I'm not the new me

Do you spend a lot of time thinking about what you eat?

I pressed my index finger next to the sign's question until my gym buddy had finished reading it. Although I'd quickly dismissed the first two questions on the "Do you have an eating disorder sign" posted in the locker room, the third question caught me. While neither of us had anything near an eating disorder, it made me sick to think about how much mental energy we and most women devote daily to just thinking about food and exercise.

I just read I'm not the new me by Wendy McClure. McClure, a self-described "fat girl," struggles to lose weight while defending herself against stereotypes, such as that people who are overweight have low self esteem. There's a great scene when she's trying to recalibrate her bathroom scale and she ends up breaking it, and gets pissed and starts smacking it around, and then realizes what a perfect Made-for-TV-movie moment this is - fat girl finally loses it and takes it out on her scale.

The book is wickedly funny and I recommend it highly (although the ending is tough. The book manages to avoid ending in a cliche, but you also realize how satisfying those cliches are and how much you long for them). But it also made me really sad how much thinking it all required... and how easy it is to slip into that dangerous vortex where your daily happiness level is determined by how much you ate or exercised.

Which all made me wonder... maybe the secret to body image contentedness is not embarking on a new plan or making new charts, but thinking less about it all.