" Just remember: You only have one body and despite how well you live your life, it may never change. Can you afford to hate yourself for the rest of your life?" -Linda Bacon
I stood up in the meeting.
I explained that I had had success in EVERY area of my life that I put my mind to- but this one.
If I had a goal that sang to my heart I accomplished it. I had got into OT school when it was harder than medical school to get accepted. I had fought addictions. I had a wonderful marriage. Beautiful children, and I had accomplished financial goals so that I could be a stay at home mother.
But then I publicly acknowleged that in that one area I always failed.
Can you guess where I was?
It could be any number of "hate yourself" places that dot our landscape, but that particular night it was Weight Watchers.
Did I lose weight? Yes.
Did it say off? no.
After years of intense willpower and numerous attempts, tears, and failures, a wonderful support system, prayer, and inner enlightenment. I have moved past those issues of feeling inferior because of my body. I don't have a "weight loss" blog. I don't visit yours. And trust me a lot of beautiful fat women have them: Here is my family blog - here is my weight loss blog.
I have a testimony because of the Gospel that one of the most important reasons we are here is to have and enjoy this body we were given.
I have definite opinions on the topic.
To put it in a nutshell, I think our obsession with weight is a full on attack from the adversary to make us feel like crap.
How much emotional and financial energy is wasted on our weight and obsessing about our bodies?
And its not even about our HEALTH.
its really about our SIZE.
Recently I started reading this book on my mom's kindle and I was so impressed with all the thorough and honest research I was mesmerized. I kept daydreaming about meeting the author in person and hugging her like crazy.
I am going to do an entire series on my blog about this topic. It needs to be talked about.
Because despite our best efforts at dieting you may be harming yourself more than helping. Many people who diet frequently end up weighing more. Drugs and surgeries may make you thinner - but the longevity of that is debatable, and the research shows you will NOT be healthier.
We should focus on WHOLE, healthy foods.
Intuitive eating - eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full.
Move your body.
Here is an excerpt:
"Until recent decades, adult weight stability over long periods of time was the norm and was an effortless process....
The healthy weight that your body aims for is called your set-point weight. Think of it as the preferred temperature on a fat thermostat. Like any thermostat, this one can be set at whatever point is most comfortable. The system then works tirelessly to do ANYTHING it can to bring your body in alignment with that point. It acts like a biological force: The further you go from the center, the stronger the pull to get you back to the comfortable range.
This system only works if we let it, however if you keep "jiggling" the thermostat via diets, the mechanism breaks down. This jiggling is like a power struggle to wrest control away from your body's innate weight-regulation system and in the end it only makes your body fight harder to retain control. The result: Your body forces you to not only REGAIN any weight you've lost, but you may even pay a penalty with extra weight gain, and a new setpoint weight set higher to protect against future restrictive diets.
My hot button topics that I'm going to blog about over time:
- How much I think gym class can hurt kids who aren't naturally athletic and over time develops a HATRED of exercise when it should be doing the exact opposite.
- What stupid things we say, even complimentary sometimes that make women feel sad about their bodies (I may even talk about the baby shower that I cried the whole way home from)
-Is accepting your size like giving up? Is is support of unhealthy habits? - short answer: No.
-Weight loss surgery - paying someone big money to force your body into malnutrition. (I may get my mom to guest post - she had weight loss surgery when I was a toddler. I grew up to the regular sounds of her vomiting.)
-Why the media talks of those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia with compassion and those who are fat like they are demons. Why is making fun of the fat person completely accepted across all venues of entertainment?
- Are you a restrained eater? If so you may be making your own life difficult. Are you a super taster? FASCINATING stuff!
-Fat children were excluded from protection in the Safe Schools Improvement Act - a measure to prevent bullying. How is that possible? If you don't think being bullied for your size is an issue - you obviously have never been bullied or seen a fat kid be bullied.
and more...
ps. here is my favorite review on Amazon about the book:
Health at Every Size starts with a discussion about the social and cultural myths surrounding weight. She talks about how at different times in the last century, women's magazines have had articles about how to GAIN weight, instead of how to lose it. Maybe the most important lesson in the book is how the weight loss industry, which includes government agencies, lies and manipulates statistics in order to make us believe that if we are fat, we are going to die.
1.) We're all going to die. Skinny does not equal immortal. (In case you were wondering.)
2.) The Center for Disease Control helped to design the `obesity crisis' with false statistics.
3.) The act of trying to obtain a `perfect' weight causes far more health problems than the act of trying to be as healthy as possible at your current weight, whatever that may be.
The first part of this book, for me anyway, felt like a battle cry.
The next part of the book talks about Health at Every Size and how to implement it into your life.
I'll admit something here. I skipped ahead to section two. And I was confused. Because I was looking for menu plans and concrete steps to follow. I've read a lot of diet and `life style change' books, starting with Susan Powter and ending right here. They all have steps to follow.
This book doesn't break HAES down that way, and at first I was confused. Because-well, how am I supposed to do this if you don't tell me how? Where are the charts? What about a training schedule or a list of HAES friendly snacks?
Then I went back and read from the beginning. (This was one of those times that my penchant for reading books backwards didn't work out for me.)
Turns out that HAES isn't a diet. I was a little slow integrating that information, because I actually knew that going in. It isn't a fitness plan. It isn't anything other than a validation, permission to treat yourself well right this minute. So Bacon's section two talks more about easing yourself out of what may well be a decades long addiction to dieting. It gives you permission to exercise because it's fun and feels good, or even as training, rather than as a punishment for the sin of being fat. To enjoy whatever food you want to eat-literally, whatever food-without putting a moral judgment on it.
HAES breaks down like this:
1. Love yourself. Yourself today, not yourself 10 or 50 or 150 pounds from now. Your body is just your body, it is neutral morally.
2. Eat good food, eat what you want and enough of it, and stop when you're full.
3. Move because it feels good, it is good for your health (yes, even if you never lose a pound) and it's fun.
Deceptively simple, right?
