Anne Barone's description of growing up in the 1950s mirrors my own experience,
and I am very entertained by her Puritan vs. French comparison.

"Blame it on the Puritans.
If you wonder why the French, the most food-obsessed people on the planet,
can eat all that cream, butter, and egg yolks and struggle far less with excess weight
than Americans who dutifully take home shopping bags of sugarless and fat-free,
the answer is: the Puritans.

The French never had any; the Americans did.
The French had Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte,
Charles de Gaulle, and Brigitte Bardot.
But no Puritans.

Back in 1620 when the Puritans stepped off the Mayflower,
they brought with them the intellectual baggage that if something feels good
and makes us happy, it is bad. Discomfort and sacrifice are good.
The more uncomfortable and unpleasurable something is, the Puritans thought,
the better for you. Of course this Puritan philosophy grew out of strong religious conviction.

The French were also religious -- in their own fashion.
When they wanted to give thanks to God, they built -- by hand, no less --
huge, architecturally magnificent Gothic cathedrals. The construction of Chartres,
no doubt, burned more calories than all the Jane Fonda workout videos ever sold.

For Thanksgiving, the American Puritans fixed a big dinner and ate it.
Our annual reenactment of this feast kicks off that part of the year
when the average American gains six pounds.

The Puritan legacy was still strong three centuries later
when I was growing up in the 1950s.
In that small Bible Belt town, drinking alcohol was a sin, smoking was a sin,
playing cards was sin, dancing was a sin, and going to the movies was a sin.
Any effort to improve your appearance was viewed with suspicion.
Once I arrived at a friend's house to find her grandmother in a rage.
Pointing a damning finger, she demanded, "What do you think about
a girl who would go against the will of God?"
My friend, it turned out, had straightened her naturally curly hair.

In that Bible Belt milieu, sex outside marriage put you on the fast track to Hell.
As for sex in marriage, you weren't supposed to enjoy it.
The only sanctioned pleasurable activity was eating.
I have witnessed church family night dinners that were food orgies
that would have shocked the un-Puritanical French right out of their socks.

The French seek equal pleasure in a well-prepared meal as in a session of
passionate lovemaking. Actually the French favor alternating one with the other.

But everything in moderation.
The French, after all, coined the phrase "la douceur de vivre, the sweetness of living".
Americans coined the phrase "No pain, no gain."
The way this works, you go through the pain of dieting.
Then you gain it all back.

THE NOUVEAUX PURITANS

In recent decades American Puritanism has undergone an evolution.
Activities no longer prohibited for religious or moral reasons,
are now on the no-no list as unhealthy. This has given the Puritan mentality
an in-road to spoiling our previously okay pleasure in eating. The rules are simple:
Anything that tastes good, like grilled steak, cheese enchiladas, fresh-brewed coffee,
or Key lime pie, are poisons, guaranteed to kill us. Foods such as tofu, bean sprouts,
and plain low-fat yogurt are cure-alls promised to put the medical profession
out of business and make us all live to 110.

Most new products the food industry has put on the shelves recently carry some
(mostly overhyped) health claim. And whatever the fad health food,
they add it to everything. During the oat bran craze about the only products
on the supermarket shelf without this gritty little addition was laundry detergent
and disposable diapers.

These Nouveux Puritans have studies to back up their claims.
But my faith in "studies" is weak. I remember one study that concluded that
wearing lipstick caused cancer. However, to ingest as much lipstick as they had
pumped into those poor little research mice, a human had to eat 90 tubes of lipstick per day!

Across the Atlantic the French hear the results of the American Nouveux Puritan
food studies, pause a moment from eating their pate de fois gras, cut a bite of bifteck,
sip their Beaujolais, and contemplate the cheese tray as they shrug and say,
"Il sont fous, ces Americains. They're crazy, those Americans."

I first became aware of this quote from the book Chic & Sllm (2001) by Anne Barone
several years ago when it was posted by wones, who is active in the No S Diet forum,
and is also registered here at DietHobby.

I like the way I look at a normal weight.
I don’t walk past a mirror or reflective glass
without taking a look and admiring my handiwork.
Most of the time when I look in a mirror, 
my reaction is “Damn, I look good!”

I could offset that paragraph by telling you
about the imperfections my body still carries.
But I’m not going to.
I believe in focusing on the positive.
I’m not going to let the “flaws” negate the positive traits. 
 I love my body just the way it is, the way it was,
and the way it is will be.

I am no longer waiting for perfection that will never arrive
before I decide I can love myself.
If I could give one piece of advice
toward the goal of accepting your body,
it would be to let go of the idea of Perfection.

Let go of the idea that there is something wrong with you.
Let go of the notion that if you could look just a little better,
you would be able to love yourself.
Realize that self acceptance is a choice completely independent
of your physical appearance.
Realize that Perfection does not exist.

