Right now my life is one big whirlpool of unhealthiness. I'm sleeping 3-4 hours a day (staying up all night), living off lots of sweets (and a little bit of healthier food), and not moving from my house. I'm panting heavily as I even walk up the stairs. This will all be over in 5 days when I submit my final project to the printer, so I'm not exactly going to start exercising. I just want to complain about what I put myself through.
The only thing I have control over is the food. I just do not have the time to bother with intuitive eating, but I'd like to stop eating the sweets for the next 5 days. Normally I would be hesitant to cut anything out because disordered eating blah blah blah, but right now I just have to do what I have to do to get through these next few days, and if that means not eating chocolate in order to not have such big energy slumps that interfere with my studies, then I'll do it. I hope to report back on Thursday night a relatively sane person. Hope.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Response to visual food cues, part 1
I have a problem whereby, when I see certain foods, I immediately want to eat them. For example, when I see KitKats at a 7/11, I want to buy them. When I see people eating chips on a bus, even though I don't really like chips, I immediately want to eat chips. When food is laid out in abundance in front of me, it is like I know no boundaries.
As mentioned in the last post, I don't think this is a result of being on diets or emotional eating, but simply something gone wrong in my brain that contributes to my obesity. I am both a binge eater and a plain old overeater, and I can always tell the difference between the two. The binge eating is what causes me misery and is the manifestation of my emotion dysfunction, but the overeating can create feelings of shame or guilt that feed into the binge eating.
Initial research into how I can counter my propensity to overeat and react strongly to visual (or other sensory, e.g. smell) food cues brought me to this ongoing clinical trial. It suggests that obese people perceive a greater reward when they look at food cues, and so have a stronger reaction to those food cues. Basically, it does not think that that strong response to a cue can be effectively changed; research is more on how to mitigate the eating that follows the response, or the response to the response if you will. (I disagree with this to some extent, but I will detail that below).
There are two main therapeutic means of counteracting this. One is using CBT, which is about delaying the response through distraction - a strategy I mentioned earlier that I don't think works for me very well. The other is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which seeks to get obese people to accept that they will always crave food, but don't need to act on it.
I personally think I can work on desensitising myself to cues. For example, why do I feel overwhelmed when I see so much food in front of me? I think there is scarcity. I think that I have to get in as much food as I can before it runs out. Why do I react to the KitKats? That's tougher, but maybe because I have trained myself to think that chocolate is a 'guilty pleasure', and I have always made a big fuss out of how much I looove chocolate, even when it doesn't truly reflect how I feel. I have trained myself to respond to the smell of chips, hot or cold, because it evokes past memories of how good they taste.
I don't want to completely remove the evocative power of food, but I do deliberately make a big deal out of it, and I do have issues with feeling like there is never enough food, even though I have never personally experienced scarcity or deprivation. I get very angry when I think that someone else is cutting across my food or my access to food. This post suggests that maybe it's about anxiety and feeling like I don't have enough in many areas of my life, and it's just acting itself out in the arena of food. I don't know, I'll have to think about it. But at least I am thinking about it now.
As mentioned in the last post, I don't think this is a result of being on diets or emotional eating, but simply something gone wrong in my brain that contributes to my obesity. I am both a binge eater and a plain old overeater, and I can always tell the difference between the two. The binge eating is what causes me misery and is the manifestation of my emotion dysfunction, but the overeating can create feelings of shame or guilt that feed into the binge eating.
Initial research into how I can counter my propensity to overeat and react strongly to visual (or other sensory, e.g. smell) food cues brought me to this ongoing clinical trial. It suggests that obese people perceive a greater reward when they look at food cues, and so have a stronger reaction to those food cues. Basically, it does not think that that strong response to a cue can be effectively changed; research is more on how to mitigate the eating that follows the response, or the response to the response if you will. (I disagree with this to some extent, but I will detail that below).
There are two main therapeutic means of counteracting this. One is using CBT, which is about delaying the response through distraction - a strategy I mentioned earlier that I don't think works for me very well. The other is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which seeks to get obese people to accept that they will always crave food, but don't need to act on it.
I personally think I can work on desensitising myself to cues. For example, why do I feel overwhelmed when I see so much food in front of me? I think there is scarcity. I think that I have to get in as much food as I can before it runs out. Why do I react to the KitKats? That's tougher, but maybe because I have trained myself to think that chocolate is a 'guilty pleasure', and I have always made a big fuss out of how much I looove chocolate, even when it doesn't truly reflect how I feel. I have trained myself to respond to the smell of chips, hot or cold, because it evokes past memories of how good they taste.
