Masknesia

The cicada's evening chorus filled the dark night air as I opened the wash machine door for what seemed like the fiftieth time today. At least I had insect company as I stared down the two dozen plus freshly washed masks. 

If you’re anything like me, you almost forgot about wearing masks for the past two months of summer. Luckily, we were largely outdoors and with fully vaccinated friends or family so everyday didn’t feel like a maskmergency. It was my own joyful mask amnesia or masknesia as I like to say. My partial, not total, memory loss of daily mask wearing felt blissful. 

But, here we are, Delta variant on the rise or peaking in many areas of the country, school looming around the corner, breakthrough infections and cooler fall and winter temperatures on the horizon. 

My heart sank a little as I assessed my mask mother load. Don’t get me wrong, I love masks. If there was a community badge offered for civilians willing to remind people to put on their mask, I’d have a mask enforcer Girl Scout badge (did you see the new cookie for this year?) already in the bag. I know, I’m that super annoying, yet polite, mask reminder-er.

Having that sinking pit feeling reminded me of those times when I was restricting my intake. The worst was when I’d open the refrigerator after coming home from a vacation. When I was away, I couldn’t have my regular “diet” foods and just ate what was available. A vacation from dieting gave me a much needed diet amnesia. But, coming home to a pantry and eventual refrigerator full of diet foods brought all the counting, the monitoring, and the measuring back in an instant. I soldiered on in the name of what I thought was “health”. 

I know now that health doesn’t mean restriction of any kind. In fact, restriction (no matter how small you think it may be) can increase your likelihood for a whole host of diseases and digestive problems. Healthy means full allowance of the foods that taste and feel good to your body. 

Now, of course, our refrigerator, pantry and freezer are full of all the things and dieting feels very close to a full memory loss event. Although any dieter knows that there’s never going to be a complete memory loss of a time where you very likely caused physical and emotional harm to your body and mind. That stays with you like the cicadas who stay underground for 17 years at a time. Burrowed deep, dormant, but still alive. 

I can’t wait for the day when COVID feels almost like a full memory loss and we can say remember when we were all stuck in our houses, had to wear masks, couldn’t see our friends and family and finally got vaccinated? 

Stock your fridge like you’re (hopefully) stocking your house with masks. You better have enough masks and foods that taste good and give you enough energy to get through this next (and final??) COVID variant stretch. 

PS. The news is a lot these days so I wanted to highlight one small piece of good news from our friends at Old Navy. They’re offering clothes in sizes 0-30 and XS-4X.
It’s called BODEQUALITY (watch the video!) because extra material shouldn’t mean extra cost to larger bodied consumers. “I am 100% and I’m only getting better now.”

When you're ready, here are two ways we can work together:

1. Peace Out Diets is my online course designed to help you unlearn diet culture's rules and redefine your values so you can stop obsessing about food and your body. 

2. MindBody YogaFlow is my online Vinyasa yoga library filled with classes of various lengths and themes. Convenient, fun, challenging and rejuvenating classes.