writing for self-discovery

I’m tired of hearing it. “I hate you! Look at what eat! How can you be that skinny?” So here it is…my SECRET.

But first a very short, albeit necessary, tirade.

Scales weigh things to establish their worth. A 5# bag of apples, for instance, has a price. A kilo of grain, a liter of laundry detergent, all are weighed and assigned a value. How many women step on the scale each morning, step off to find their glasses, step on again, step off to clean their glasses, and step on once more finally assessing their self-worth according to the number displayed. Too many.

I was curious. Who was the sinister and diabolical genius credited with inventing this tool of torture? I had to chuckle at the irony of my discovery. Leonardo da Vinci built the first self-weighing scale around 1500 AD. This master artist, brilliant inventor, and tireless student of anatomy, was fascinated with the human body. It makes total sense that he would figure out a way to determine its weight.

I, too, was once a slave to the bathroom scale. But I have a thing about obsessions. I’m wary. It’s almost tangible, the urge, the pull to repeat an action, to yield to a habit. It has a slimy feel about it. Insidious but recognizable. It flashes a warning that freedom of choice is slipping away from me. It came to a point where I feared that more than the magic number on the scale. The scale went in the dumpster.

I made another decision that day. Going forward:

I would not eat anything

WHITE (potatoes, pasta, ice cream, bread)

I would eat as much as possible of everything

GREEN (vegetables, sea weed)

and plenty of

FRESH FRUIT

I would eat foods

BAKED, BOILED, and RAW

I would not eat foods that were

FRIED

I would not eat or drink things with

SUGAR

I would not eat

DESSERT

It is a simple plan, a big picture plan, and it has kept me physically healthy and weighing between 105 to 110 lbs. at my yearly physical check-up for over 40 years. It also allows me to indulge when I am confronted with my sister’s Death by Chocolate Cake, or a plate of ‘snake’ that could feed a Balinese family of 8 for a week. Which I had this morning, by the way. I told Ketut he really shouldn’t give me so much, “Two, maybe three treats enough!” I said. He smiled and replied, ” Okay today, many many day not okay.” Which lets me know that he has no intention of changing my portions. I’m secretly delighted.

That’s it. That’s all there is. Throw away the scale. Follow the NO WHITE diet, and only stray from the path when you know it will be worth every morsel…like snake, for instance, or Death by Chocolate Cake!

Balinese kue fondly known as ‘snake’