It has always been my choice what food I eat and how much.
It has always been my choices that created the shape of my body.
I have to choose to eat the right amount, not too much and not too little.
The hardest part of learning this was admitting to myself
that all the mistakes I had made were choices I made.
It would be really easy to place blame on outside factors,
but that would be false.

 I can’t control the circumstances of my life
or the actions and words of others.
I can only control my reactions.
I accept that many negative things that have gone on in my life
have been due to my own choices. At the same time, I forgive myself.
This comes back to not expecting myself to be perfect.

There is a huge difference between accepting responsibility and placing blame.
Yes, I’ve dealt with some difficult situations in my life in less-than-healthy ways.
But it was not the difficult situations that caused this.
It was my own choices in how I dealt with them.
By saying this I am not saying that everything is my fault.
I am only acknowledging that it is my choice to make changes.

It really is 99% mental.
Is losing weight or maintaining weight loss really difficult?
Yes.

But the actions to take are pretty straight forward.
Eat less. Move more. Everybody knows it.
Deciding to do it, believing you deserve it,
sticking with it… those are the hard parts.
Not because we don’t know how, but because we have
so many mental and emotional barriers in our way.
 We can love ourselves
and still desire to change our body size.
Let’s be mentally kind to ourselves while we deal
with changing the behaviors that determine our body size.

We all make mistakes.
It is simply a part of every life.
This lifestyle change that we are involved in is not easy.
Anything of real value never is.

Success requires hard work, dedication and sacrifice.
It's a lot more than counting calories, fat or carbs.
It means there are days you look in the mirror
and you tell yourself that unless you alter some of your behavior,
you are not going to be the success you hope to be.

 I know, I am there. I am learning,
I am moving forward, even on the days that I feel like giving up.

We live in a world that suggests "magic" and "easy" at every twist and turn.
We have come to believe that if we simply buy a potion or pill,
subscribe to a web-site and buy a video, health and happiness instantly occurs.
But truly, it's very hard work and sometimes it’s hard work I don't enjoy.

A half-cup of plain 0% Fage yogurt
gets me to my goal quicker than several cookies,
but I don't always want the yogurt.
I have to talk myself out of poor choices daily.
But when I make the right choice
I am acknowledging that my goals have value.

I deserve success just as much as anyone else does.
I have to work for it, sacrifice for it.
We are not called to be perfect;
we are called to put forth our best effort every day.
It's not always glamorous.
Most days it's putting one foot in front of the other
and walking the walk.

Here are 4 Core Elements to consider when Setting Goals:

Make sure your goals stand up to the following tests:

Are they realistic, specific and measurable,
and do you have a back-up plan
for when things don't go as expected?

Realistic

The goals you set have to be real in the context of your life.
They cannot be based on some ideal version of your real situation
and more importantly don't base them on some change you are ‘going' to make
that will give you more time. Set your first goals according to what your life looks like right now!
Look for changes that you can insert into your current schedule.
If you are too busy to cook--then don't plan to cook at home every day.
Start by finding healthy calorie controlled prepared foods that don't take a lot of time to prepare.

Specific

Make each goal very specific.
Make sure that both the steps to achieving it and that the results are readily observable
so there is no guesswork or grey in your ability to know what to do.

As an exanple: “Today I will weigh and measure the kind and amounts of food I eat
and immediately enter every bit of it into my computer food journal.”

Measurable

In the example I just gave.
it is easy to measure the extent to which you completed the goal. 

Back-Up Plan

Once you have set out some realistic, specific and measurable goals
you need to set up a second set that mirror these goals but are a little more forgiving.
These are useful when the unexpected happens.

So for example, sometimes the unexpected occurs.
For these occasions, instead of doing nothing
(which feels like failure and can trigger a bigger slide)
simply carefully note the kind and amounts of food eaten,
jot that estimated information down and then enter it in your computer food journal later.

While this is less than ideal it IS still part of "the plan" and thus will have you feeling
psychologically that you succeeded whereas skipping altogether would feel like failure.

                           

Serenity means calmness and tranquality.
The Serenity prayer says:

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference. “

Some things we can change,
and some things we cannot change.
How do we know the difference?

Recognizing the difference between what we can change
and what we cannot change will make our lives
more peaceful and more productive.

Wisdom is the recognition that our control is limited.
 The only thing that we have any power over
is our own behavior and our own choices.

For Serenity we must Accept that we have no power or control
over the behaviors or the choices of others.

Changing the things we can,
means mustering our Courage to work toward
the difficult task of changing ourselves,
specifically…changing our own attitudes and our own behaviors.

Many of us spend time feeling anxious
about things we cannot change:
things like the economy, the weather, traffic on the freeway,
or the actions of other people who are close to us.

This focus on things that are outside our personal control
drains from us the energy that we need
to make the most of our own personal opportunities.

The Wisdom I’ve found is: 
that Acceptance of this Truth
brings me Serenity and also gives me Courage.