Dieting is great if you have the right reasons

I don’t like diets. Every time I go on one I feel like I’m conforming — conforming to society’s idea of skinny, conforming to what doctors think is the “right” body size, conforming to an idea I have in my head of what I should look like. Plus, diets turn me into a crazy, obsessive, calorie-counting fiend. Also, I like chocolate and bread. A lot.

Modern-day society is obsessed with losing weight, partially because two-thirds of American adults are considered obese, and partially because we all want to look like Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie models. There are a myriad of ways to lose weight: pills, juice cleanses, the Atkins diet, Weight Watchers, gluten-free diets, etcetera. Our obsession with diets can be exhausting and sometimes makes me want to stay in my room forever eating nothing but Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

I’ve never scientifically been overweight, and my doctors have yet to tell me that I need to lose a few pounds. However, since starting college, I’ve definitely gained some weight. I do a lot of stressing and sitting and eating and sitting and stressing and eating and not having time to exercise due to stressing and sitting and eating. All of this sitting and stressing and eating have caused my pants to become a little too tight for comfort, so last week I decided to get over my aversion to diets and face the dieting frontier head on. I downloaded the popular calorie-counting app MyFitnessPal and plugged in my height, current weight, sex and desired weight. After a few seconds the app spit out the number that would be my constant companion for the next five weeks: 1,210.

I gaped at the app. Only 1,210 calories a day? That’s ridiculous! My roommate would come home one day and find my emaciated body lying on the floor, one hand outstretched in a vain attempt to reach a bag of chocolate. This diet was going to kill my enjoyment of food and, eventually, me.

However, being the ridiculously stubborn person that I am and rationalizing that I could stop whenever I wanted and buy a bigger pair of pants, I decided to give this tiny amount of food a shot. The next day, I packed my lunch of mostly fruits, vegetables and Greek yogurt and braced myself for my slow demise.

As it turns out, 1,210 calories is actually a lot of calories if you don’t have bread for every meal. I had trouble with this at first since I’m a huge fan of bread, but then I started liking how I felt after eating a lot of veggies and proteins. I also learned that the calories I burned exercising were added to the total calories I could eat. This meant that I didn’t have to be deprived of bread and chocolate all the time, which in turn gave me the incentive to work out and eat better.

Although I don’t like diets, and I’m against society’s image of what a woman’s body should look like, I do believe that being comfortable in your pants and with your own body is important. I’m not saying that everyone should go on a diet, but if you find yourself jumping up and down more than usual to get your jeans on, or your doctor has expressed concerns about your health, you might want to think about losing a few pounds. If you’re against losing weight because you’re against the norm, then lose weight so you don’t become another value in America’s obesity statistic.

Losing weight is a pain and something not everyone wants to go through the effort of doing. However, it does pay off in the end. All that torture and stomach growling and not being able to eat four slices of cake really does lead to weight loss, a slimmer body and an overall sense of health. I’m pretty sure I will always hate dieting, but I do love when putting on pants is not the hardest part of my day.