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Bad
Body Thoughts “It just hits me out of the blue. I start to feel fat and disgusting and then it’s all I can think about.” “As young as I can remember I’ve always felt too big. My mom used to yell at me, and I would go eat cookies and feel fat.” In order to give up an eating disorder and become a “normal eater” again, women must give up weight loss as a goal. But its hard to give up weight loss when you have negative feelings about your body. Often negative feelings about our bodies were the first symptom of our eating disorders. Think back, why did you start your first diet? Because you felt fat or too big. In our society, with its size 0 supermodels, it is very hard not to have negative body image. In fact having some degree of dissatisfaction with one’s appearance is considered the “norm”. When women get together, where does the conversation inevitably turn?....to body dissatisfaction and diets. Its been called “Anorexic Bonding” of women. When my clients say to me “I feel fat”, I remind them that “fat” is not a emotion. Feeling fat is almost always a bodily sensation of a displaced or unidentified emotion. Often women who have eating disorders are not aware of what they are feeling, and focusing our attention on our body gives an illusion of control. As Jane Hirschman and Carol Munter point out in their books Overcoming Overeating and When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies, “Bad body thoughts are never, ever about your body...But the thing about a bad body thought is that it includes believing that it’s about your body. ” If you do not feel good about your body it is always about something else in your life. If we listen to what we say about our bodies we get clues about what else needs our attention. For example: Let’s say that I’m a 40ish professional woman with two children and a bourgeoning business to run. (Hmmmmm, sounds familiar.) In the middle of a particularly hectic weekday morning after I’ve lost my keys, was late for an appointment, and just received a second notice on a bill I forgot to pay, I start to “feel fat”. “My abs are flabby!”, I think to myself. So I go to the health club and do a million sit-ups and workout on the abcruncher for a half hour. Sweating and exhausted, I leave, only to find that I have to return home because I left my briefcase in the kitchen and forgot to pack myself a lunch for work. The next day, I realize that I never got around to returning those phone calls, and rather than doing the bookkeeping and billing, I decide that my flabby abs need another workout. On the third day, I’m feeling flabbier than ever when I look at the stacks of paper on my desk. I think to myself, “I’ll do it when I get back from the health club”. But day after day I will continue to feel powerless against these “flabby feelings”. As you can guess from my example, when we focus solely on our body, the real issues which cause us to feel a certain way never get addressed. We need to listen to the words we use to describe our body and ask ourselves, “If this isn’t about my body, what in my life feels flabby?” In this example, my paperwork and bookkeeping are flabby. If I work on organizing my paperwork, scheduling a bookkeeping system, become disciplined to return phone calls promptly, and take a mindful moment each day to make sure I have everything I need before leaving home, my life will not “feel so flabby”. My life will change and I will grow, feeling more empowered with each change. In Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the YA YA Sisterhood, there’s a great example of this: “Do I look too fat?” Vivi asked. Sidda could not count the number of times her mother had asked her that question. Now, for the first time, she thought she heard what her mother was really asking: Is there too much of me? Do I need to trim myself back for you? “No Mama,” Sidda said, “you don’t look fat. There is just enough of you. Not too little. Not too much. In fact, you look exactly right.” Now, I have nothing against working out. I believe in keeping our bodies healthy, and moving our bodies in enjoyable ways. And if our bodies truly are asking for healthy movement, it is perfectly OK to heed that call. But when we go to the health club looking for something else, we are looking in the wrong place. Linda Harper wrote about this in her book The Tao of Eating . She advocates asking our soul what it is looking for when we want to engage in our eating disordered activities. In my example above, maybe my soul was looking for a sense of control over my life and mistakenly thought that working out my abs would give me that control. Maybe I was looking for a way to “work out” my frustrations caused by my disorganization. The next time you “feel fat” try asking yourself, “If this isn’t about my body what in my life feels like it needs changing. What is my soul asking for?” That is where you will find your answer. I am currently working on a book about recovery, eating disorders and body image. In this book I will use anecdotes from women in various stages of the recovery process. As I write the book, I will ask a question at the end of my newsletter articles which you may respond to by email (as part of the email message, not as an attached file). This issue’s question: When was the first time you felt dissatisfied with your body? When you were growing up what messages did you receive (verbally or nonverbally) about your body? What happens in your current life that makes you feel that body dissatisfaction all over again? Please send your
