Читать онлайн «This Is Not A Diet Book: A User’s Guide to Eating Well»

Автор Би Уилсон

Asked on what occasions she drank champagne, the champagne heiress Lily Bollinger used to say that she drank it when she was sad and when she was happy; when she was alone and in company. ‘Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty. ’ I used to be the same with food. Any occasion, whether happy or sad, was a reason to gorge. And then there were times when I ate just because I was peckish. Which was pretty much always.

For many years, until my early twenties, my eating was chaotic and out of control. I would sit alone at the kitchen table eating whole pint-sized tubs of maple pecan ice cream. We talk in a sickly way of ‘indulgent’ foods, but when you are a compulsive eater, it does not feel like being pampered. Everywhere I went, food screamed at me. There were days and weeks when I gave myself up to consuming guilty treats. And then there were the not-eating phases, when I taunted myself with short-lived diets that started with raw carrots and hope and ended, a few days later, in pastries and despair.

I never thought I would end this futile cycle. But somehow, over a period of months, if not years, a happier way of eating crept up on me. Meal by meal, I reconditioned my responses to food. It was as if I were a child, learning how to eat all over again. Structure returned to my meals. Where once I’d hesitated to eat too heartily in public, in case someone thought me greedy, now I gave myself permission to eat until I was full. My tastes subtly altered.

I found myself eating more vegetables, not to punish myself, but because they were – surprise! – delicious. I shrank from large to medium without really trying. This new life was the opposite of going on a diet.

My experiences are far from unique. Humans are more capable of improving their diets than we give ourselves credit for, as I discovered when doing the research for my last book, First Bite. We often speak in fatalistic and negative terms about our own eating, as if our taste for muffins and frappuccino were a life sentence. What we forget is that, as omnivores, we are extremely gifted at changing the way we eat to suit different environments. The consequences of bad diets are all around us, from type 2 diabetes to infant tooth decay. But the more research I did, the more encouraged I was to find that the scientific evidence suggests that our tastes and food habits are remarkably malleable. ‘All of it is reversible,’ as one senior doctor working with obese children put it to me. You could be cursed with all the genes that make a person susceptible to heart disease and obesity and still grow up healthy, by establishing balanced food habits.

This short book takes a rather different approach from First Bite, although it covers some of the same ground. I offer it to you as a sort of user’s guide to eating. It is less about science or history and more about the practicalities of everyday life. Diet gurus often suggest that the answer to eating better is a return to the wisdom of grandmothers but my own hunch is that we need new skills to navigate this bewildering new world of food. We are the first generation to suffer more from plenty than want, and this changes everything.