The “Fuck It” Diet

I have lost some weight which has set off a strange wave of paranoia among people that I have either had my stomach stapled or shut off with a rubber band, or am on some freaky raw food diet or whatever.

What happened was that I was fucking sick and tired of dieting and working out. I fucking was sick and tired of buying clothes that were too small for me so I could ‘thin into them.’ I was fucking sick and tired of eating 5 to 7 small meals a day. I was sick and tired of no carbs. I was fucking sick and tired of thinking about food and not thinking about food. I was fucking sick and tired of my trainer and any type of exercise. I went to a nutritionist and I lost a lot – of money. I never left his office without dropping at least a grand on bullshit. Shakes, pills, supplements, food substitutes, exercise programs. I said “FUCKING FUCK THIS FUCK IT FUCK IT SERIOUSLY FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK FUCK FUCK IT!!!!”

I stopped going to Fred Segal and getting the one thing in the whole store that fit me. I started buying clothes that fucking fit me, like now. I put away all notions of what diets meant to me, what I was supposed to eat and not supposed to eat. I altogether lost the thought process that carried me through my life – my dieting and exercise regimen – and started thinking about the people I loved, hated, tolerated, laughed at, laughed with. There was a lot of time to read. I wanted to watch old movies. I ate a lot of shitty food. I gained some weight and it was scary. But it didn’t really make a difference. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. I stopped exercising, and started writing. I played with my dogs. I looked at shit on Ebay. I started to eat what I wanted – and kept doing it. Not a food vacation – not a respite between diets. I just was going to eat eat eat eat eat eat and fucking eat some more.

Then, I kind of started to get weirdly thinner. I get it now. Because I don’t care about food, it is there when I want it, I don’t crave it and want it and think about it. Since I can have everything, nothing is that important. I don’t need to eat a whole cake because I can eat a whole cake every day every meal if I want and I don’t care. I don’t prepare to eat because I might be hungry later and ‘they’ won’t have what I have to eat. When I am hungry, I eat. You know, that is what the weird diet is.

Here is what I usually eat every day. In the morning I have a bowl of cereal with two kinds mixed, granola and LIFE. If I am in a hotel, I have granola and yogurt, croissants, one chocolate and one regular and then a big cranberry juice. I drink a lot of water, and a lot of lemonade, regular COKE – no diet anything ever. After that, I usually eat a peanut butter cup or something like that. Then I get to work, which is writing usually, recording sometimes, interviews, etc.. I get hungry later around early afternoon, and so I eat what I think is a good thing at the moment, which could be mac and cheese, or pizza. I eat as much as I want, but it is usually too rich to eat all of it and since I am not dieting and I don’t need to cram the forbidden food in before the diet starts up again, I eat as much as I feel good eating and leave the rest. I leave a lot on the plate because I need not clean my plate. Why? I don’t have to. And the value of not having to finish all my food, probably has been the biggest contributor to my healing around food. I used to feel like I needed to eat all of it, all and then some, but actually, it doesn’t feel good to do that. It doesn’t taste good. I can have more when I am hungry again. I eat dinner late, usually with friends. I like appetizers. I will order 3-4 types, so I can have a variety of edible treats, instead of an entrée. If I order entrées, it would be more than one, because I deserve to eat what I like. I never eat leftovers. I never take anything home. I never eat anything that doesn’t taste heavenly. I never eat when I am not hungry. I never let myself get too hungry. I never deny myself a fucking thing because I have denied myself enough for 1000 lifetimes and there is no more denial for me in the way that I live. I deserve all the mozzarella sticks, all the fucking chocolate, all the fucking pizza, all the chicken a’la king, and I deserve to leave what I don’t finish on the plate.

So there you go. Big secret diet. Love. Love and the audacity to actually waste food.

81 thoughts on “The “Fuck It” Diet

  1. Thank you so much for posting this! I come from a family of women who diet constantly and hate themselves for gaining weight. A few years ago, I was at an all time low of 124 pounds (I’m 5’3″) I now weigh 155 and I don’t care. I have a boyfriend who loves me for who I am, and I started buying clothes that fit …I threw out my size 8 jeans and bought 12’s…I threw out my B cup bras and bought C’s…I feel much cuter in my clothes now, and I really don’t care that I’ve gained 31 pounds. My poor mom still hates herself because she thinks she’s fat. I refuse to live my life that way. I’m sick of counting calories and feeling guilty. Fuck it!!!! 🙂

  2. I’m crying right now, this is what I needed.
    I’m so hard on myself, I am my worst and harshest critic. I am fifteen and although I truly thought I was done with it I am struggling still with my eating disorder. It’s so hard. Everyday I don’t what to do, what to feel, how to act.

    I wish I could believe and follow the Fuck It Diet… I try so hard to everyday.

  3. Hi Margret thanks i need your diet it is the best their is because it’s not a diet that’s great i am going to read it every day because diet thoughts alway’s pop up in my head again thank you for f diet now i got to put your thinking into my head and do the f diet thank you again charlie69

  4. Hi Margret thank you for the f diet i need to your post every to fight the diet thougts you are right diets suck and the make people fatter again thanks again charlie69 the 69 is my age

  5. I am on the Fuck It diet because the fact of the matter is that I just don’t fit the FOBby/media-friendly Korean woman mold (very intimidating when all the Koreans around you DO – Thin City all the way.). I’m a mother of two, and I have a little bit of a muffin top that spills over my Land’s End khakis. It really bothers me. But guess what? The lady in the post office told me today, “You have the most beautiful smile. And you know what? I think it’s genuine, and that’s the best part about it.” So you know what? Fuck you self-critical voice in my head (a 30-year compilation of shit female relatives said to my face and within my ear-shot). Fuck you people who only want to see me through the lens of your own ignorance and Lucy Liu fantasies. Margaret is so empowering, and she speaks the truth. Margaret, I love you!!! You are my hero. (Did I mention I love you?)

