Butter makes you fat

Does it? I don't think I buy it. In my last entry I talk about making pate with a 1/2 lb of butter. Ok, so I haven't eaten all the pate yet, but I've switched most of my cooking so that I use butter several times a day. This is because butter (according to my cookbible) is healthy. Butter that comes from cows feeding on rapidly growing green grass is full of nutrients that we need to look and feel healthy, and for body and brain function. And the strangest thing of all? After a month of increasing my intake of butter, whole milk, whole cheese, olive oil and fatty meat, I've actually lost weight.

Healthy fats eaten with healthy vegetables, grains, fruits, etc, will help your body function and metabolize more effectively, meaning that your body should better regulate its weight. We gain weight when we put stress on our system by eating foods it can't handle--such as excess sugar, refined flour, polyunsaturated vegetable oils (corn and soybean) and most of the products that the food manufacturing industry puts in our foods to make them cheap and give them long shelf-life.

So--and this was a surprise to me, having grown up as part of the avoid fat, eat chicken breasts generation--eating rich, whole foods is incredibly healthy and can help you lose, or balance, your weight.

Now, my second observation, the much more philosophical one. Do I like this? Losing weight, I mean. First of all, most of my clothes don't fit, which is frustrating. And then I feel like there's generally less of me--a disconcerting feeling. Losing weight is such a sacred goal for women in my, and many, societies, it seems like there shouldn't be a downside, right?

I've been spending a lot of time looking at bodies the last several days, Watching people move, what their shapes look like. I study and work on a university campus, so there are plenty of young, thin bodies walking around, and what I think I'm realizing is that thin, in and of itself, is not that attractive. It seems that how people carry themselves, how they wear their clothing, where they decide to let a curve show is, to me, more determinate of beauty.

Ultimately, healthy is very beautiful. Maybe my body still has some more 'balancing' to do and I'll gain weight back with all this butter I keep eating. I would do so happily. My focus has been shifting--away from body size and toward body health.