Food fight

We’re well past the halfway mark for the month of January, which means some of us have already abandoned our resolutions for the new year. Every new year should be celebrated with the fanfare of your choosing and with some resolve to either never do a certain something again or to do a certain something everyday. I’m right, and you know it. This year, I have resolved to continue on my journey of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including my personal challenge to become more physically fit. Now, before you turn the page—because lifestyle changes and fitness make you feel uncomfortable or out of control—remember, this is my resolution. I have thrown it down at my own two feet.

I was a kid in the ‘50s. My parents were kids in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Mom and Dad were committed to making sure we were well fed. Processed foods, in my childhood home, were rare. Mom had it right, even in the ‘50s. She thought processed foods were fattening and expensive. We often heard, “when I was a kid, we would have been grateful for liverwurst and pickle on rye in our lunch pail.” Or my favourite, “kids in (insert third world country of choice) are starving, and you’re turning your nose up at turnips and lima beans.”

Mom baked, canned, preserved, gardened and bulk-shopped for almost everything we ate. Aside from keeping us in line and running a huge household, she was beyond busy just getting meals and snacks on the table for nine people. Telling my mom to send my turnips to China or India wasn’t even on my radar. We heard a lot about havenots. We ate what was put on our plates or found a secret way to get rid of the stuff we didn’t want to eat. Fortunately, we lived on a large property, and had a miserable guard dog who was an indiscriminate eater. When the dog wasn’t keeping the foxes out of the rabbit hutch, he waited under the kitchen table three times each day. We were also fortunate to have a younger brother who, for some reason, loved liver, turnips and lima beans. But it was harder to pass the food to him without getting caught. Cleaning our plates, one way or the other, was a given. Mom didn’t have time for mealtime shenanigans.

So I grew up cleaning my plate, which wasn’t a bad thing. When I wasn’t eating home cooked meals, I swam competitively, skated at the local park and biked with my friends. I played baseball and basketball. I loved track and field.

And then I became a teenager. In the ‘60s, I paid more attention to fashion and trends. The models in magazines weren’t curvy. They were emaciated and pouty. There was a lot written about how to be as thin as Twiggy or as gaunt as Mary Quant. By the time I was 15, I knew I wanted to be skinny more than I wanted to be healthy. Food, which I had enjoyed—except for liver, turnip and lima beans—became my enemy. Bread, potatoes, rice, baked goods, meat, pasta, snacks, cereals and dairy were kicked to the curb. My love of sports didn’t change but my game suffered. I couldn’t be skinny, by Twiggy standards, and be athletic, too. And slowly, the food fight began.

I stopped competing, but my fight with food continued for decades. I fought the scales. I dieted. All of that work to be thin, yet by 2010, I—like the cost of living—was grossly inflated. I was obese, out of shape and miserable. A photograph of me on a cycling trip in 2010 woke me up. I had thought I looked fit. The picture told a different story.

Since 2010, my resolutions have remained the same, and New Year’s Day is a good day to renew my commitment to myself. I refuse to engage in a fight with the food I eat. I will continue to work on being healthier and fitter. This year, I have added another line to my resolutions. I resolve to fight the media images of a brand new lineup of gaunt, pouty, gap-thighed models that our young people are confronted with every day. Pass the liverwurst, please.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca