What qualifies someone to give you weight loss advice? Is it the amount of total weight they have lost? Is it the length of time they have lost weight and kept it off? Is it some certification as a dietician, doctor or mental health professional? When looking for answers, which voices do you deem worthy and why?
This is a question I ponder because I notice that the answers tend to boil down to one factor - the thinness of the person giving the advice. If that person is currently not overweight, then it is assumed he or she has a worthwhile answer. Thinness seems to be all of the evidence people require to decide that the party offering up tidbits of wisdom must know what they're talking about. Until that magical number is reached on the scale, any advice that is offered is to be regarded with skepticism or to be utterly dismissed.
I'm known this on a barely conscious level for quite some time. In fact, earlier in my blogging, some readers encouraged me to write a book since my approach is different than most. As they said such things, all I could conclude was that, "no one will listen to me until I'm "done". I know that my voice carries little weight as long as my body carries an excess of it. No matter how unique, intriguing or effective my words, I have to be able to stand out as the proof of technique. If I'm not there yet, despite over two years and two hundred pounds lost and a better relationship with food than any former or current fatty I've ever run across, my theories and ideas have no value.
I don't make that last assertion in order to say that duration and total poundage shed should entitle me to have more ears. I say it because none of that matters until I'm at a magic number and I know it. No matter how certain I am of what I think and feel, no one will take me seriously until I've rung the bell on a state of "healthy weight", thinness, or "looking good."
The problem, as I see it from my computer desk, is that there are a lot of thin people out there who are still incredibly disordered in their feelings and relationship with food. They have simply managed to re-order their disordered thinking to funnel it into maintaining a weight. They still obsess about food. They still have to avoid foods. They still have binges and are "triggered". They can't navigate life in a "normal" fashion because they have to exercise vigilance and caution to keep on that tightrope lest they fall off and regain. They have no idea how to widen the rope, let alone stop needing to walk on one. What is more, they are convinced this is the only option for them.
When I say it's not the only option, I'm not believed because I'm not thin yet. They must be right. I must be wrong. The truth is though that I think the reason most people who lose weight regain is that so very few of them would know a healthy and "normal" relationship with food if you spelled it out for them. They have no idea what it is like not to be obsessed with food and weight. They don't know what it is like to be able to navigate the world of food without viewing it as a field of land mines. The idea that they could ever just "live" and "be" with food is utterly alien to them, and to the vast majority of Northern Americans.
The problem with weight loss, and I faced it, too, is that the more you focus on it, the more disordered you become. At the outset, this is actually necessary. You can't drag yourself from not thinking about what you eat or abusing food to thinking about it and using it more constructively without becoming immersed in it for awhile. This is, however, a stage. You don't have to say in it forever, but most people do... until they don't and snap back to their former state of disorder and overeat.
For most, the stages are:
1. Overeat (defined as consuming more calories than your particular biology requires to maintain a healthy weight, not a set number of calories) and consume freely (without particular attention to food). In this state, you are not particularly obsessed with food.
2. Attempt to consistently under-eat to lose weight and become very obsessed with food.
3. Experience success and determine that this is "easy", "natural", and something you could do forever even though it requires very rigid eating, preparation and deprivation. Plan, plan, plan. This is the honeymoon when you're applying yourself to the goals and having success.
4. Experience fatigue with the obsession, effort, and consistent planning. Start to become tired of the consistent deprivation and inability to freely enjoy food.
This is then followed by one of two branches:
5. Return to step 1 and start the process over again.
Or
5. Reach desired weight and continue to live in stage 4. Fear of regain keeps you there.
For the vast majority of people, it's one or the other of step 5 because step 3 is often executed in a manner which is deeply flawed and disordered. People rarely see any other goal other than a particular weight. It's all about the number. That's why thin people's advice weighs more than mine.
Here's the progression I made:
1. Overeat and freely enjoy food with occasional self-loathing for my lack of control. Believe I was born to be fat since I've been very fat most of my entire life.
2. Under-eat and control my eating. Become obsessed with food.
3. Experience fatigue with the obsession despite my success and decide to work not on the mechanical processes but the things that drive my issues with food.
4. Work out what a "normal" relationship with food would be like. Do self-analysis and conditioning to alter my disordered thoughts. Apply mental and physical conditioning to alter those thoughts.
5. Stop obsessing about food and enter into a more natural and less controlled relationship with it. Learn to exercise prudence rather than strict control when it comes to food. Learn flexibility and eat at restaurants and in situations where I don't know what is to come. Eat everything, but attend to issues of true hunger and satiety.
and the ultimate step will be 6:
6. Learn to trust my eating such that I no longer have to monitor it but handle it intuitively.
With 4 and 5 under my belt, I'm confident that 6 will be possible with further mental work and once I'm at a normal weight and my body's energy demands are for that weight. If I eat intuitively at a greater than healthy weight, I will do so to maintain that weight. I'm still losing so I must continue to exercise some control over calories. However, that control is not obsessive. It's simply more mechanistic and less organic at this stage than I plan for it ultimately to be.
I have lived abroad for a long time and I know what a normal relationship with food looks like. I've seen it in a culture not yet fully contaminated by Western obsessions. I learned from their example and can see that food is just food to some people. They eat everything. They eat when hungry, but they also don't overstuff themselves. They aren't disinterested in food, but they aren't obsessed with it. I can see what normal looks like and it looks like this:
1. Food is just another part of life. It is not the thing your life revolves around.
2. Your body is not the primary focus of your thoughts and energy.
3. Food is not a source of anxiety or stress. You can take or leave something based on curiosity, satiety, and pleasure. It isn't an enemy and it doesn't control you.
4. Health and eating are related, but health is not the only reason to eat. However, entertainment or psychological need are also not the primary reason to partake of enjoyable food. Enjoyable food which is relatively empty calories is eaten with restraint, attentiveness and moderation. It's about the experience, not the volume.
