| Eating Behavior Consultants |
| Lynn Muller Guiser, Masters Level, Registered Dietician |
Author of the Book "A Great Escape"
It is now a time of year when many of us are thinking about the dreaded "D" word - dieting. We either made a New Year's Resolution to stick to a diet, or we simply want the holiday pounds to come off quickly! In January, dieting to lose weight is a contagious activity. Many of us will join others who are dieting simply to be a part of the crowd. It seems to be the moral thing to do after the holidays.
Most of us will not deliberate too long over our decision to begin a diet. Why should we? Isn't dieting safe? The answer: Not exactly! As innocuous as dieting seems, it is not without hazards and side effects. Medically speaking, the more well known hazards of dieting are loss of hair, loss of gall bladder, gallstones, lowered immunity, anemia, sensitivity to cold, depression, constipation, diarrhea, hypoglycemia, loss of body muscle, dehydration, cardiac arrhythmia's, fatigue, amenorrhea, inability to concentrate, and even death, may occur. The lower the calories, the least variation of food in the diet, the greater the medical risk.
Research shows that dieting is not a very effective treatment for long term weight control. Only five percent of dieters maintain their weight loss. In fact, one of the side effects of dieting can actually be weight gain. Diets backfire on us. At best, one to two years after a diet we gain back most of the weight we lost. But some of us will weigh more than we did before our diet started.
Humans appear to be "diet resistant". There is a scientific and psychological explanation for this concept. Our ancestor, Stone Age Man, ate in a feast or famine style. For survival, the Stone Age man's response to a famine was to feast and fill up his fat cells when food was available. This prepared him for the inevitable famine. The human body has a universal memory of the early ancestor's feeding experience.
Today, our body interprets our intentional dietary restriction as a famine. Thus, when food becomes available, we lose control. Our body takes over and we feast. We may even binge. Our body tries to prepare for the next famine by overeating and gaining weight. Our metabolism changes in order to defend our body fat. Our "natural weight" is reset at a higher level. Each time we diet, we get better and better at gaining weight. Gaining weight is a side effect of dieting.
The psychological explanations for diet resistance and the ensuing side effect of weight gain is identified by looking at the design of diets. Diets are set up by labeling foods as either "allowed" or "not allowed". Not allowing foods leads to yearning, a trapped feeling, curiosity, feeling of deprivation, and obsessively thinking about foods. Eventually, we feel we must have the forbidden foods and we eat them. We may eat them in larger quantity than if we hadn't dieted. The amount of sensitivity we have to feelings of deprivation will determine how psychologically resistant we are to dieting.
Diets require preoccupation in order to stick to them. Our thoughts about food, our weight, and eating increase greatly while dieting. Our feelings throughout the day begin to revolve around what we ate - was it a good food or a bad food? and what we weighted - did I gain or lose weight?
If we have eaten a forbidden food or gained weight, we may feel angry, sad or guilty. If we have eaten all good foods and/or lost weight, we feel powerful, good, and successful. Our life gets narrowed down to the safety of food and weight thoughts. This is another side effect of dieting a small life filled with thoughts and feelings about what we have eaten, what we will eat next, and whether we have changed our weight.
Dieting reinforces that we should feel good from the outside. They rob us from learning how to feel good from the inside. A "diet dependency" may develop, whereby we grow to rely on the diet as the source for our sense of well being. We feel good, confident, and happy based on how well we follow a particular diet and/or what our weight is. By jumping from diet t diet, we lose touch with who we really are and how we feel about our life. Dieting to lose weight becomes a desperate attempt to feel good, to achieve something and to be accepted. This is how we become addicted to dieting. It is another side effect of the dreaded "D" word.
The questions are: Are you willing to risk your physical and mental health in order to lose weight? What kind of relationship do you want with food? Do you want short term or long term results? If you do not choose to diet, if you want the diet monkey off your back, if diets don't work for you, there is an alternative. I suggest a Non-Diet Approach.
