Today I am very conscious of being the fat woman in the office with a big bag of celery sticks and baby carrots. This is directly attributable to my coworker, male, who is trying to lose weight and brings in baby carrots as a “healthy” alternative to, you know, actually eating.
The celery I have is organic and it tastes really freaking good. It reminds me of why celery was one of my favorite childhood snacks (though back then I sprinkled salt on it and now I favor veggie dip). The baby carrots are also a taste sensation and both snacks are super crunchy, which I’ve been all about lately.
They are diet foods in the eyes of the world. But they are also delicious. And while I could have let my disdain for diet food prevent me from enjoying them, I am reclaiming ownership of my carrots and celery.
If someone looks at me and assumes I am dieting, I have limited control over that. As a fat person, people assume I am dieting all the damn time anyway. Screw that. Carrots are more delicious than other people’s perceptions. AND they have the benefit of being tangible.
Which is a good thing when you want to eat something.
If you don’t like carrots, you are not a bad person or a failure or weak-willed or whatever the latest term is for people who don’t scarf diet food like it’s going out of style (if only). You just don’t like carrots.
But if you do like certain foods, enjoy them. Eat them and enjoy them regardless of whether or not they are diet foods. You aren’t eating them as punishment for being fat, no matter what onlookers might believe. And if someone asks, tell them. “What? A diet? No way, I just like crunchy foods dipped in dip!”
*crunch*
29 Comments
Vegetables FTW! Never mind they’re supposed to be healthy — I love spinach and leeks and peppers as well.
But it irks me when people assume things about what I eat and don’t. I never eat lunch at work — but that’s because I think it’s a waste of my time to sit around a table with colleagues and talk about work stuff or generally gel as a team. I should not be made to do it on my own time. So they probably assume stuff like that about me, too.-
When i was a wee person, whenever i was hanging out with my grandma, she’d peel and slice an apple for us to share, or an orange or whatnot.
But my favorite? Was when she’d slice up some celery and put it into a glass of icewater. Fresh, cold, delicious celery. And the water afterwards was cold and NUMMEH. So refreshing!
Carrots are a’ight. I prefer them in juice form. I can drink carrot juice until i turn orange. Seriously. I’d marry it if i wasn’t already married to Ben.
I have a love for spinach that just defies all reason. I love baby spinach salads with spring greens and a little grilled chicken, but I hate it when people think I’m “being good” by eating them. What “being good” and food have in common, I really don’t know.
I love carrots, and dip, I brought some for lunch today. I just know my coworker is going to be all “Oh, you’re being so GOOD!” It’s funny because she realizes that I”m anti-dieting, and yet at the same time believes that restricting ones food intake in order to lose weight is not a diet.
Strange how people seem to assume that, as a fat person, I am BOTH on a diet AND unable to keep from shoveling donuts into my gaping maw. I guess they assume me to be constantly failing at dieting.
I am a veggie maniac and I cannot tell you how much it irks me when people tell me how “good” I’m being as I shovel broccoli into my gaping maw.
OH my word, organic celery FTW. It’s stunning how flavorful it is compared to the conventionally grown stuff, huh?
Shinobi, I have no adequate response for your coworker. Wow.
Also, spinach, oh, spinach, I love you, spinach! You were super delish in my pasta last night!
Ooh, celery with peanut butter was my fav as a kid!
Oranges yum! Now I love them with a little ricotta, cinnamon or cocoa powder.
Don’t even get me started on baby greens! Love ‘em with raspberries and a bit of bleu cheese…or with grape tomatoes and grilled asparagus!
Heh, I know what’s going on the grocery list…
the hilarious thing is carrots often aren’t even considered a diet food anymore because of atkins.
yay carrots!
Have you tried the old standby of putting a little peanut butter in the groove of the celery? Since peanut butter stays put better than veggie dip, it’s extra portable.
I am slightly allergic to nuts and I use it to justify my lifelong apathy toward peanut butter. *grin* Though I won’t turn down a peanut butter cookie. When I was filling my celery sticks, I did so with… cheese whiz. *laugh* I love cheese in its many forms.
Oh, crash_up, that is a totally good point!
As a fat person, people assume I am dieting all the damn time anyway.
Except when they assume you’ve never tried dieting, and that’s why you’re fat. Sigh.
Yay for carrots!
I never liked carrots – I simply don’t like the flavor of raw carrots at all. So I don’t eat them. More for the rest of you!
But celery…yum. And spinach. I loved spinach even as a child. And my personal favorite, zucchini. I adore the stuff.
Why do people have to think I’m dieting because I like to eat things that taste good?
Kate, there is always that. Obviously, they are not thinking clearly. Perhaps they are on diets.
