Followers of this blog are no doubt familiar with the cabbage diet (and never want to go back there). In this personal essay writer Mary Elizabeth Williams discusses her history with eating cabbage for weight loss. Be prepared to be brought back to the bad old days, and to re-commit to a future without diets.
I don’t remember the first time we tried the diet together, but I was probably 15 or 16. I remember the piece of paper clearly though; a photocopy so many generations away from its original the letters were fat and fuzzy. My mother was probably at the beginning of everything then, all the problems I still don’t understand. It was getting harder for her to maintain the whippet physique that had become part and parcel of her identity. I’d begun to notice the vomiting, though I didn’t yet doubt her excuse, that she just had a nervous stomach. I was starting to assert my own adolescent independence. And her mental health issues that I believe — and remember — as always present had begun to take a stronger foothold. Clearly, it was time to boil some stinky vegetables.
Articles like this help us see how crazy dieting is and why we should think twice about embarking on whatever is currently trending. And maybe to reconnect with cabbage in a positive way.
