Thee most cuckoo thing in a 🍌 bananas week

Dear heaven, no.

Image: Joris Hoefnagel, Guide for Constructing the Letter N, and Guide for Constructing the Letter O, about 1591–1596, The J. Paul Getty Museum. Public domain.

SO. Has your inbox suddenly gotten really weird? Exceptionally weird? Mine sure has.

I'm not gonna name names but .... oh, yeah, I am though, and I have never been a big ole name-namer, but everything's gone topsy-turvy. And by topsy-turvy I mean check out some of the startling ways that people have shown up to "help" via email this week, with

• pep talks on how to give more people more pep talks. Owww, just, no. Don't want to give em, don't want to get em.
   

• assurances of deep solidarity with what I'm going through, because we're all grieving. No sir, we are not all grieving. Stop telling people how they feel.
   

• donation requests from a multinational corporation to fund "our" family of employees, without telling me what the executive team is doing for them. If they were really family, wouldn't your execs be taking care of them? How bout you lead by example before asking customers to pay your staff?

But in a week which also brought sales emails in Comic Sans (!), the absolute most cuckoo thing in my inbox was an email from Weight Watchers.

I was last in touch with Weight Watchers when my last child was born. He is 24. Just to paint a picture.

So long time, no hear. They don't write they don't call and that's just how I want it, because ugh, DIETS.

Yet after more than two decades, they're sliding into my inbox with no warm-up, no heyyyyyy Max. Just a supreme weirdity titled "how to get back to tracking THIS week!" and a bouncy gotta stay positive! tile.

And yes, by "tracking" they mean food diaries and calorie limits. AND YES, by "THIS week" they mean a shelter-in-place, eat from the pantry, wear a mask!, global health EMERGENCYPOCALYPSE is no excuse to take a break from the deadly serious job of losing weight.*

As Samantha Irby might say: Wow, no thank you. And I will say, just in case anyone's confused, which I doubt you were:

THERE IS NO IMPERATIVE TO LOSE WEIGHT THIS WEEK.

Not that there's anything wrong with losing weight, or any reason NOT to, if you want or need to. Many of the people I work with—specifically, in the Body of Knowledge Weekly program—come to me for just that reason.

I'm also not suggesting that we all resign ourselves to coming out the other side of this worldwide crisis with an extra 10-20 lbs. Nope! I doubt this will happen. Even if we can't eat the freshest, wholest, vitaminniest food ever. Even if wall-to-wall PB&J is the foreseeable future.

But WEIGHT LOSS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY NEED like beans or canned tuna or toilet paper. "Getting on track" with weight loss is not the week's priority. (Unless it is actually a need-driven priority for you, which, golly: Just get in touch.)

Otherwise, no, the priority this week is staying healthy and sane so we can do our part—not more!—to keep the rest of humanity healthy and sane. And if you're a bingey eater sheltering in place, you might be in a difficult spot with that.

To that end, I will have something for you next week: A daily email for 30 days to help you eat well, feel good, stay steady, and get through this by focusing on what's really important. It will not be focused on losing weight.

It will focus on the essentials of normal eating, even in abnormal circumstances. Nothing extra, nothing fancy: the BASICS.

Will it be affordable? YES IT WILL.

Will there be a subscriber discount? OF COURSE.

So more soon! And that's the week. Let me know how you're doing and how I can be of help. 

 

(*And by "gotta stay positive!" I think they might mean "we have no humanity and no human experience lol.")