I love ice cream. In a cone. Not in a dish, not as an ice cream soda or a shake. These all leave out the best part of enjoying ice cream. The lick - tasting the cold creaminess on the tip of my tongue and having to lick fast to avoid the same cold creaminess from running down my arm. And then there’s the contrast of biting into the crispness of the cone itself, a strategic bite to ensure just the right amount of cone is broken off along with just the right amount of ice cream. Eating an ice cream cone properly takes practice.

I do limit the number of cones I eat so I don't overdo the sugar thing which allows me to make getting an ice cream cone into an outing. Once in a while we’ll go to the ice cream stand that unfortunately opened up about a mile from my house. It’s a cute little farm stand with an ice cream window that, much to my dismay, is open year-round.

It saddens me to see so many drugs on the market to assist with weight loss. Some of these drugs are FDA approved, but does that mean we should take them?

Weight loss drugs have a storied past for sure. In the 50’s and 60’s the weight loss drug of choice was amphetamines. According to an article written by Jacques Peretti in the Guardian, they were banned in the 70’s due to being highly addictive and causing heart attacks and strokes.

The door had been opened however and the pharmaceutical companies could not resist the opportunity to sell to women (and men) who were desperate to lose weight.

Diet culture. It exists and instead of being angry at it, I have a different approach.

Accepting it.

Sometimes, accepting something for what it is and softening around it can create an opportunity to see it in a different way.

Diet culture, as we know it, has been with us for decades. It has informed how we eat, think, and dress for several generations. In our desire to lose weight, we have prescribed to a system that has led us into restrictive behaviors creating a victim approach to life, one that is contracting in nature.

I’m a clothes person. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been attracted to clothes. In the summer when I was eight or nine, I taught myself to hand sew little tops using lacy handkerchiefs, which I proudly wore. Making my own clothes became a necessity when my arms and legs were too long for conventional clothes. I was forever perusing fashion magazines, keeping myself up-to-date on all the latest fashion trends. I took fashion seriously and working to stay thin was paramount. Any weight gain would ruin everything.

Restrictive dieting, meaning constantly being hungry and denying myself the pleasure of food, was a pattern I established. It never occurred to me that dieting for over 40 years was unnatural, it’s just what I did.

I had no idea what my natural body rhythms were or what my body really wanted me to eat.