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IF
NOT DIETING, THEN WHAT? I was diagnosed at age 13, just before puberty and all that that entails. My hormones were raging, my skin was spotty, and I wanted more than anything to be skinny and beautiful and perfect. Not an uncommon dream for your average adolescent. Trouble is, of course, that being 13 and being a type-one diabetic are two of the most incompatible states known to humankind, in terms of developing a healthy self-esteem and body image at any rate. Not unlike many other diabetics...actually, not unlike many other 13 year olds, I began to battle with my body and with my psyche until I had such low self esteem that I used to slap my own face in self-hatred.
I really wish that somebody had given me this book then. What "If Not Dieting, Then What?" is all about is how to eat as you would if "diet" was a word you had never heard. Just as the title says - what do you do, what do you think, what are you, if you're not dieting? If you have been on the roller-coaster ride familiar to all chronic dieters, the deny-gorge cycle, then chances are that you've lost whatever natural hunger signals you were born with. You don't know what being hungry feels like. You're not sure what "comfortably full" feels like. You don't know how to eat something, really enjoy eating it, and feel nicely satisfied afterwards and how to push back from the table and get on with life. At least, that's how I was at 22 when I began to wake up from the toxic diet coma. Kausman explains how to hear your body's needs and how to trust its natural instincts. The aim is to eat to satisfy hunger (elementary, my dear Watson) and to reduce or eliminate what he calls "non-hungry" eating. He debunks a lot of eating-mythology, from the "finish everything on your plate", to the popular "this is good food, that is bad food" fable. "Enjoy your food", "Treat food as neither your friend, nor your enemy, but as sustenance", and "Accept that diets don't work, never have worked, and never will work", are some of the messages that the book makes loud and clear. He makes suggestions on how to recognize your eating habits, how to figure out which are healthy and which are sabotaging your efforts to achieve and maintain your healthiest weight and which are sabotaging your ability to think well of yourself. He suggests strategies on how to normalize your eating behaviour, how to eat when you want to and not when you think you have to, how to eat until your satisfied, how to choose the food that you want to eat and not what some book, or some pyramid, or your mother tells you to. He believes that you know what's best for you; or rather your body knows what's best for you. You just have to learn to hear it properly. Of course, being diabetic makes that the "normal eating" ideal much harder to attain. Diabetes, by its very nature, requires us to be ever mindful of what we eat, to participate in the diet-mentality, for more than aesthetic reason. Diet is part of our life. We are perpetual carbohydrate counters, regimented eaters, and we are not able, despite medical advances, to just eat what the hell we want, whenever the hell we want to, without worrying about the consequences. So given that, what is there in this book to recommend itself to us? Answer is, quite a lot actually. Even with the constraints that insulin timing, or dosage, or the glycemic index places on us, listening to our body and debunking the diet myth is still vitally important. I would hazard that it is even more important than for "normal" people, since it is so easy to loose touch with ourselves and our natural instincts in the paranoia that surrounds the "are we being 'good little diabetics'" mind-set. Food-guilt (the "wrong food", the "bad food") is at an all-time peak for diabetics, and isn't helped by the fact that wherever we turn there's always some well-meaning busy body or other, with eyebrow raised saying, "should you be eating that?". I would say that diabetics need to be able to have a normal relationship with food, in order to be healthy human beings. And I don't believe that it's an unattainable ideal. With modern medical technology we do have the ability to eat a wider range of foods, at a wider range of times, in differing quantities (more or less depending on how you feel) without fearing hideous consequences. It might require a bit of research, and a bit more responsibility and understanding, but if it means you can actually enjoy the food you eat and feel happy after you've eaten it, then it has to be a good thing. Best yet, there's a lot in the book that are tactics that a diabetic could put to good use without changing a single dose. Like, how to avoid buying into the "perfect body" bullshit, how to comfort and nurture yourself without tim-tams, and how to de-mystify food, to put it in its proper place. This is a book that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone who has ever had a "food-issue", men and women, diabetics and non-diabetics alike. Kausman talks about "shifting the paradigm" away from the simplistic insurance-healthy-weight charts and the prescriptive "eat this today, tomorrow and for the next 80 days to loose x amount of weight" diets. He wants society to move towards a greater understanding of the complexity of issues related to "ideal weight". He wants us, as individuals, to undertake to treat ourselves better, accept and love ourselves the way we are, to normalize our relationship with food and gradually move to the weight at which we, individually, are most comfortable. Ultimately, he wants each of us to foster a lust for life, with no regard to the number of kgs on the scales. I am 100% with him on this. And I guess you could say I'm at "Step One" on this paradigm shift. Dr Kausman has also set up a website that provides information and support for people trying to navigate the food/body image minefield. (It's also where I ordered a copy of his book - delivered in lightening fast speed!): http://www.ifnotdieting.com This page reviewed 26 October, 2005
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By
the time I was 22, I had pushed my way through three different eating
disorders, bulimia, anorexia and compulsive over-eating. Food
was my comfort, my solace, and my vicious enemy rolled into one. Every
significant date; New Year, first day of the month, second full-moon
in November, I began a new "diet" and resolved "to only eat fruit for
a week", or "or drink a litre of water before putting any food in my
mouth". Other times I ate a vat of icecream in one sitting, unconsciously
shoveling the stuff into my mouth, and hardly even tasting it. For two
days I ate nothing, existing on water, fruit juice and cigarettes. At
22, and after nine years of diabetes I had such a disordered eating
pattern that I had no idea what "hungry" felt like or what "normal eating"
looked like. It would be true to say that food occupied my thoughts
80 or 90% of the time. 