DitchTheDiet2016

And it’s that last one that really irks me: that most people — and especially most women’s — new year’s resolutions center on dieting and weight loss as the key to happiness.

And so I slid the scale to the back of my closet, started freely eating doughnuts when I craved doughnuts, and simply donated the jeans that stopped fitting instead of holding out hope for them.

We have been told that that's how it works: calories in vs calories out. "Eat less than you expend and you'll lose weight."

In February, you gave me that soul-punching gaze again and told me it's okay to eat bread while we obtain Our Best Bodies. You lost 26(!) pounds and you eat bread every damn day! I feel how miraculous this is for you because you've probably made bread evil, along with All The Carbs and fat on your body.

So, back in the diet season frenzy of December 2007/January 2008, Weight Watchers came out with a new campaign that bashed diets. (Seriously, you've got to check it out. It'll blow your mind.) They called diet a four letter word and said that diets don’t work, are mean, and “take away the things we love."

The Cabbage Soup Diet, aka The "Torture” Diet. You just put cabbage in water and cook it. And you eat it. All day. It is not good. You will still be hungry, and farting — very smelly, paint-peeling farting.

I'm an anti-diet teacher. I teach chronic, obsessed dieters how to eat normally, trust their bodies, and fully commit to living their lives now, not 30 pounds from now.

How does that old cliché go? “Love is not a noun, it’s a verb”? Loving your body is a verb. It’s an action — and in many ways it’s a sacred and defiant one.

If you’re at an amazing restaurant, eat the amazing food there! Enjoy it! Don’t limit yourself to one bite of expensive entree because you frantically forced down a pound of undressed salad before the bread basket showed up. Eat salad for its own sake. Eat it because you want to eat it, not because you’re trying NOT to eat something else.

What we really need is a better definition of health. One that is less about weight and more about the broader idea of what health is really about.