Hi friends! Last week we talked here about rules. The discussion continued offline with a few of you. Thank you for helping me think about this!

Much of the ordinary discourse around eating would have that rules in and of themselves basically = eating disorder. Because rules are understood as rigidity, and rigidity is not a good strategy for living in the "real world". Rigidity is evidence of stunted thinking and relating.

That's a summary of how I often see the discussion framed. It's what informs the question Why not just moderate!? "Moderation" is understood to be the healthy position, at least with food and eating.

For me that's just wrong. I understand rules as helping me navigate a chaotic world. And the present-day world of food is indeed chaotic.

Ugh, "food" is maybe too generous a term. What we're really talking about are highly engineered substances that have been developed to be habit-forming for the specific purpose of turning a nice profit. Health is not among the concerns.

If I'm being honest with myself, this is what I find: Yeah, I can eat these engineered foods. I can eat any way I like and still stick to my one rule to rule them all aka Meals at Mealtimes, No Matter What.

What I can't do is eat any old kind of way and actually feel good. So periodically I seize myself with both hands and say Hey you're eating too much junk! and I swear off and that's when people like to challenge my so-called recovery with what they think is the killing blow:

HOW COME YOU CAN'T JUST MODERATE!?

And what they mean is "I can moderate, so if YOU can't moderate you're doing it wrong". Also they mean "Ha! Gotcha."

Or they mean "If I can't eat whatever I want, it's not my kind of recovery" which in the past I also believed. (Whoops.)

Anyway, one answer to the question How come you can't just moderate? is PEOPLE VARY. Individual food response varies, a lot. I don't actually know why you can moderate and I can't.

But I don't need to know why. And I FOR SURE don't need to collect more evidence.

Because another true answer to the question Why can't you just moderate? is Oh, I can. I can moderate the fuck out of those substances...until I CAN'T.

Which is to say, every single time. (By design.)

So that's why rules. That's why, for me, rules actually = a very good strategy for living in the real world. If I am not creating rules to navigate eating, some smarter and much eviller group of people is deciding that for me.

* * *

Moderate? Abstain? What works for you? Gretchen Rubin has a whole good discussion about why neither is better but knowing which you are is everything.

Other things are...

Writing: Over at Modern Daily Knitting, I revisit Sabrina Hersi Issa's personal inventory day. Mine had gotten so stale—and then Beth Pickens gave me a nudge.

Reading: Starvation Mode, by Elissa Washuta. Healthy as F***, by Oonagh Duncan. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century, by Erik Olin Wright.

Knitting: Yeah, I'll be working on Astrid for a while. (Ravelry link).