I don't want to completely remove the evocative power of food, but I do deliberately make a big deal out of it, and I do have issues with feeling like there is never enough food, even though I have never personally experienced scarcity or deprivation. I get very angry when I think that someone else is cutting across my food or my access to food. This post suggests that maybe it's about anxiety and feeling like I don't have enough in many areas of my life, and it's just acting itself out in the arena of food. I don't know, I'll have to think about it. But at least I am thinking about it now.
Going mad
Living with my parents is driving me a little bit mad.
Firstly, I don't have control over what food is brought into the house. When I was living alone, I had a gentle process of habituation where I introduced one 'dangerous' food at a time. Now, I have corn chips and pastries and Nutella and cut-up watermelon constantly in my face. Furthermore, at dinner time, instead of being served a portion, we have the entire serving dish on the table in front of us. I find it EXTREMELY hard to be mindful and stop when full when I am being visually bombarded.
Secondly, my family are very watchful of what I eat, and are constantly making comments like "I hear you rustling in the pantry" or "you're a big eater, I don't eat that much" or "dinner is in an hour, do you really want to be eating?. What this does is creates a sense of guilt and shame in me, even if I am happy with the choice that I am making. In turn, this makes it harder for me to trust that what I am doing is the right thing, and build up self-confidence in making choices that are right for me.
Thirdly, and most annoyingly, my family and family friends feel entitled to comment freely on my body, a privilege they truly love to indulge in. We have an absolutely beautiful family friend staying with us for a couple of days now (beautiful in terms of her soul and personality, I mean), who would rather cut off her foot than hurt me. However, she has struggled with her weight all her life, and has no problems with projecting that on me. Just now, she said that "if I lived with Nina, I would have big problems, we would just eat sooo much" because we are gutses, and before that she compared me to a fat fluffy ("cute") cat with my puffy cheeks. She is not alone; my mum (who has also been fat most of her life) will gently slap/rub my arms or my tummy and make comments. I would never say anything to the family friend because she really loves me, and my mum's comments also are from a position of love (she thinks I will never find a partner and therefore never be happy unless I lose weight. She pretends this is about health but then admits this is an excuse). But it is just so trying to have to put up with and really interferes with this process of trying to improve my body image and feel comfortable at any weight.
Furthermore, this family friend and my mum (who grew up together) often talk about food and diets. My mum is not dieting anymore due to her illness but the friend will still talk about how she cuts out this or is trying to do that, sort of making implicit suggestions to me to try things. Their discourse on what is 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' is along dieting lines where food most definitely has a moral value. I don't know if I'm entitled to use the word 'trigger', but this is a massive trigger for me in terms of feeling shame. I know this is a very common thing for people to have to deal with, but I have actually been very lucky in my life in that my friends are bright and beautiful and not caught up with the cultural obsession with weight loss - some do have their own issues but they don't presume to make that struggle a topic of social bonding. So it's my family that really drives me nuts on this topic. However, it's one that I have to learn to adapt to, as I can't expect that everyone else will change their unhealthy thinking just because I ask them to.
How to fix this?
The first topic is one where I can take responsibility and work on my problems. I have actually been lucky to begin my therapy process without being surrounded by 'unsafe' foods, but now I am squarely back in the real world. Tips my therapist suggested:
1. Only eat sitting down at the table
2. Before eating anything, try to evaluate hunger levels (this is hard because when I see things, I go straight for them without any delay! The object here is to extend that delay period from 2 secs to a minute or so) and the reason for eating.
3. Try to maintain mindfulness throughout eating...
4. Try to eat slowly, evaluating hunger at every bite
5. Try to take in the taste, smell, texture of food.
All that is regular mindfulness stuff, but I'm not sure about how to mitigate the instant visual reaction I get ("delay" is not very helpful) when I see certain foods in certain settings. I found this article on visual food cues, and can hopefully come up with some strategies to break that strong connection I have between seeing food and immediately eating it if it is in reach (or craving it if it is a particular kind of food). I doubt this is just a BED problem - I'm sure regular non-emotional obese folks suffer from it too - but overeating then triggers the emotional problems, so it's in my interests to figure out a solution.