  6. The “F” it diet is very similar to a book about using your internal wisdom to heal your relationship with food. Written by 2 dieticians and nutritional therapists, “Intuitive Eating” is an amazing resource for this dazzling journey towards healing. Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch http://www.intuitiveeating.org Cheers to loving ourselves and being present in our present bodies.

  7. You are so brilliant that right now I am fantasizing about covering you in cheese and chocolate syrup and sour cream and…wait, what were we talking about again?

    Seriously though, great post. Thank you.

    Tsada K.

  8. It’s healthy not to make a big deal out of food for sure, but to advocate wasting food? If only everyone had your taste in heavenly food and neglect of leftovers, the price of available food stuff could rise so much faster because of greater demand coupled with lesser availability! Personally, I can’t afford to eat this way, and love when a restaurant gives me big portions so I can eat half at the diner and half at home the next day.

    btw, exercise does more for you than just help you lose body fat. Human and animal bodies are made to be moved.

  9. Fruits and veggies I eat, lots of grapes/bananas/apples/watermelon,etc, flushes out the system. Other than that, beans,rice,fish,mostly oriental type stuff I eat (the wife is from Okinawa).
    Treat yourself and enjoy Margaret. 😉

  10. I love this. The only bit I personally wouldn’t/couldn’t do is not take leftovers, because I fucking love burgers and pizza and a lot of foods the next day. Sometimes I love them even more. All I have to do is pop ’em in the microwave for a minute to melt the cheese (because there will always be cheese. Always.) and woo, easy food. the only things I will not save are fries, because the only way to make them yummy again is to re-fry them, and I don’t want the extra work. But usually I just eat them all at the table and take home a near entire burger, so it all works out very good I suppose.

  11. Amazing, Margaret! Did you read Intuitive Eating? You are doing exactly what it advocates. Taking back the power one bite at a time.

  12. You are not getting the point, Dr. What. Margaret Cho isn’t “advocating wasting food”. If you actually read what she says, she talks about taking back her own experiences with food and being creative about how to break its hold. For HER, not eating leftovers was a breakthrough. Your kind of guilt-ridden thinking is exactly what makes dieters so miserable… and then fail. I don’t think anyone could read a manifesto here – it’s personal, which is why it worked for her.

  13. I used to weigh 220 and was on my way to 320. (Up to that time all I though about was dieting for as long as I can remember.) I had the same epiphany after a talk with God. This is the only way to live, and I have maintained my weight doing it since 1984. I eat mostly health food, but basically I eat whatever I want. I wrote a blog for about a year in 2010 which is free to anyone to read: udonthave2Bfat.blogspot.com

    Long Live Freedom from the Tyranny of Diets!

  14. Huh. I eat the same diet. Instead I call it the rational portion diet. I don’t over stuff myself. Just eat slower, get full with less. Eat whatever I want that doesn’t make me feel crappy.

  15. Wonderful post, but gotta say… I can only dream I’ll have this much economic security someday. Not to worry about cost, about price, about the future of my family. I can totally see being relaxed enough to not look at the price tag, eat what you want, and let the rest go.

    But it feels like a dream to me now.

  16. sounds liberating, but i don’t believe you can totally unburden yourself from the concerns of healthy eating. In the face of so much garbage on the supermarket shelves, in fast food joints, convenience stores…etc, how can you not practice some degree of restraint?

    I realize your post is an attack against being obsessively concerned about what you eat and its consequences, but I think it is unwise and quite difficult to return to a sort of blissful, guilt free relationship to foods that you know you should strive to avoid.

    Isn’t moderation an outcome of practical restraint?

  17. Yes! So glad there’s one more person out there who understands and advocates that the “fuck it, imma just go live” strategy is the best “diet” out there. Turns out every body has a set point, and when we stop trying screw with metabolic processes and chemical interactions that have evolved over a bagillion years (people tell me they’re going on such-and-such new diet, and I just look at them and wonder if they’ve even HEARD of those lovely neurochemicals, leptin and ghrelin), our bodies are pretty damn good at figuring out what to do to be healthy.

    Now that’s HEALTHY, not super model skinny. Which isn’t healthy anyway. And I would know – I swing the other way when it comes to weight. Once managed to eating disorder my way down to oh-shit-your-heart-could-give-out pounds and have had to work my back up the scale, in both weight and self-esteem, since then. Of course, by “work my back up” I mean “fight my RD tooth and nail over every pound” until maybe six months ago (that’s after 4 years of treatment and therapy), when I was finally like “hunh. my body isn’t going to keep gaining until it’s xxxxxxxxx pounds. I can just… eat food… and not be neurotic about it… and everything’s going to be okay.”

    Whodathunk.

    Anyhoo. Congrats, and happy writing 🙂

  18. Your humor is not my cup of tea….you dieting advice is my milkshake! I’m a 48 year old male with a Doc that has me on a dozen meds for a dozen different things. “Your blood work says…” ….Fuck you Doc I’m done. I have spent wayyyyy too much time reading labels, downloading recipies, and spending my whole Sunday preparing meals for the week….THAT I FUCKING HATE. I’M DONE! I like your advice/view, and I’m going to give it a whirl. Thanks for your post. BTW, I found it by googeling ” I fucking hate dieting”…:) OK maby I do KIND of like you…

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