Saturday ramble

If I can't stop ruminating over the body-weight-as-a-microcosm thing, it's because analogies are everywhere. I was reading some election-season article used the term "unforced error," and thought about forced and unforced errors in general, and of course, in weight management.

I'm mindful that we as a nation can't have an adult conversation about internal and external factors, and the interplay between the two, without reductionism and absurdity. I remember when Charles Blow--who writes about the system underlying factors behind poverty--ran a column about poverty and choices, he was accused of blaming the poor for poverty. The same goes for obesity: it's hard to talk about systemic factors, choices, and the interplay between the two without butting up against the perception of blame.

I don't think blame is the point; in most things, there's a mix of systemic factors and personal choices, and the latter impact the former. With money and weight, there are circumstances and choices, and the former can be far more powerful but that doesn't make the latter unimportant. You can do everything wrong and fall into money and everything right and never fall into it, but there's a sweet spot where choices make a difference. You can subsist on Twinkies and never exercise and remain stick thin (and really unhealthy), and you can eat salad and exercise rigorously and struggle to lose weight, but there's a sweet spot where healthy eating and regular exercise habits will pay off at least to some extent. A friend of mine once noted that she was the only one of her friends who didn't lose weight on Weight Watchers because she already ate healthily (whereas the others didn't). I ate healthily and exercised, and couldn't seem to shed an extraneous 25 pounds (until I did), and I don't know exactly what happened, but my sense is that the healthy habits that didn't seem to be doing much for me, did eventually pay off. For example, it could be that quitting animal products altered my metabolism in a way that made me lose weight, but I also ate healthy vegan food (I didn't replace the cheese with fake cheese, except occasionally). I have a friend who quit animal products (from omnivore to vegan) and did not lose weight, and really wanted to. She and I traveled together years ago, and I would see her--I don't know how to say this non-judgmentally, except to state that it wasn't judgment--crawl into bed every night with some kind of dessert she'd bought. The idea of eating in bed doesn't appeal to me at all, and I couldn't understand how it was comforting. It was also a level of self-sabotage beyond what I'd known, which were 'forced errors': I'd always had trouble turning down food that was there--food that people gave me, restaurant portions that were too big, desserts left in shared office kitchens--but I certainly didn't go out of my way to acquire obstacles to my goal of weight loss. Buying a dessert to eat in bed when you're trying to lose weight is an unforced error.


I reiterate, though, that I say that without judgment because I absolutely understand unforced errors. I'm guilty of this myself: DC is a terrible city for dating (for women), but I can hardly say I'm doing everything I can to meet someone. I have trouble with dating--not just actual dating, but managing my dating life and the way I think about the people I date. In other words, I've made forced and unforced errors. So even though I have a healthy relationship with money--I neither waste nor hoard it, and I have decent personal finance skills--and now have a healthy relationship with food, I understand that even unforced errors are easy to make and bad habits are easy to fall into.

And I believe in doing everything in your power to fall out of them. Deferring to systemic causes can keep you from doing the things that position you to get where you want, should the circumstances change. That's why I actively fight my bad habits, and also why I think back on how my excess weight didn't go anywhere until it did. You've got to start with the things you can control.