As for the other stuff, I have already spoken to my family, but I want to speak to my mum again and make it clear that I don't want her to comment on my appearance or food unless asked in future. my therapist gave me tips on how to ask people assertively for what you want, so I will try to follow those steps. She has these guests hovering around her for the next forever, but I'll try to get a moment to tell her today. (Edit: Asked her and she said of course. She is really supportive, just has to be asked what to do.)
Firstly, I don't have control over what food is brought into the house. When I was living alone, I had a gentle process of habituation where I introduced one 'dangerous' food at a time. Now, I have corn chips and pastries and Nutella and cut-up watermelon constantly in my face. Furthermore, at dinner time, instead of being served a portion, we have the entire serving dish on the table in front of us. I find it EXTREMELY hard to be mindful and stop when full when I am being visually bombarded.
Secondly, my family are very watchful of what I eat, and are constantly making comments like "I hear you rustling in the pantry" or "you're a big eater, I don't eat that much" or "dinner is in an hour, do you really want to be eating?. What this does is creates a sense of guilt and shame in me, even if I am happy with the choice that I am making. In turn, this makes it harder for me to trust that what I am doing is the right thing, and build up self-confidence in making choices that are right for me.
Thirdly, and most annoyingly, my family and family friends feel entitled to comment freely on my body, a privilege they truly love to indulge in. We have an absolutely beautiful family friend staying with us for a couple of days now (beautiful in terms of her soul and personality, I mean), who would rather cut off her foot than hurt me. However, she has struggled with her weight all her life, and has no problems with projecting that on me. Just now, she said that "if I lived with Nina, I would have big problems, we would just eat sooo much" because we are gutses, and before that she compared me to a fat fluffy ("cute") cat with my puffy cheeks. She is not alone; my mum (who has also been fat most of her life) will gently slap/rub my arms or my tummy and make comments. I would never say anything to the family friend because she really loves me, and my mum's comments also are from a position of love (she thinks I will never find a partner and therefore never be happy unless I lose weight. She pretends this is about health but then admits this is an excuse). But it is just so trying to have to put up with and really interferes with this process of trying to improve my body image and feel comfortable at any weight.
Furthermore, this family friend and my mum (who grew up together) often talk about food and diets. My mum is not dieting anymore due to her illness but the friend will still talk about how she cuts out this or is trying to do that, sort of making implicit suggestions to me to try things. Their discourse on what is 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' is along dieting lines where food most definitely has a moral value. I don't know if I'm entitled to use the word 'trigger', but this is a massive trigger for me in terms of feeling shame. I know this is a very common thing for people to have to deal with, but I have actually been very lucky in my life in that my friends are bright and beautiful and not caught up with the cultural obsession with weight loss - some do have their own issues but they don't presume to make that struggle a topic of social bonding. So it's my family that really drives me nuts on this topic. However, it's one that I have to learn to adapt to, as I can't expect that everyone else will change their unhealthy thinking just because I ask them to.
How to fix this?
The first topic is one where I can take responsibility and work on my problems. I have actually been lucky to begin my therapy process without being surrounded by 'unsafe' foods, but now I am squarely back in the real world. Tips my therapist suggested:
1. Only eat sitting down at the table
2. Before eating anything, try to evaluate hunger levels (this is hard because when I see things, I go straight for them without any delay! The object here is to extend that delay period from 2 secs to a minute or so) and the reason for eating.
3. Try to maintain mindfulness throughout eating...
4. Try to eat slowly, evaluating hunger at every bite
5. Try to take in the taste, smell, texture of food.
All that is regular mindfulness stuff, but I'm not sure about how to mitigate the instant visual reaction I get ("delay" is not very helpful) when I see certain foods in certain settings. I found this article on visual food cues, and can hopefully come up with some strategies to break that strong connection I have between seeing food and immediately eating it if it is in reach (or craving it if it is a particular kind of food). I doubt this is just a BED problem - I'm sure regular non-emotional obese folks suffer from it too - but overeating then triggers the emotional problems, so it's in my interests to figure out a solution.
As for the other stuff, I have already spoken to my family, but I want to speak to my mum again and make it clear that I don't want her to comment on my appearance or food unless asked in future. my therapist gave me tips on how to ask people assertively for what you want, so I will try to follow those steps. She has these guests hovering around her for the next forever, but I'll try to get a moment to tell her today. (Edit: Asked her and she said of course. She is really supportive, just has to be asked what to do.)
