Lifestyle Choices

When discussing the effects of the study carried out in America, Keys and his colleagues said: ‘Food in all its ramifications became the principal topic of conversation, reading, and daydreams for almost all… subjects.’

The first change that became obvious for the women in my study was that they became preoccupied with food.

As women, in a society where we are expected to shop, cook and provide food for our families, food already plays a central role in our lives. It becomes a way to show love and affection to our dependants and a way to ask for love from those we are dependent on. If we provide dinner for our husbands when they come home from work (even if we ourselves have been working!) it shows that we appreciate that they have been working hard (and, it suggests, even harder than us) and that we recognise how much they do for us. Children learn from a very early age that eating their mother’s food makes her feel positive and valued. They also learn that to refuse her food is rejecting her love and will make her anxious and upset. We think about food in terms way beyond the limitations of feeling hungry and needing sustenance.

And yet when dieting, this food has to be avoided. The aim of dieting is to eat less of the substance which plays a central role in our family and social lives. Endless lists of foods become forbidden. Cream cakes, chocolate, chips, pastry, dairy products and take-aways are all outside the limitations set by the diet. They become special and treats. They are even advertised as treats; remember the ‘naughty but nice’ adverts! And the obvious result of anything being ‘forbidden’ is that it becomes far more attractive than it ever was before. And therefore we want to eat it more than we ever did before. Dieters do not crave salads; they crave high calorie foods — the very food they are trying to avoid. Their attention is focused on the stuff they cannot have.

And to make things worse, not only are they not supposed to eat high calorie foods, most dieters still have to provide them for everyone else. If dieters could live in a world where everyone ate 1000 calories a day, where families did not feel rejected and annoyed if mum stopped buying biscuits and where high calorie foods were not presented as being exciting, then dieters might have an easier time of it.

However, they don’t. Not only are we a society which is already obsessed with food, but trying not to eat it makes it more attractive, and makes us more preoccupied than ever before.

Many of the women who took part in the study said that having to cook for others made sticking to the diet very difficult.

One woman gave a dinner party for several friends and felt that she had eaten more than her diet allowed. She said: ‘I did not want to give in, but I felt that after preparing a three-course meal for everyone else, the least I could do was enjoy my efforts.’

Another women said: ‘It’s Sunday and I’m cooking for the kids so I might as well have some, rather than make something else for myself.’ She felt that since she had already made the effort in cooking one meal, why should she bother to cook another?

Food plays a central role in family life. Trying not to eat it when you still have to cook for everyone makes dieting very difficult.

Several other women said that they needed to cook and eat with their family to show how much they cared.

One woman said that she treated her daughter to a hamburger lunch and that ‘I didn’t want to feel isolated, and it was nice just having lunch together’.

Another felt that she had ‘to feed the family properly’ and that ‘it is a sign of love if my husband gets a nice meal’.

For women, love and the family are already intrinsically tied up with food. Trying to diet means attempting to stop seeing food in the usual way, and trying not to think about something which is central to our lives. Dieting makes us more preoccupied with something which is already central to our lives as women.

And the consequence of being preoccupied with food?

Food becomes the focus for rewards, for treats and for comfort. The more we try to diet the more we think about food. And the more we think about it, maybe.. .the more we eat. Diet-breaking becomes understandable.

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