Help, My Lipstick is Making Me Fat!

You really can’t make this stuff up. Not too long ago I heard a woman in Whole Foods ask a store clerk which brand of vegan lip moisturizer had more calories. Lucky for her, the employee was super polite and actually stopped to read the tiny print on the two lip-balm labels before shaking his head and apologizing that he couldn’t help her. I can say with certainty that if she had asked me the same question, I would’ve promptly snatched the organic low-carb baguette from her shopping basket and whacked her over the head with it.

Why some women remain obsessed with calories, fat grams, carbs, inches, pounds, and God knows what other measurements we can obsess over, is beyond me. Now there are certain substances we do need to watch, such as our sodium and sugar intake, and foods we need to make sure we’re consuming enough of, such as those little-miss-perfect leafy green veggies. But I’m not pooh-poohing general nutrition and smart eating here. The paternal side of my family has been cursed for generations with premature heart disease, and since turning 40 I’ve become a bit of a health nut myself. But that’s another story.

What I’m poking fun at is the over-the-top stuff women do to become thinner. Every decade there is a new diet fad. For the past decade or so we’ve been flirting with high-protein, low-carb and, most recently, gluten-free foods. In the ’90s we strove for less fat consumption. In the 1980s it was all about counting calories—I remember finding my mom’s calorie counter from 1985 and being intrigued that a banana was approximately 100 calories. And then there was the truly crazy stuff that most of us were not around to witness, such as the grapefruit diet in the 60s. (With that one, who really cared if you were fitting into that teeny-weeny, yellow-polka-dot bikini, because all that acidic fruit left your lips too puckered to be kissed.)

Over the years, some women actually tried dangerous stuff like the tapeworm diet. This brilliant strategy required ingesting grotesque white worms, which would nest in your digestive system and consume a portion of the food you ate, until they died and had to be retrieved through the magic of laxatives. Google it if you don’t believe me—as I said, you can’t make this stuff up. And how about that delightful cabbage soup diet (not for the faint-of-heart, or even the Irish), or the baby-food diet (strained peas, anyone?). My personal favorite was the cotton ball diet—I guess it’s hard to shove a cheeseburger into your mouth if you’ve got chunks of white cotton stuck to your tongue.

When I was just a toddler, I had my first brush with obscene weight-loss methods. My mother, like many women of her generation, received from her doctor a prescription for diet pills. Why she had stashed them in the top drawer of her bedroom bureau is beyond me, but one day while she was downstairs vacuuming the living room and I was upstairs jumping on her bed (to think she now judges me on my parenting skills), I decided to open that drawer and taste some of mommy’s “candies.” Twenty minutes later, I found myself in the ER, puking on the intern who was just about to pump my stomach. To comfort me after my ordeal, I was taken straight from the hospital to Friendly’s for a Jim Dandy sundae. As for my mother, the incident frightened her so much that she tossed her bottle of diet pills for good. However, she never did lock her top drawer, and over the years I stumbled upon lots of other interesting stuff, which will not be named here.

About two years ago, someone asked me if I had lost some weight and, if so, how I did it. “Haven’t you heard of the new weight-loss craze?” I joked. “It’s called the House Renovation Diet: The amount of weight you lose is directly proportional to the amount of money hemorrhaging from your bank account.” But I wouldn’t recommend any diet that relies on financial or any other type of stress for weight loss, because that strategy always comes back to bite you. As the worrying subsides and you resume eating three meals a day, the rate of weight gain is directly proportional to the rate of hair growing back on your head.

Part of the reason these diets catch on is that everyone is so perplexed about how they should be eating. The rules of nutrition seem to change every year. Remember when all fat was bad fat? We now know that there are good fats, just as there is good cholesterol. Remember when grapefruits were a diet breakfast staple? I read recently that regular consumption of grapefruits may be linked to increased rates of breast cancer. What?! And my God, why is it that eggs used to be considered “evil,” especially if you had high cholesterol, and now they’re lauded as a super food? I remember my father being told to cut back on his sodium intake. Since then I’ve tried to avoid salt myself, but recently I had a doctor tell me to consume more. It’s pure madness.

Everything now has a nutrition label, but it often just adds to the confusion. Calories and carbs are the least of our problems, because we’ve now got high-fructose corn syrup, saturated fat and trans fats to contend with. And who would have guessed that some products labeled “light” or “low fat” may kill us with too much sugar, that sugar substitutes are as ominous as sugar itself, and that, horror of all horrors, fat replacements cause anal leakage. Just thinking about it all makes me want to reach for the bag of potato chips and a glass of Pinot and call it a day.

One thing I know is that we’ve all got to stop obsessing, especially in front of our children. I noticed, after recent visits with my sister and mother, that although the three of us prepare and eat healthy food, we’ve got this annoying habit of deconstructing our meals and discussing our bodily conditions immediately following the consumption of said meals. Neurotic statements like “This has a lot of mayo in it, so I’m gonna take just a tablespoon,” or “I’m so bloated—I shouldn’t have eaten all that” run rampant following every lunch or dinner with my family. I recently pointed this out to my mother, and she agreed that, for our sake as well as the kids’, we should probably just shut up and eat.

That said, vanity still has a valuable place in most women’s diets. And sometimes it benefits us. A few years ago, I decided to give up sugar because it was making me feel sluggish and, quite frankly, I was sort of an addict. It was a slow-going withdrawal, until I read an article stating that too much sugar can cause collagen breakdown (translation: dreaded wrinkles and sagging). Enough said. Who needs sugar in their tea? Not me! I’ll save money on sugar and may never need Botox—it’s a win-win.

In front of my tween daughter, I’ve been especially careful not to obsess about food. When she sees me lace up my running shoes and asks why I exercise, I tell her I want to keep my heart and mind healthy, and omit the part about maintaining a firm butt. I also want her to know that while eating healthy is a top priority, it’s not a big deal to treat herself, once in a while, to something naughtier than kale. I want to teach her that moderation is good. Staying active is great. And that stressing over the label on a tube of lip balm is definitely not cool.