Diet? What diet?

I was having a conversation the other day with a friend about the question of whether you tell people you’re ‘dieting’ or not. “Sure” he said. “Why not? It’s not a thing to be embarrassed about, is it?”

No. I mean, ‘no, I guess not’. Because I’ve never said it, and I don’t care to. I’m not on a diet. I’m eating carefully, sure, and being aware of not eating to excess if I can help it. I’m aware of what I’m eating, and pleased when it is healthy, and feel slightly naughty when I know it isn’t.

But diet is a VILE word. It’s a state of denial; an impermanent state after which you have to beat yourself up when it all goes belly-up, or rather ‘belly-big, all over again; and, what’s more, it’s a sublimation into a subservient state of eating only when and what people tell you to.
Yes, I have certain problems with authority. What of it?

I understand that diets and diet clubs are very helpful for people - and, to be fair, very effective, which is why people ON them - particularly the diet club thing, be it Weight Watchers or Slimmers World or whatever else - tend to lose weight a lot faster than I have. But for me it has been a slow process of changing the way I think about food - about cooking it, and eating it, and enjoying it.

I have changed the way I eat to eat, where I can, as healthily and deliciously as I can. But I eat what I want to eat. I ain’t on no diet, foo’. No sucker tell ME what I can and cannot eat. Also: I ain’t getting on no plane.
Sorry, I seemed to have turned into Mr T and thought I should probably try to make the best of it.

So eat what I like. I eat what’s in the cupboards and the fridge, which tends to be brown things (brown rice and noodles and things, I mean, rather than ‘poo’) or green things (again, vegetables rather than things that have gone off, although there tend to be some of those in the fridge too, because I am a bit slovenly). I don’t snack on bad stuff, I try not to graze mindlessly when I’m in a place where that would be possible, and I’m steering clear of Guinness and drinking vodka instead. Which, admittedly was pretty easy as I like one very much, and not the other at all. I am eating what many might perceive as diet food, then.

But if I have had a long week and a pissy day, and I’m hungover and grumpy and can’t be arsed to think of anything more constructive, yes of course I’ll have a pizza. A big one, piled with pepperoni and jalapeno peppers and anyone who says I can’t have one had better be prepared for the consequences. And if I’m in a restaurant that serves a big fat steak, you are very mistaken if you think I’m going to order a stuffed pepper.

There is absolutely nothing WRONG with being on a diet, please do not get mistake me. It is just that I am not on one. Not even slightly. No.