Begin by learning to trust your "natural instincts" First, start to recognize when you are physically hungry. What does it feel like for you? Honor your physical hunger by eating much the way you honor the urge to go to the bathroom. forget about clocks to tell you when to eat.
Second,eat until you are satisfied. When does hunger disappear and you feel food in your belly? When do you feel comfortable and satisfied? Stop eating at this point even if your plate still has food on it. Learn to rely on yourself as your best resource about when and how much to eat.
Third, eat foods that you normally eat. If you find that there is a food that scares you, one that you are uncomfortable with, consider bringing it into your home and eating it when you are hungry. Pay attention to the taste, decide if it is as good as you thought it was. It it still "glitters" at you, keep a medium quantity (more than you could eat at one sitting) in your home. Eat this food until it is no longer a novelty. In other words, "legitimize" the food.
Pick only one guideline at a time to work with. Se reasonable goals. Make gradual changes. For example, decide to make a change in your eating three times for the first week. Increase slowly and at your own pace. Continue to practicing these three guidelines. It may take six months to one year to get the dieting mentality out of your system. When you have mastered these three steps and all foods are legal, compare your diet against the Food Guide Pyramid. Make changes so that you do not deprive yourself of healthy eating.
Staying "diet free" is very difficult. It will be easier if you can find support for a non-diet approach. Try books, friends, a support group, or a professional familiar with these concepts. Be kind to yourself, respect yourself, be gentle with yourself and I guarantee that in one year you will be in a totally different relationship with food.
Will women learn to accept themselves?
I recently spent the weekend with some old college friends. We are career women in our late 30's. The group is awfully fun to be with - mentally stimulating, humorous and interesting. Everything is very normal about us. Yet, I can't help but notice an "oh-so-common" presence of personal dissatisfaction. It presents itself in complaints abut the shape of our buttocks, the changes of our bodies with age and the way the entire female body functions. It is the downright dislike of the current size of our bodies.
Many woman chime in to this chorus with degrading comments about their "femaleness" one of the most precious parts of ourselves.
Look around, we are all different heights and circumferences, yet most of us are dissatisfied, or even hate, at least one body part.
Where are we as women when female body hatred is so normal? Where are we when a 50-year-old woman risks her entire health and well-being by choosing to have breast implants for cosmetic improvements? Where are we when it is acceptable to so aggressively ( via surgery) alter one's body in order to feel good?
Where are we when a once world-ranked tennis player, now a successful pro teacher, looks enviously at her 90-pound female friend, wishing for just one day, to be in that body? Where are we when a critical-care nurse proudly displays her now 14-pound thinner body as a model of success, yet feels it is self-serving to speak about how her work involves saving lives?
Where are we when a 48-year-old women calls a young anorexic to find out hints for getting a smaller body? Where are we when a 65-year-old woman says she dyes her hair because she "thinks enough about herself" to do this?
Where are we when we will not let ourselves get old, get gray, get larger, have sagging breasts and move gracefully through the life cycle? Where are we, as women, when this type of self-trashing and unacceptance of ourselves goes unnoticed?
We are in a lot of trouble. Women are afraid to stand out, and to feel powerful and successful. We are holding back. We minimize our skills and strengths by getting smaller and/or by getting the "official size" breast or thigh.
We have "bought" the media portrayal of the "ideal" (unreal) woman - the one who looks 17 years old, the one who has outward-based, media-defined sex appeal, the one who has everything -- yet is a sex object.
Despite the fact that we can legally vote, drive a car, wear pants and demand equal pay for equal work, we have not undone the centuries of being told that we are valued less than a man. We are not fully allowing ourselves to take up as much space and power as we deserve.
I say: Be a model of self-acceptance not self abuse. Apologize to yourself and resolve to stop trashing your body. Let's celebrate our diversity.
Comments can be sent directly to: Lynn Mrs. Muller Guiser.
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