Another factor that must be considered is the time factor. It takes time to plan and implement a healthy diet.
I know this, because over the last three years, my husband and I have lost quite a bit of weight. I’ve lost around 80 pounds, and my husband has lost around 30 pounds.
Perhaps for people who have done it all their lives, it’s no big deal. But for us, it meant a complete change of lifestyle, planning, writing out our food plan, shopping for all this food, cooking all this food, storing all this food, and cleaning up after cooking and storing all this food.
It’s so much easier to just go out to eat for every meal! Or just buy junk–ready-to-eat foods like chips, cookies and other sweets, cold cuts, macaroni and cheese, etc.
One of the things that enabled us to do all this planning, shopping, etc. was the fact that our children had grown up and were no longer at home. We were able to cut back on a lot of our community, school, and church involvements, which left us with more time to concentrate on healthy eating.
In December of 2011, we started slipping back into our old ways again. Everything was just so incredibly busy. I had several piano gigs (longterm), as well as a few major community involvements, and we started doing more at the skating rink again. In addition, our jobs started heating up and we had to scamper to keep ourselves employed in a very bad economy.
So we started going out to eat for more meals. Now that doesn’t have to mean disaster for healthy eating. It’s possible to order a small hamburger, no bun, with a side of fruit or veges instead of fries, and eat no dessert–very healthy and lo-cal. And for a while, we did this. But then we started ordering more fried pork tenderloin sandwiches instead of small hamburgers. And then we added fries instead of steamed veges. And then we ordered desserts.
Along with this, we started cooking more calorie-dense foods at home again. It’s so much easier to stir together a meatloaf, a green bean casserole (everything in cans), and some crescent rolls (just pop 'em open) than it is to make a marinated chix breast (must be prepared several hours in advance of cooking) with chopped salad/homemade vinagrette dressing and steamed brocolli (which has to be reasonably fresh, not all brown and moldy from sitting in the frig for a week).
So guess what–by April, we were both up by ten pounds. Yuck.
For the past two weeks, we’ve been back on the regimen again. Interesting that I call it a “regimen,” which calls up visions of “military drills.” Yes, to us, that’s what this is. We can no longer jump into a car for a drive to a skating competition, stop at a Road Ranger, buy a huge bag of Cheetos, and munch all the way to the rink. Instead, I have to make sure that we have carrot sticks, apple wedges, grapes, etc. in plastic bags in a cooler, and my husband has to pop and bag popcorn, with very little salt. And you know, it’s tasty, but it’s not Cheetos.
Sigh.
So what I’m saying is that in this time in history in the United States, food issues are huge. As far as I’m concerned, if you haven’t struggled with food issues, you need to be very, very VERY careful when speaking about them to those who DO struggle. Labelling “obesity” as “gluttony” and therefore “sin” is tricky, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Those of us who struggle aren’t helped by the knowledge that not only are we fat, but that we may go to hell, too.