Friday, October 11, 2013
Bleh
Things aren't going great right now. I have a looot of emotions, but no time to address them until I finish this project in 2 weeks. The project itself is stressing me out, and painfully so - I feel that strong physical burden in a way that I haven't for years. But I just have to suck it up and get it over and done with.
In terms of eating, I've been going so-so. I managed to curb my binge eating, plus snacking, but I feel that I've been over-eating in terms of quantity at meals. I definitely haven't been eating mindfully. I'm still going out of my mind about being so fat right now and my family's comments are exacerbating it. My therapist suggested setting boundaries, for example only eating at the table. I might try keeping a food and thought diary for the next week. I'm just so thrown out by this project that it feels like my sanity is subordinate to it for a while.
In terms of eating, I've been going so-so. I managed to curb my binge eating, plus snacking, but I feel that I've been over-eating in terms of quantity at meals. I definitely haven't been eating mindfully. I'm still going out of my mind about being so fat right now and my family's comments are exacerbating it. My therapist suggested setting boundaries, for example only eating at the table. I might try keeping a food and thought diary for the next week. I'm just so thrown out by this project that it feels like my sanity is subordinate to it for a while.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
On self-worth
After a couple more days of miserable bingeing, mostly in self-pity at how I am at my highest weight ever and my ~*~crush~*~ will never like me and nobody will want to be my friend at my new job and all these relatives visiting us are going to judge me and my family are monitoring my eating like a hawk, I figured a couple of things out.
a) It is normal to oscillate daily between feeling attractive and unattractive. Some days I think I look cute, pretty, even gorgeous. Other days my hair is frizzy and my skin is dry and I look fat and 13 years old. I am fairly confident that most humans experience the same thing. It happens, and I should roll with it without letting it devastate me.
b) There is nothing wrong with enjoying my own beauty when I feel that I possess it. It's okay to be attractive for me and only for me, in the same way that I confidently dress up and enjoy fashion solely for myself. In some ways I actually feel lucky that I have never felt obliged to dress up to attract others.
c) I constantly objectify myself by viewing my physical self through the eyes of others. I imagine (almost unconsciously) how strangers feel irritated at the space I take up, the disgust of new acquaintances, the irritation of men who would find me attractive if I were thinner. Even when I assume compliments at the usual body parts people seem to like, this practice never fails to make me feel weak and unworthy. Which leads to...
d) I will never again see myself through others' eyes. To put it crudely, this gives them the power to evaluate my worth, inevitably resulting in my devaluation and pushing my self-worth beyond the reach of the self. This might seem a naive and hippy-ish philosophy, but if I am going to give myself to other people in love and friendship and respect, it must be the whole of me, as a whole person. Fragments are not enough.
e) Confidence is but a mute glow on a distance horizon for me, but I have a vague sense that this is all about power. For someone who is so aggressive and confrontational, I am constantly giving my power away; to food, to men, to other people. I am only just starting to realise this
f) Whilst full-on burlesque or pinup aren't exactly my style, I really appreciate the confidence that goes with the image, I guess in the same way that all this punk/riotgrrl shit might have were it not super-trendy right now and I not a strident contrarian. I had a friend (who sadly as of last week is not my friend anymore, something else that has been getting me down) who almost exclusively wears printed A-line dresses, and girl just works it.
I sometimes feel embarrassed by how vain I am, always staring into mirrors and reflective surfaces. I now understand that this is a symptom of the constant evaluation and re-evaluation of my own worth. Do I look presentable? How about now? Oh no, my hair has frizzed at the front, nobody will want to speak to me, better go home and try again tomorrow. In articles about therapy, I read over and over again that women felt essentially unworthy of recovery. I scoffed at this notion; how could anyone feel unworthy of recovery? I didn't even know what worth meant. I still don't. But at least, as of today, I'm thinking about it.
I'm glad that I realised this, because I was truthfully on the verge of trying another diet. Body acceptance feels nigh on impossible when a second chin is firmly in the picture and my underwear leaves red welts. This might sound a bit silly, but (probably because my posture is so bad) I hold myself up at the cheekbones, so when they are submerged in fluid and flesh, I feel that I've lost my core.
I'll leave you with a few posts that have led me to the conclusions above.
1. The Fat Nutritionist - You're pretty good looking (for a girl). "Beauty is a cultural construct designed to keep people balanced on a knife-edge of anxiety over the potential loss of status, and the rabid desire to gain it." I will probably quote this another ten times on this blog.
2. Tavi Gevinson's musings on being attractive (I know, Rookie is annoyingly twee, but she is more self-aware at 15 than I am in my 20s)
3. Ami Angelowicz and Winona Dimeo - 10 Better Body Affirmations for Women
a) It is normal to oscillate daily between feeling attractive and unattractive. Some days I think I look cute, pretty, even gorgeous. Other days my hair is frizzy and my skin is dry and I look fat and 13 years old. I am fairly confident that most humans experience the same thing. It happens, and I should roll with it without letting it devastate me.
b) There is nothing wrong with enjoying my own beauty when I feel that I possess it. It's okay to be attractive for me and only for me, in the same way that I confidently dress up and enjoy fashion solely for myself. In some ways I actually feel lucky that I have never felt obliged to dress up to attract others.
c) I constantly objectify myself by viewing my physical self through the eyes of others. I imagine (almost unconsciously) how strangers feel irritated at the space I take up, the disgust of new acquaintances, the irritation of men who would find me attractive if I were thinner. Even when I assume compliments at the usual body parts people seem to like, this practice never fails to make me feel weak and unworthy. Which leads to...
d) I will never again see myself through others' eyes. To put it crudely, this gives them the power to evaluate my worth, inevitably resulting in my devaluation and pushing my self-worth beyond the reach of the self. This might seem a naive and hippy-ish philosophy, but if I am going to give myself to other people in love and friendship and respect, it must be the whole of me, as a whole person. Fragments are not enough.
e) Confidence is but a mute glow on a distance horizon for me, but I have a vague sense that this is all about power. For someone who is so aggressive and confrontational, I am constantly giving my power away; to food, to men, to other people. I am only just starting to realise this
f) Whilst full-on burlesque or pinup aren't exactly my style, I really appreciate the confidence that goes with the image, I guess in the same way that all this punk/riotgrrl shit might have were it not super-trendy right now and I not a strident contrarian. I had a friend (who sadly as of last week is not my friend anymore, something else that has been getting me down) who almost exclusively wears printed A-line dresses, and girl just works it.
I sometimes feel embarrassed by how vain I am, always staring into mirrors and reflective surfaces. I now understand that this is a symptom of the constant evaluation and re-evaluation of my own worth. Do I look presentable? How about now? Oh no, my hair has frizzed at the front, nobody will want to speak to me, better go home and try again tomorrow. In articles about therapy, I read over and over again that women felt essentially unworthy of recovery. I scoffed at this notion; how could anyone feel unworthy of recovery? I didn't even know what worth meant. I still don't. But at least, as of today, I'm thinking about it.
I'm glad that I realised this, because I was truthfully on the verge of trying another diet. Body acceptance feels nigh on impossible when a second chin is firmly in the picture and my underwear leaves red welts. This might sound a bit silly, but (probably because my posture is so bad) I hold myself up at the cheekbones, so when they are submerged in fluid and flesh, I feel that I've lost my core.
I'll leave you with a few posts that have led me to the conclusions above.
1. The Fat Nutritionist - You're pretty good looking (for a girl). "Beauty is a cultural construct designed to keep people balanced on a knife-edge of anxiety over the potential loss of status, and the rabid desire to gain it." I will probably quote this another ten times on this blog.
2. Tavi Gevinson's musings on being attractive (I know, Rookie is annoyingly twee, but she is more self-aware at 15 than I am in my 20s)
3. Ami Angelowicz and Winona Dimeo - 10 Better Body Affirmations for Women
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Binge eating is back
... with a vengeance. Stuff at home has been hard in the last few days so I know why. Fighting this is going to be my battle. I am definitely not at the intuitive stage; instead, I'm back to the delay/preventing bingeing stage. All I can think about is chips or spinach-and-fetta filling (in pastry or calzone maybe?). We only have crappy wholemeal bread in the house, which to me tastes like white bread. I could go up the road to get a sweet potato and lentil mix or I could just make do with whatever we have in the house. I have to just white-knuckle this until I get more time to pay attention to the emotional stuff.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Paradoxes are painful
But the frustrating thing is, I really didn't want this to be about weight loss. I have read weight loss blog after weight loss blog where people showed off what good, new, self-disciplined people they were, only to lapse back a year later. I have read even more blogs where it's pretty clear that their motivation is how awful they feel about being fat. The guilt, the shame, the disgust and self-loathing. I was so happy to be past all of that.
So I vow now that I will never write a blog about my weight loss efforts. I genuinely love food. I love cooking, I love the social aspect of it, I love sharing recipes with mum and my friends, I love the slow ritual of eating something truly delicious, I love eating out, I even love (if we're going to get cliched here) travelling to all parts of the world without leaving my house. I am not going paleo or primal or sugarfree or low-carb unless I am truly medically mandated to, and at present I am not. As before, this is going to be a blog about learning how to deal with emotions in a healthier way. I'm just going to put more of a focus on the health component. To some people, that might read as bullshit. I don't care.
This whole thing about my family member dying has made me think about what I do and don't want in the life I have now. (Most of those contemplations are way too personal for the Internet.) They have no regrets, but if I were to look at their life and change one thing about it for my own, it is that they have spent most of their adult life on the diet yo-yo cycle. Those periods of obesity affected their self-confidence, their happiness, and of course their health. They say that their mother was the same, always regretting her size and feeling that it held her back, wistfully wishing she could squeeze herself into her old outfits.
There is a good chance that my life won't be long either, so I have no desire to follow in their footsteps. I don't want to be on any diet that is temporary in its lifespan. I refuse to feel horrible about my own sense of attractiveness, and to let it affect my personal relationships and self-esteem anymore. As I wrote two posts down, life is too short for that; more specifically, my life is too short for that. I had never felt that I was worth fighting for before, because failure would be the inevitable result. Yet now, finally, the stakes are too high to let apathy dictate the days that will make up the rest of my life.
So I vow now that I will never write a blog about my weight loss efforts. I genuinely love food. I love cooking, I love the social aspect of it, I love sharing recipes with mum and my friends, I love the slow ritual of eating something truly delicious, I love eating out, I even love (if we're going to get cliched here) travelling to all parts of the world without leaving my house. I am not going paleo or primal or sugarfree or low-carb unless I am truly medically mandated to, and at present I am not. As before, this is going to be a blog about learning how to deal with emotions in a healthier way. I'm just going to put more of a focus on the health component. To some people, that might read as bullshit. I don't care.
This whole thing about my family member dying has made me think about what I do and don't want in the life I have now. (Most of those contemplations are way too personal for the Internet.) They have no regrets, but if I were to look at their life and change one thing about it for my own, it is that they have spent most of their adult life on the diet yo-yo cycle. Those periods of obesity affected their self-confidence, their happiness, and of course their health. They say that their mother was the same, always regretting her size and feeling that it held her back, wistfully wishing she could squeeze herself into her old outfits.
There is a good chance that my life won't be long either, so I have no desire to follow in their footsteps. I don't want to be on any diet that is temporary in its lifespan. I refuse to feel horrible about my own sense of attractiveness, and to let it affect my personal relationships and self-esteem anymore. As I wrote two posts down, life is too short for that; more specifically, my life is too short for that. I had never felt that I was worth fighting for before, because failure would be the inevitable result. Yet now, finally, the stakes are too high to let apathy dictate the days that will make up the rest of my life.
HAES and disease: A catch-22
Recently I've been forced to re-evaluate Health At Every Size. I don't dispute that as a slogan it may be true for some people; however, it has emerged that it is not true for me.
In the past I would dismiss arguments about health as a reason for weight loss on the basis of the fact that I am in my twenties and still healthy. Now, the facts are different. A close family member has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, which was triggered by their 25 years of obesity even though they are now in the normal BMI range and at a visibly good weight. This is genetic and the specialist has asked me to lose weight immediately. On top of this is the insulin resistance I have from PCOS which has a strong chance of continuing into full-blown diabetes, and the medication I take to manage PCOS symptoms which increase my risk of the genetic disease even more. Either way, no matter how young or healthy I am, death is staring me in the face.
I discussed this with my therapist, who is naturally reluctant to advocate a non-HAES-based approach. She basically said that I would have to come to my own conclusion. So here is my attempt to reason out a conclusion.
Diets don't work for me. I know from the PCOS diagnosis that the fear drives me to binge eat.
Eating whatever I want won't work for me. It may make me feel better mentally, but certain foods affect my insulin production, and it is my weight rather than my diet that is the problem with the cancer risk. I cannot stay at the weight I am now and be healthy.
