You believe you are too fat.
You’re unhappy with your body. You feel uncomfortable in social settings. There are so many activities and life experiences you’ve put on hold until you lose weight. But every diet you have ever been on has ended the same way and there’s no reason to believe another diet is going to end differently.
Now imagine if I said these words to you, “There’s no diet out there that is going to work. Accept your body exactly as it is today.” Does that feel scary to you? If so, you’re not alone.
Body Hatred Kept Me Motivated
For years I held onto the idea that dieting and losing weight would fix everything. Don’t tell me to accept was body. Accept my body? No way! Back then I feared that if I accepted my body, I would lose the one thing I had going for me that motivated me to diet—how much I hated my fat body. Back then, it was my self-loathing that drove me to seek out and start the next new diet. If I didn’t have that, I feared I would never diet again and I would get as big as a house.
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I often bought clothes that were a size too small. Each outfit was to be a new motivator to lose weight. (In years past, resale shops loved seeing me coming. Most of the clothes I brought them had the original tags attached and had never been worn.) Most mornings I faced a closet full of clothes that didn’t fit. I wore over blouses and shirts untucked to cover the waistbands of pants and skirts I couldn’t button. Some days I wore clothes that felt so tight they hurt. I’d wear control top panty hose under dress slacks and jeans, even in hot weather, believing they made me look a little thinner. It was crazy. Give all of that up and accept myself as I was. Not a chance!
What was I thinking?
I was thinking that I felt out-of control and that dieting was the only way I knew of to feel back in control. I was thinking I hated my body (therefore I hated me). So I had to change my body…and it must happen immediately! I spent an inordinate amount of my time feeling miserable and trapped. It took me years to learn that true emotional and physical well-being would come only when I began to be motivated by self-care, rather than by self-loathing. (Dieting is about self-loathing.)
“Only when we know and accept who we are, can we change.” I read those words in a wonderful book called Transforming Body Image; Learning to Love the Body You Have, by Marcia Germaine Hutchinson, Ed.D. I totally identified with Hutchinson’s words, “If we could harness a tiny fraction of the energy and attention wasted on body hate and use it as fuel for creativity and self-development, just think how far we could travel toward our life goals.”
Hutchinson says “Any movement toward self improvement must be propelled not by disgust and self-rejection, but by a realistic acceptance of who we already are and a desire to be the best possible version of that reality. Any diet or regime we impose on our bodies that is inspired by self-disgust will be punitive and our bodies will rebel and fight us at every turn.”
First Steps Toward Self-Acceptance, Self-Care and Change
You already know that change is a process and that it will take time to shift from body hatred; which is familiar and a habit, to self-acceptance and self-care; which may feel new and unfamiliar to you. That said…think about what motivates you to diet. Are you afraid to give up dieting for fear you’ll lose your drive to lose weight?
Then, no matter what, make up your mind to stop dieting. Stop the on again/off again, “good food vs. bad food” way of thinking. Consciously decide (and keep reminding yourself) to be motivated by a desire for emotional and physical well-being, rather than by self-disgust. When you find yourself reaching for food, tune inward. Be mindful! Are you physically hungry, or are you asking the food to take care of some emotional need (boredom, anger, anxiety, loneliness, etc)? Explore ways to learn new emotional regulation tools (ever considered working with an emotional eating coach?)
This next step may be tough to do. It’s very concrete and very important!
Clean out your Closet
Throw away, give away, box up, or segregate anything in your closet that does not fit you right now. If you do not currently have clothes that fit you well and comfortably, go out and buy some. Imagine how good it would feel to wake up every single morning and face a closet filled only with clothes that fit and appeal to you. In my many years of personal and profession experience, observing many therapy and coaching clients, the very deliberate decision to practice self-care leads to more self-care…which leads to an increased motivation to nurture your body with healthy, good tasting food…and to move your body more, for the fun of it (rather than just to burn calories). Self-care itself often becomes the new motivator, the by-product of which is increased emotional, physical, nutritional, and spiritual health. And self-care feels and tastes so much better than self-loathing!
Ellen Shuman is a Life Coach who specializes in working with people who struggle with emotional and binge eating issues. She is the founder of A Weigh Out & Acoria Eating Disorder Treatment, Vice President of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), and Co-Chair of the Academy for Eating Disorders Special Interest Group on “Health at Every Size”, ellen@aweighout.com
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