Tropical Chrome, I think it is because we have removed “taste” as an element to be considered when it comes to food, in large part. The only time taste gets mentioned is when people who seriously love food get to talking (and I have noticed that not many of them are dieters) or when people who have decided to be “bad” indulge themselves. The rest of the time, people are more concerned with what is “good” which just further illustrates how ridiculous it is to assign morality to food.
Anyone else into “Ants on a log”? It’s celery with peanut butter and raisins. My mother used to make ants on a log as snack for me and my sisters, and I still love it as an occasional treat.
Celery smeared with cream cheese instead of the peanut butter is pretty good, too.
I loathed spinach and broccoli as a kid, then I discovered that fresh spinach is very yummy and broccoli isn’t supposed to be gray and limp. Now I LOVE both of them and eat them because they taste GOOD, not because they are good for me. There is lots of stuff that is “good” for me I hate the taste of and will make no apology for refusing to eat them.
Mmmmmmm, baby carrots and celery, now I have a craving. Have to hit the green grocers on the way home and see if he has any in and if not, he’s got Klicker strawberries and I have been meaning to get a few pints of those.
I’ve become such a veggie fiend in my middle age.
An EarthFare opened here last month, and my husband and I can’t seem to stay away from it. Beautiful, fresh, local veggies everywhere you look. *sigh* The other day I decided I needed fresh brussels sprouts, and there they were! If you’ve never tried fresh brussels sprouts, you must. They’re a completely different animal from the nasty frozen ones.
The first time I told my bf that I was making “veggie Indian” (stir-fried veggies and any Indian cooking sauce desired – we usually do Korma because the 7-year old doesn’t like spicy foods [although the rest of us do]), she automatically assumed I was on another diet. In her defense, though, in the 5 years she’s known me, I’ve gone on and off more diets than I can count, so it was more a case of knowing my past than assuming because I’m FAT I’m automatically going to diet (which would be ridiculous anyway, ‘cuz she’s fat too). I actually had to explain to her that I was trying to add more veggies into our family diet in general, and I found this was an easy way to do it.
But all this happened after finding FA, so it was a little frustrating. Like I said, I knew it had more to do with her knowing ME than any fatphobic assumptions, but it was still frustrating.
Oh baby carrots, you are my favorite delivery system for hummus. (I am on such a hummus kick lately. Cannot get enough.)
PS–I found your blog through Shapely Prose, and I love it!
I love carrots and celery too AND i mostly like them without dip…every once in a while i go on a dip kick (lol) but i love plain raw veggies!
The two other women in my office are both constant diet watchers and it kind of makes me sad when the one i sit next to has a delicious container of berries and rather than saying how yummy they are talks about how “good” she is for eating them 8(
Also…pretzels are super yummy dipped in ranch if you like crunchy dipping
I have refound my love of veggies and dip this year. Mmmm. Now that I’m brown bagging, it’s a daily thing, and I love exploring different dips with different veggies. There’s a whole world of yum out there!
Oh, lord. I’m allergic to carrots. They won’t kill me, but it’s not fun.
Mary Sue, food allergies are never a good time.
Hi, Linz, nice to meet you and welcome!
And, Nan, I’m going to have to try that cream cheese thing.
And the fresh brussel sprouts. I don’t know that I’ve ever had really fresh brussel sprouts.
I love carrots. And raw peppers. And cucumber.
Celery, however, is the devil.
I’m afraid I am one of those serious foodies, where taste trumps just about everything else
. It’s one of the reasons I never was very good at dieting – I knew what good food tasted like and that wasn’t it.
To me, almost all vegetables are more delicious than other people’s perceptions. I find those to be bitter and tasteless much of the time.
There are exceptions, though, and this blog is one of them. TR, have I told you lately that I love you?
We have home-grown celery in the garden right now (other people’s planting). All of the home grown vegetables are delicious.
I like rice cakes and baby carrots. Several of my coworkers do Weight Watchers, so I know way more about rice cakes as a bread substitute than I ever cared to know.
Sometimes I feel like I have to sneak ‘diet’ foods at work, so they don’t start yammering on about points again.
I love tht this is a place where me having eaten krispy kreme donuts and carrot sticks in a span of 24 hour’s is seen as neither schizophrenic nor counterproductive.
yay celery too, but I’ve been all about Team Carrots lately (especially since discovering publix’ prepackaged ones)
I had one of our clients at work ask me one day if I was “trying to eat healthy” because she saw me reach for some grapes. I replied that I just wanted to eat grapes. I’m sure if I were NOT a big ol’ 300 pounder, I wouldn’t even have been asked that question.
I’ll admit I’m not a huge veggie eater, but I do like baby carrots with ranch dressing. I also love to eat cherry tomatoes, munch on lettuce, and corn-on-the-cob is a must, especially during the summer. I can’t do cucumbers because I have inherited my grandparents’ reaction to eating them, which is a very bad case of gas and bloating. You don’t want to be around me after eating cucumbers.