When I found out about the Switch Witch, I thought it was genius. For the uninitiated (i.e. child-free readers or maybe parents who live beyond the borders of the health-obsessed Boulder bubble), the idea is that your kids go trick-or-treating, they come home with a huge candy haul, and in the night, the Switch Witch mysteriously replaces the candy with a toy. You are then free to donate, toss, or secretly eat all of your children’s candy. 

I've since changed my mind about the Switch Witch. She’s just another incarnation of diet culture and she is no longer welcome in my house.* 

Taking away the candy sends a powerful message. It says candy is bad. Worse, it says you cannot trust your body around candy. You will overdo it and that lack of control is bad; maybe even worse than the candy itself. 

I’m done with that message.** Because we all know what happens when something is off-limits. We want it. We want it so bad, we CRAVE it, we NEED it. I used to allow myself a “cheat day” when I was adhering to the Zone diet (which I called “The Zone,” never the “Zone Diet” because it was a lifestyle, not a diet) and when I was counting macros (also a lifestyle! A lifestyle that felt like a goddamn Tetris prison but still, a lifestyle!), I found myself eating “bad” foods on my cheat days that I didn’t even want. I felt compelled to eat until I was bloated and sluggish because it was my one chance to eat with abandon. 

Pregnant with my first child, I was astounded by the fact that my intense cravings for sweets practically disappeared. Was it pregnancy hormones? Maybe. But I suspect it was a function of the fact that, for the first time since I was a teenager, I gave myself full permission to eat anything I wanted. Sweets didn’t feel forbidden. Bagels weren’t evil. Full fat Noosa yogurt was okay. Grilled cheese sandwiches weren’t the gateway to hell. And as if by magic, they lost their pull. I could walk by a dessert table and not feel the urge to take one of everything. 

We were all born with the innate ability to tune into our needs. We cried when we were hungry. We pulled away from the breast or bottle when we were full. We threw foods we didn’t like off our high chair trays. 

As we got older, we learned not to trust ourselves. We learned to follow diets and plans and lifestyles that told us what, when, and how much to eat. 

The multi-billion dollar diet industry told us there’s something wrong with us and we can fix it if we just lose weight. There’s nothing wrong with us. There’s something deeply wrong with the culture that never questions this kind of thinking.

Anyway, Happy Halloween, and if you're one of those people who can't stand candy corn (which I will never understand) send yours my way:) 

xo,
Pam 


*Although if my younger child still had all the food allergies she used to have - she’s outgrown most of them - I might keep her around because it’s no fun to tell a kid that 50% of their haul will kill them or send them to the ER if they so much as taste it. 

**And here I need to acknowledge my thin privilege. Regardless of the body image issues I’m working on, I’ve never been subject to weight stigma. Neither have my kids. It’s a privilege say I have let go of worrying about my weight without having to deal with blowback from “concern trolls” (don’t you care about your HEALTH??) or regular trolls, (You’re just a lazy piece of sh*t!)

8 Things Worth Checking Out 

• If you remember studying the diet tips, quizzes and “Get Him to Like You!” articles in Seventeen and YM like it was your bible in the 80’s and 90’s, check out Lindsay Crouse’s incisive New York Times op-ed, For Teen Girls, Instagram is a Cesspool
   
• My interview with occupational therapist Vanessa Gorelkin where she gets super real about how her experiences with depression and her (formerly) obsessive relationship with food and exercise shaped her, personally and professionally.
   
• Speaking of exercise, pull-ups are an insanely efficient way to develop strength in about a gazillion muscles at once and you feel like a badass once you master them. If you’re not there yet but you’re pull-up curious, check out my latest article for The Washington Post. 
   
• My conversation with psychotherapist and triathlete Stephane Roth-Goldberg on how athletes can embrace intuitive eating AND fuel for performance 

• A fascinating interview with doctoral student Marquiselle Mercedes, whose work focuses on the intersection of critical public health studies, fat studies, and scholarship on race/ism on why we need to de-medicalize obesity on the Full Bloom podcast. I went way down the Marquiselle Mercedes rabbit hole and now I cannot stop thinking about her post, The Unbearable Whiteness and Fatphobia of “Anti-Diet” Dietitians. If (like me) you’re white, straight-sized, and you’ve been under the assumption that #normalizenormalbodies or #bodypositivity were for everyone, it's definitely worth your time. Even (nay, especially) if it makes you as uncomfortable as it made me. 
   
• My interview on Steven Sachen’s podcast, The Movement Movement, in which I am pretty sure I blow his mind once we start talking about intuitive eating. 
   
• Noom co-opted the language of intuitive eating but it is by all accounts still definitely a diet. Virginia Sole-Smith did a deep dive for Bustle and it’s compelling.
   
• No list is complete without a book recommendation so go read Group by Christie Tate. It’s funny, poignant, and beautiful. (If you liked Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottleib, Group will be right up your alley.)