Dear Grady, You Asshole

I want to thank some of you, including the flapping, grey-gummed “Grady,” for entirely losing the forest for the trees when it came to my suggestion of eating pre-packaged foods to help get started on a calorie-restrictive diet.

Grady wrote:

You’ve lectured about how there are things you have to admit to yourself if you want to be successful losing weight. You’re going to have to admit to yourself that you must eat fresh, minimally processed food regularly if you want to be healthy.

I wanted to include Grady’s comment in its self-congratulatory entirety, but that sneering excerpt will have to suffice.

Some of us have lives, jobs, stresses, and realities we face every day that make switching from our unhealthy lifestyles—and we know they’re unhealthy; our bodies testify—straight away into a wholly organic, hand-prepared, completely healthy lifestyle difficult. The thought of purchasing and preparing every last bit of food that goes into our bodies is daunting and serves as a bulwark in which we can hunker down with our insecurities to inaction, stocked as it is with cheeseburgers, chocolate milk, and the echoing rejoinders of self-righteous, preening princes like you.

But you know what we can do? Buy some fucking TV dinners and try to power through a couple weeks of calorie restriction. It sucks a lot—and god knows most pre-packaged food is made from horse semen and basalt—but at least it’s something that’s possible and practical, albeit a lacking platform from which to leer and jab at the choices and shortcomings of others.

It’s awesome that you eat well—seriously. And you know what? The more one starts monitoring one’s diet and calorie intake, the more quickly it becomes apparent how much more flavor and tangible feelings of health come from fresh, hand-prepared food. And then once we’ve taught ourselves how to eat healthily from experience, Grady, we can start accusing those who never claimed otherwise of imperfection.