10 pounds in 3 days, and other lies

diet culture can **** all the way off

Photo by Alexandr Podvalny on Unsplash

The first time the cabbage soup diet appeared in my life, I was in junior high. My mother brought a sheet of paper home from work with a new diet typed in Courier 10 font, promising the loss of ten pounds in three days. Cabbage, grapefruit, black coffee, hard boiled eggs—these were some of the limited, “allowed” items on the diet. The cabbage soup was to be consumed each day for dinner. “Everyone in my office is doing it!” my mother said. “Someone from accounting dropped ten pounds, she swears by it.” My mom smoked a pack of Benson & Hedges cigarettes each day, drank a full 2 liter bottle of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi each day, and never met a crash or fad diet she wouldn’t try.

I would inherit this gullibility, as well as the body dysmorphia. Falling head first into the trappings of diet culture before I was even menstruating regularly.

“We can do it together, then,” my mother said to me. I didn’t make it the full three days, maybe because I was a growing child who needed calories.

The magazines I read as a tween and teen—Seventeen, Ms., Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan for the quizzes—all pictured thin girls and women. Flawless. Young girls like me had an impossible standard that we (not all, but many of us) would keep reaching for, despite what it did to our psyche or our bodies.

Do I look fat? She’s so much prettier than me. I’ll never look like that. I hate my insert physical feature(s) here.

This was my normal internal dialogue. These are things I heard other girls say. At least we’re all together in not feeling good enough, I thought to myself.

Not good enough. Because of how we looked. What a bunch of bullshit. And I’ll tell you this with certainty, that shit dies hard.

Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash

To this day, I feel better about myself when I’m thin, or thinner-looking. I instinctively, immediately check to see how I look in photos, the ones I reluctantly agree to be included in. I am working on breaking all of the ancestral curses of my family, but the body dysmorphia made it to my daughters before I knew this striving shouldn’t be the norm. It was subconscious. I didn’t let them hear me say “I look fat, don’t I?” to my husband, but I didn’t need to. My disappointment with my physical appearance was outward, not verbal.

And the never-ending, profit-yielding diet culture backed it up.

The cabbage soup diet reappeared twice when I was older. My female colleagues, just like my mother, wanted to lose weight fast. And I don’t begrudge anyone trying to be healthier, but as someone with experience, I hate that diets often come at the expense of physical, emotional and mental health.

Because so many of us are perpetually chasing those last few pounds, or enough inches to fit into our old clothes, or an image we have of ourselves that we consider ideal. As if we can’t be happy or feel worthy until we do. And once the chase is over and we get what we want, we keep chasing for more, more wight loss! Because we live in fear that the weight will come back. Or, we find something else to pursue.

This self-destructive loop masked as self-discipline. (I can write about self-destructive loops for days, but those are other posts).

Diet culture lied to us. What I wanted wasn’t size 0 or 2 or 4 or 6 or…you get it. What I wanted was just to be fulfilled and happy, which I equated with being skinny and looking a certain way. Diet culture distracted me from searching for the real reason I was not alright with who I was, from what was really wrong.

“Happiness is an inside job,” my therapist has said to me, for many years now. It took a while for me to understand. It all started with that fucking cabbage soup diet. ‘I’ll be happy when I get/achieve/earn/lose/find external thing.’ It has taken a long time for me to say ‘I’m good without….such and such,’ or ‘I’m alright, even though variable is happening.’ And ‘I’m not broken, even if I’m not happy all the time.’ No one is happy all the time.

(But if soup makes you happy, make you sure you read to the end).

I know that this may not make sense to anyone but me, but I wanted revenge on the cabbage soup diet (I blame the Scorpio placements in my birth chart). So I reinvented the soup with health and nutrition in mind. Health and nutrition. Only. And the only reason I make this soup, it because it tastes really fucking good. It tastes even better the next day, and is a great detoxifier. Make it vegan/vegetarian with vegetable broth :)

All of this to say, here’s another soup recipe. I apologize that there was no ‘JUMP TO RECIPE’ option at the beginning of this post, but at least you didn’t have to exit out of a bunch of ads.

CABBAGE SOUP

INGREDIENTS:

(8) cups broth (I use beef), have extra on hand

(1/2) head of cabbage, chopped

(1) bunch of green kale, chopped

(5) carrots, chopped

(1) 28 oz can of chopped tomatoes

(1) package frozen cut green beans

(2) bay leaves

(2) lemons, juice squeezed when soup is done

salt & pepper to taste

flavor enhancers; fresh or dried herbs like parsley, oregano or thyme / low sodium Better than Boullion—start with one tablespoon (I prefer beef boullion) / garlic cloves (however many is your call)

METHOD:

Bring broth to boil and add all vegetables.

Cook until vegetables are tender.

Remove bay leaves.

Try broth for taste—if it needs to be heartier, add boullion, but start small until you achieve desired taste.

Juice the lemons into soup.

…and add whatever you want, this soup is your blank slate now.

NOTE: I buy grass fed beef bones, roast them at 450 degrees for five minutes, and add to my instantpot with water, a splash of apple cider vinegar, celery and carrot ends, and the stalks of whatever fresh herb I am adding to the soup. I strain this bone broth (after anywhere from 2 -4 hours in instantpot) and use it as the soup base. I use concentrated chicken stock or glace de veau as flavor enhancers, along with additional store-bought broth if necessary. Better than Boullion is my reliable stand by if my broth is still wimpy.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash