I ate a smidge more than I would have if I was being watched, but I stopped before it was all gone and left plenty of sugar for my co-workers. Then I calculated how many calories I’d eaten and was glad I’d bought that bag of salad at the grocery store this week. It was barely past noon and I‘d already eaten all of lunch and half of dinner.

Later on there was carrot cake and fruit offered at a team meeting, but I turned it down and it wasn’t even a big deal. I didn’t even think about the cookie cake for the rest of the day, except to think how odd it was that I wasn’t even thinking about the cookie cake. Then I went home, ate my salad and some fruit and snacked on some celery and came in at my calorie goal for the day. It was bizarre because it was one of the rare cases when I was able to transpose theory to reality. In theory I can eat a treat if I back off the food for the rest of the day. In reality I usually get hungry later and eat more than I’d ever planned to. For some reason it worked out this time. Don’t know why, but it was nifty keen and I hope to do it again. I even lost weight this that week.

If someone had seen me eat all those cookies and lick the frosting off my fingertips, I probably would have been labeled as one of those bitches who can eat whatever the hell they want and still be thin. People who eat cookies for lunch don’t usually weigh under 200 pounds. Which makes me wonder, could it be that those bitches who eat whatever they want aren’t all blessed with miracle thin genes? Do they pay for their ice cream sundaes and Hershey bars by cutting back when people aren’t watching them eat? It’s possible. I just never thought I’d be one of them.

I once watched a “Where Are They Now?” special on VH1 which was a much more polite title than the equally appropriate “Washed-Up Pop Stars.” One of the people they interviewed was a protégé of Prince who used to slink around in lingerie and do drugs, but had now become a complete Jesus freak. They interviewed her in a church and every other word out of her mouth was about the Lord and God. While I have nothing against Godly devotion or God himself (anyone claming responsibility for creating the duck-billed platypus obviously has a great sense of humor), it did seem a bit extreme. I was happy that she seemed happy, but she also seemed a bit off her head. Sometimes I wonder if people think I am equally wacky when it comes to health and fitness.

For instance, when I made baked goods for my friend back in February, I made whole-wheat muffins instead of a more-likely popular item, like chocolate frosted cupcakes. I did this because I wanted to cook her something but I knew I could not be trusted around frosting and cupcake batter. I could see how that would go clearly. Not only would I lick the beaters, I’d lick the spoon, then I’d dip the spoon in again and lick that, then I’d stick my finger in and lick my knuckle to my fingernail, and then I’d run my finger around the edge of the bowl to get all that stray sugar and flour sprayed at the top edges. I’d probably eat half the batter and frosting before I could seal a finished batch away from my mouth in a Tupperware container. So whole-wheat muffins it was.

When I presented my muffins, everyone was complimentary and polite and I think they genuinely like them. But I’m sure cupcakes would have been more popular. And I think if I started bringing “healthy” foods to potlucks and pitch-ins it’s just as likely my foodstuffs would be pitched in the trash afterwards than eaten. The sugar-filled, fat-stuffed, calorie-dense foods are usually more popular. It’s weird to think I could get a reputation for bringing the granola-crunching, hippie who brings unusual, health foods to get-togethers that people eyeball strangely before dipping into the potato salad. I think people just like to stick to what’s familiar, and the goat-cheese salad, while tasty, is definitely not familiar in a state that has almost no goatherds.

Similarly, I feel a bit weird whenever I go out to eat with people. Over the years I’ve gotten much better about resisting peer pressure. I don’t dive into the bread bowl as much. I can ID the most healthy items on the menu. I stick to water. While this leaves me feeling much less guilty than the days when I stuffed three rolls in my face and sucked down four refills of cola, I also hope no one feels like I am judging them or acting morally superior with my food choices. I’m just ordering what I feel comfortable ordering and if everyone else wants to fill up on bread and drench their fettuccini in cream sauce, more power to them. Yet I do feel like I might be making people feel uncomfortable, like they’re discussing birth control options next to their hard-core Catholic aunt who only endorses the rhythm method. I used to feel very insecure about this and would purposely order “normal” foods that did not have the word “salad” in them just to show that I could eat regular food like them. Now I’ve reached a point where I don’t care that much what other people think of my food choices and just order what I want even if it’s 50% lettuce. It’s not a political statement, it’s just lunch.

Some of my friends who know about my healthy lifestyle will sometimes apologize to me if we go to a place with lots of fried food or will double-check to make sure there is appropriate food for my in their fridges. This is very considerate and thoughtful of them, but again it makes me feel odd. It’s undeniable that my healthy eating and fitness lifestyle sets me apart in unexpected ways from many of my friends and acquaintances. I just try to keep it myself and not get preachy about it. When I was walking on the trail with my mom a month ago a family handed us pamphlets asking us, “Have you been saved?” which we promptly threw out because it’s really no one else’s business whether we have been saved or whether we care to be saved. It’s not my business what other people choose to eat and I’m not going to start lecturing people on the proper amount of vegetable servings they should have in a day. But I have to admit when it comes to healthy living, just like the article said I have “got religion” and strangely enough I like it.

Then I thought about the fresher drawer in my own fridge. It’s currently home to a tomato that will probably collapse into a liquid mess like Senator Kelly from the X-Men movies if I try to touch it. There’s also a head of lettuce that looks fine from the top, but is turning into a gooey, black mess on the bottom, like a model for the decaying infrastructure of our government. Then there was the entire bag of grapes I tossed last week because I didn’t get around to eating them before they started to turn. So yeah, 25 percent of produce sounds like a pretty good estimate. I usually try to save the good parts if possible, like a surgeon amputating someone’s leg. I can sometimes just cut off the moldy part of sweet potato or a block of cheese and eat the rest without developing food poisoning.

