here is something i’ve been thinking a lot about lately:
it’s hard to date in a body you don’t always feel great about.
or perhaps: it’s hard to date in a body, period. and yes, i know that while i exist here on earth, dating in a body is my only option—but man, has it been throwing me for a loop lately.
{trigger warning: weight loss + diets}
some of you may know that last year—for over a year—i adhered to noom’s weight loss program. i lost 35ish pounds, weighed the least i’ve weighed since high school, thanks to a strict caloric limit that i did my best to stick to. each day, i logged every single thing i put into my mouth (or at least, i tried to). i diligently completed noom’s daily lessons, which taught me about caloric density; which foods i could eat a limitless amount of—leafy greens like kale, most fruits, egg whites—and which foods i should aim to eat less of—fats of any kind, sugar, ice cream, potato chips. noom operates on traffic light style system: green foods = the lowest in caloric density. they contain lots of water, so you can eat lots and lots of them. ideally, your diet is made up of more green foods than anything else. yellow foods = foods you can enjoy, but in moderation. things like oats and pasta were yellow foods; okay to eat, but not to go HAM on. red foods = foods that are high in calories, even for a small amount. nuts, dried fruits, olive oil, butter, chocolate, french fries. all these things are red foods—foods you can have, but shouldn’t have a lot of.
note: i believe noom has changed ‘red’ foods to ‘orange’ foods; i’d love to know the market research behind that decision!.
what i liked about noom is that it allowed me to maintain some semblance of balance and normalcy. red foods weren’t off limits, they were simply to be enjoyed in small amounts. each day, the app told me how many calories i should aim to consume in each category: mostly greens, a good portion of yellows, a little bit of reds. on its face, noom’s program is a) smart and b) relatively reasonable. by that i mean, it stands to reason that if you have had french fries for lunch, you might not want to have ice cream after dinner. but also, sometimes life is tough, and you want both french fries for lunch and ice cream after dinner.
in case anyone is wondering whether i believe noom to be a diet (it claims not to be), i want to definitively state for the record: yes, i think it is. it’s a diet shrouded in a cute traffic light color system, with an somewhat modern app that could honestly benefit from better design and better ux—but it’s a diet nonetheless.
which is probably why after about a year, i plateaued, and then tapered off, eventually deactivating my membership in early january. i told myself it was because i was cruising towards a month in mexico, and i didn’t want to spend my wild and precious time abroad logging calories.
and then, something funny happened: i spent a month in mexico sans noom, sans scale, sans any form of calorie counting at all, and—miracle of miracles, i arrived back home to find i weighed even less than i had when i’d left.
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