a death sentence to be overweight. Her goal is to get her clients to a point of acceptance about their sizes, appetites and emotions. In short, to let go of the outcomes and accept their truths.

In my short time in recovery, this is what I've come to accept: that life for me is pretty much completely about acceptance. I'm not the prettiest or thinnest or smartest girl in the room. (Although I can say that a lot of the time I was the drunkest.) I am not the world's best mother. I am occasionally funny. I married a person who was the right guy for me in 1991, but not the right guy for me in 2008. I am often worried and quick to anger. I'm hugely defensive and have big, ass fears of looking like an idiot. I will get more rejections, guaranteed. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing most of the time. I am human and have no control over anything. Stuff like that. And it's starting to be okay.