This is the approach I am deciding to take:
- Undertaking a sustainable exercise programme that should be lifelong
- Adopting the suggestions made by the nutritionist for PCOS, which mostly involves swapping high-GI foods for lower-GI options, although it doesn't rule anything out
- Making an effort to include vegetables with lunch and dinner
- 'Desensitising' myself to binge foods, including potatoes, chocolate, and baked goods. This will take exactly the same form as the pasta experiment did: eating that food enough so that I physically (and mentally!) get the message that it is not 'banned' or a 'bad' food. This way, I naturally find myself eating less or craving it less. In the short term, this will not help my plans one bit. However, I think it is the only way I can reconcile intuitive eating and a gradual but permanent weight loss - reducing the fear that surrounds certain foods.
- Not focusing on weight loss. No scales, no goals, no calorie or carb counting.
- Fighting the 'diet mentality' where food has a moral value
- Being 'stricter' with intuitive eating. At present I'm doing OK, but if I were truthful with myself, some emotional or non-hunger-based eating does slip in. I know that intuitive eating is NOT an 'eat when hungry, stop when full' diet, but I can't lie to myself.
- Continuing to work on body image and self-acceptance.
This is going to be hard. I can sense resistance in myself at the idea that my chocolate will be "taken away from me". I just have to break that siege mentality and reassure myself that I can have chocolate whenever I want, only if I truly want it. This will take time, but I think it is the only way that I will become healthy - which for me, yes, does mean losing weight. I am sure it will take years, and will be made insurmountably more difficult by the years of painful weight loss scripts playing over and over in my head. In the end though, I am devastated that my family member is not going to be with me for years to come, and I know it would equally devastate my family if the same were to happen to me because I failed to look after myself. HAES at its core is a philosophy of self-care. It is time to give myself the care I deserve and need.
In the past I would dismiss arguments about health as a reason for weight loss on the basis of the fact that I am in my twenties and still healthy. Now, the facts are different. A close family member has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, which was triggered by their 25 years of obesity even though they are now in the normal BMI range and at a visibly good weight. This is genetic and the specialist has asked me to lose weight immediately. On top of this is the insulin resistance I have from PCOS which has a strong chance of continuing into full-blown diabetes, and the medication I take to manage PCOS symptoms which increase my risk of the genetic disease even more. Either way, no matter how young or healthy I am, death is staring me in the face.
I discussed this with my therapist, who is naturally reluctant to advocate a non-HAES-based approach. She basically said that I would have to come to my own conclusion. So here is my attempt to reason out a conclusion.
Diets don't work for me. I know from the PCOS diagnosis that the fear drives me to binge eat.
Eating whatever I want won't work for me. It may make me feel better mentally, but certain foods affect my insulin production, and it is my weight rather than my diet that is the problem with the cancer risk. I cannot stay at the weight I am now and be healthy.
This is the approach I am deciding to take:
- Undertaking a sustainable exercise programme that should be lifelong
- Adopting the suggestions made by the nutritionist for PCOS, which mostly involves swapping high-GI foods for lower-GI options, although it doesn't rule anything out
- Making an effort to include vegetables with lunch and dinner
- 'Desensitising' myself to binge foods, including potatoes, chocolate, and baked goods. This will take exactly the same form as the pasta experiment did: eating that food enough so that I physically (and mentally!) get the message that it is not 'banned' or a 'bad' food. This way, I naturally find myself eating less or craving it less. In the short term, this will not help my plans one bit. However, I think it is the only way I can reconcile intuitive eating and a gradual but permanent weight loss - reducing the fear that surrounds certain foods.
- Not focusing on weight loss. No scales, no goals, no calorie or carb counting.
- Fighting the 'diet mentality' where food has a moral value
- Being 'stricter' with intuitive eating. At present I'm doing OK, but if I were truthful with myself, some emotional or non-hunger-based eating does slip in. I know that intuitive eating is NOT an 'eat when hungry, stop when full' diet, but I can't lie to myself.
- Continuing to work on body image and self-acceptance.
This is going to be hard. I can sense resistance in myself at the idea that my chocolate will be "taken away from me". I just have to break that siege mentality and reassure myself that I can have chocolate whenever I want, only if I truly want it. This will take time, but I think it is the only way that I will become healthy - which for me, yes, does mean losing weight. I am sure it will take years, and will be made insurmountably more difficult by the years of painful weight loss scripts playing over and over in my head. In the end though, I am devastated that my family member is not going to be with me for years to come, and I know it would equally devastate my family if the same were to happen to me because I failed to look after myself. HAES at its core is a philosophy of self-care. It is time to give myself the care I deserve and need.
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