Being 'good'

Sweet Hubby and I were recently having dinner out with good friends, a couple we tunnel fly with, lovely people.  Both of them have been dieting, and it shows.  When we ordered, the wife of the couple said she was going to have a salad because she's trying to be good.

I have always inwardly shuddered when people equate denying themselves food with being 'good', as though eating what they want to is being 'bad'.  As though there is virtue associated with dieting, ergo vice associated with not dieting.

But last night I began to look at it differently.  Since integrity (and lack of) is on my mind quite a lot lately, I realized that being good in the way our friend meant it is about having integrity, staying true to her word, keeping her commitment to herself to lose weight.

Sometimes I think our relationship to food is screwy (and my 'our', I mean 'my').  I don't know that there has been a day in my life when I wasn't thinking about my weight, no matter whether it was high or low.  Eating can't be given up completely, like smoking or nail-biting, so it  has to be monitored if one (and by 'one' I mean pretty much everybody) wants to lose weight; it has to be assessed and altered and constantly made conscious.  I'm sick of it.  I would love to see if I could go through an entire day without thinking about how much I weigh and what I'm eating and how much exercise I'm getting and whether I look good enough.