The article also says “some fruits emit ethylene, an odorless, colorless gas.” That sounds kind of scary. I’ve got a carbon-monoxide detector to warn me about that odorless, colorless gas, but evidently ethylene emitting from my bananas won’t kill me. It will however speed the ripening process and “lead to the premature decay of nearby ethylene-sensitive vegetables.” I’m supposed to sort my ethylene-emitting vegetables away from my ethylene-absorbing ones. And I thought we’d left segregation behind in the 1960′s.

Then the article starts to get kind of complicated since it says which fruits to refrigerate and which ones to under no circumstances to refrigerate and the ones that ohmygod never, ever let near gas releasers. Can you believe I have been refrigerating my peaches, pears, plums, and tomatoes? It all starts to get very complicated and I have to wonder how many separate containers I would need in the fridge to follow all these rules.

Then they list foods in the order of how quickly they go bad, which is very handy and I’ll have to print it out and stick it on the fridge. Then I can look at it as I’m throwing away my lettuce and say, “Yep, I really was supposed to eat this earlier in the week. Oops!” because even though I have a list I doubt it will make me eat a salad on a day I don’t want to.

“Dieting” has a lot of negative baggage. If you’re on a diet it’s implied that someday you will go off a diet. It’s a temporary state of existence, like a month-to-month lease. Dieting implies another “d” word – deprivation. Dieters are accused of starving themselves and going hungry. It’s implied that if you break any of your diet’s multiple rules you are a very bad person indeed. Violators will have their knuckles rapped with their diet books and be sent to the corner to moan about what bad people they are as they suck their thumbs.

If that’s what you think diets are, then no wonder there are people who are anti-diet. All of the above behaviors are a pretty messed up way to live your life. I was always suspicious of diets because of all those connotations, which is one of the reasons I never went on one before.

I state on my “About” page that I follow the South Beach Diet. Maybe when people see that big D word they assume I fit into the category of people above. If I ever start taking on those behaviors, I give you all permission to tie me to a chair and force feed me cake. I’d prefer chocolate fudge cake if you’ve got it, but angel food cake is yummy too.

I do have guidelines that I follow when I make my food choices. I’ll always go for the slice of whole-wheat over the white bread. Sweet potatoes will beat normal potatoes in all my vegetable wrestling matches. I’m going to peel the skin off the chicken even if you call me a poultry scalper. But if I really, really want to eat something, I eat it. There is still a dried-up, sticky streak of mint chocolate shake residue on my car’s cup holder from my expedition to Steak N’ Shake a month ago. I haven’t cleaned it off yet because I’m lazy and I need to stick some more napkins in my map holder, but also because every time I see it I think “Damn, that was a goooood milkshake,” as if I am remembering the best sex of my life. I don’t regret the milkshake and if I ever get a big hankering for one again, I’ll go consume those 700 calories joyously.

I demand that I enjoy every single thing I eat. If I don’t, I say “Well, that was nasty. Let’s not stick that in our mouth again.” Recently someone asked me what I do when I’m hungry and I responded honestly, “I eat.” The idea that I’m starving myself or eating only raw Elmer’s paste is ridiculous. Paste tastes so much better when you add cinnamon and Splenda, duh.

Sometimes I still overeat. Last week I was lying in my bed after dinner with that sickly “Why did you eat the entire antelope?” feeling our cavemen ancestors must have had. I started to moan, “Geez, why did you have to eat all that….cauliflower?” This was completely ridiculous. I was guilting myself over cauliflower? Did I think tiny florets were going to spring up on my face like I had vegetable-induced herpes? I suppose that’s the biggest difference between my old way of life and my new lifestyle. These day’s I’m usually pigging out on little white vegetables that look like trees instead of entire pints of ice cream.

My way of eating and exercising has become natural part of my life. Planning what I eat is part of the regular maintenance required on my body, just like combing my hair, brushing my teeth, and showering. It’s just something I’ve got to do, less I be the crazy, smelly girl with fuzzy white teeth. It doesn’t mean I’m obsessed with dieting, not any more than I am obsessed with going to the bathroom because I have to pee 5 or 6 times a day.

I don’t want to say I’m on a diet, because this is a permanent change that leaves me satisfied and happy. I’m not suffering in any way because of it. The word “diet” makes it sound like I’m eating only protein shakes and vitamin pills. I also don’t want to say I’m not on a diet because I am following guidelines and actively managing what I eat. And I don’t live a life completely free of food guilt. There are still some days (like after an Easter binge) that I feel a bad about eating half a cake and I have to keep reminding myself to get over it already.

There are a lot of people like me out there. Wendy over at Pound refers to her lifestyle as “this thing I’m doing.” There was recently a survey that said less people were “on a diet”, and those who were dieting were “more likely to be on diets of their own making rather than following diets prescribed by physicians or by diet food marketers.”

I cracked open the aqua-marine cover of my South Beach Diet book last weekend to see how closely I was following the plan since it’d been about two years since I’d read the book. I discovered I have been eating the wrong kind of oatmeal, all the couscous I’ve been consuming hasn’t been Kosher, and that peas are starchy and I shouldn’t be raiding their pods so much.

Then I closed the book, put it back on the shelf and thought, “Well, that’s lovely,” and made some couscous and peas. What I’m doing seems to be working anyway. I don’t want to give up my Pine Nut couscous or my Baked Apple Instant Oatmeal. For the most part, I still am following the South Beach plan, but I’ve made my own modifications, picking out the parts I like best and rationalizing any indiscretions. It’s the buffet style approach, which is the same way many people approach religion. There are plenty of Catholics who use birth control despite what the pope might say. I guess I’m doing South Beach: PastaQueen Style.

Diet or anti-diet, I don’t even know what those words mean anymore. I’m just going to eat, drink and be merry. I’ll save a place at the table for you.