responses to info@awakeningcenter.net If you would like to work on resolving these issues please plan on attending MAKE PEACE WITH FOOD, MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR BODY, MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR SELF. Nutrition
Q&A: Diets "I happened to catch Oprah yesterday and she had this show on about low carbohydrate diets. I then found myself wondering maybe this is what I should be doing and I was back in the diet mode again!" Many of my clients who are moving away from diets periodically get pulled into the diet mode with the latest diet best seller or “diet-in-disguise”. When you’ve pledged to move away from diets you are in the process of learning to trust and feed your body as well as focus on health, not on weight. Any book, program, or health professional that is critical, judgmental, or tells you, “You’re not good enough because of your weight” is a diet. Any book, program, or health professional that tells you exactly what, when, and how much to eat is a diet. These elements of a diet are external messages that tell you to override your natural internal signals. So how can you watch Oprah or any other show that inevitably will continue to have diets and diets-in-disguise? 1) Look for the critical, judgmental, and “you’re-not-good-enough” reasoning behind the program being promoted. ALERT: DIET AHEAD! 2) Look for the specifics to come: exactly what, when, and how much to eat. ALERT: THIS IS A DIET 3) If you are still hooked by some way of eating that is being promoted, perhaps there’s a grain of truth that you can use. You are in the process of learning to trust and feed your body. You now have the ability to make choices for your body and see if it fits for you. For example: You are wondering if your body could use more protein to feed your body. So you try it and ask yourself how it feels, what does it do for you? Or perhaps you’ve driven through the same drive-thru for the same foods at the same time of day for a long time. You’re not feeling so good physically or energy-wise about these choices. So you brain-storm some ideas, try a few new routines, try other foods, and see how it feels. Do you want to keep doing that new routine? Has it helped you at all? You will eventually read what is wrong with the latest best seller diet that comes along, but they will continue to come along. And as they do, keep in mind there is no nutrition regimen that is true for all people. There are general nutrition principles for wellness, and there will continue to be new findings about nutrition. Then there is your own body. You have the ability to make healthy choices for your body. Stay connected to your natural internal signals, they will guide you. Marianne Evans-Ramsay focuses on Nutrition Attunement: bringing into harmony the natural processes of eating with the study of nutrition. In a step-by-step, gentle approach, she teaches clients to tune into their body, eat naturally and honor their health. She can be reached at (773) 929-6262 ext 16. How
Do I Help My Daughter? How do I help my daughter avoid the problem I had with weight and eating? Many women are adamant about making things “better” for their children. They don’t want to “let them get fat”, but they also do not want to repeat what their parents did to them in regards to food and dieting in their childhood. These women work very hard to provide healthy foods for their daughters. They try not to be judgmental about their daughters body. Yet, somehow they often wind up in my office because their daughter doesn’t like how she looks or everyone is worried about the child’s weight. So, what went wrong? Living in America in 1999 is a part of what’s wrong. The cultural message is still very clearly “thin is good, fat is bad”. The lack of size diversity on television and in the media sends a strong message to our girls that “thin is the only way to be”. Then we are frequently getting hit with 30 second summaries of research revealing the dangers of obesity in children, and how more and more of our children are obese. We worry that how and what we feed our children may contribute to weight problems. (In fact even as a dietitian I struggle with what I “should” be feeding my own children. Either there’s some new study showing a food like apples or margarine is laden with “bad” things or I see standard recommendations for things like calcium or protein change. We also have so many more choices than 30 or 40 years ago. My mother did not struggle with “organic” vs. “conventionally grown” foods. When I was growing up there was just milk, not whole, 2%, 1%, skim, fat free... It’s no wonder feeling confident that we’re eating and feeding our children right is hard.) The solution to helping your child develop a healthy attitude toward her eating and body requires a very wholistic approach. In a recent article in Chicago Parent, Lisa Schab, LCSW, made the following recommendations: talk to your children about how happiness comes from within and not from the size of our bodies; emphasize the importance of diversity in life and body shape and size; practice size acceptance and model a focus on internal qualities; build healthy esteem in your children and yourself; and finally focus on nutritious eating for health and enjoyment, not looks. In other words, we have to take a good look at our own attitudes and behaviors. As we work to love and accept ourselves, our daughters will learn from our example. Our actions speak much louder than our words. Elisa D’Urso-Fischer
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