5. Treats, salty snacks, and desserts have a place in a diet. They are not evil and one does not eat a whole bag of chips, a whole pie or cake, or a pint of ice cream because one cannot control oneself.
The worst thing about 99% of the voices out there is that they make you believe that "normal" is simply not possible because they don't even realize they are disordered. They believe that "thin" requires a sacrifice. Obsession is the price you pay and food sanity is the slaughtered lamb on the altar. Beyond those voices are the ones telling you fat is "normal" and inevitable. These two extremes bring nothing but misery to people and frankly it frustrates the hell out of me that there are no voices out there saying you can do better. You can be free. You can work it out, but it will take time and effort. And I don't mean "willpower" or exercise. I mean maturation and thought altering.
One day, you can eat anything without guilt or obsession and still not be overweight because you won't need food to occupy that mental space in your life. Because everyone is so screwed up and they have no clue what "normal" even looks like anymore, this sounds like some hollow statement which is used to sell a hack trick rather than a potential reality. That's the state of our relationship with food in the Western world, and I don't see it changing any time soon.
My ultimate goal is to become a counselor and help people with eating disorders, but I'm nearly at the point where I see it as futile. In the face of a culture-wide sickness, I don't think my voice is capable of "curing" anyone or anybody. People want simple answers and they don't want to deal with the real issues. They just want a list of things that "work" or to throw up their hands and conclude nothing will. What's the point in my even trying? Stay sick and disordered about food, if you like. It's your body, your mind and your life and who am I to try to help? I'm still fat so I clearly have nothing of value to say.
Showing posts with label obsession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obsession. Show all posts
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Monday, July 19, 2010
Coming Full Circle
Like many people, my husband and I were drawn into the Harry Potter series of books. We were also increasingly disappointed as the series wore on, as were many readers as well. Nonetheless, we looked forward with anticipation to each new book and were disappointed when it ended with a statement from the author that there would be no more stories in the series. Even when you have an ambivalent relationship with something, your attachment to it can cause you to feel letdown and as if you have lost something when it is gone.
As the end of a series of books, movies, or television that many people enjoy approaches, you'll often notice that the attention of the fans and media is heightened. The prospect of having less of it makes what is left more exciting and perhaps even valuable to its consumers. You think about it more knowing it's going to go away than you do when it's always there. When it's gone, you may be desperate to arrange to have more of it. This is what spurs DVD sales even when the conclusions or stories are already known.
This relationship that we have with the experiences in our lives is not unique to entertainment. It applies to relationships with other people, places, and objects. It's where the phrase "absence makes the heart grow fonder" has its basis. It's why we care more about that lost childhood stuffed animal that we can't find now that it is lost than when we had it sitting in a box in the closet for years. When it's going or gone, we want it more. We can even become preoccupied with it for a time until the desire for it fades. We learn to fill the empty spot with some new entertainment.
I'm sure that most of my readers can see where this is going in regards to food. Many people who are overweight don't think much about food as long as they can have as much of it as they want. When they try to lose weight and can no longer have it as often as they like or in the quantity they like (and for many people, not even the types of food they once ate... though that doesn't quite apply to people like me), they become obsessed with it. When you can't have something, it takes on immense meaning, especially when it's something which is so important as food.
The feeling of being preoccupied with food when you're dieting is maddening. In fact, about 5 or 6 months into what I have been doing, I sometimes felt I would go crazy having to think about food all of the time. It wasn't that I wanted to be obsessed with it, but rather that my hungry body and my preoccupied mind couldn't stop. On more than one occasion, I started to wonder if this was going to be the rest of my life. If it was, I wasn't sure if I could stand it.
In my post "Early Fruit", I talked about how I had started not to think about food (or weight loss) all of the time, though later I felt derailed in my post "My Inner Masochist". I'm happy to say that since the week of the later post, I'm back to what can be termed "the new normal". That means that I am not sitting around thinking about food or when my next meal will be all of the time. I don't have to push myself to distraction because through time and lots of mental effort, I've learned to fill the spot with something else. I usually can spend my time productively without considering my weight or eating.
My feeling is that I have come full circle in a peculiar way. When I could eat anything I wanted, I didn't obsess about food. Now, I've learned to put food in a different context in my life and I'm finding that I also am not obsessing about food. Let me be clear about "proper context". I'm not saying that I see food as some neutral, lifeless element in my life. I'm not on the "food is fuel" bandwagon by any stretch of the imagination. I still love food and eat a variety of pleasurable foods. I have given up absolutely nothing, except eating large quantities of anything.
It has taken a lot of hard work to reach this point, and frankly, I think a part of this is also about time. I think I have been doing this long enough to have forgotten what it was like to eat a pint of ice cream, an entire bag of chips, or a large portion of mashed potatoes. The memories faded, though getting them to do so by adopting new routines and a different outlook about portions and hunger took no small effort.
I wish I could teach everyone to do the mental work which would allow them to escape thinking about food and weight loss so much because it is incredibly oppressive. I think that it is so stifling that it has to be one of the reasons people eventually give up on their diets and throw in the towel. Unfortunately, I don't know if what I have done would work for anyone other than me, though the process is all spelled out here in this blog should anyone want to try.
If I never lose another pound, I am going to be happy to have found this sense of peace. At present, I feel neither guilt nor obsession when I eat. I find that my time between meals is spent more productively and creatively than ever before and I don't resent my self-imposed restrictions or buck up against them so hard. I mentioned several posts ago when I was talking about my identity that there was this person I used to be in college (the one who lost a tremendous amount of weight and got down to around 180 lbs.) and I feel like I've found a piece of her again, a piece I thought had been lost forever. This is really only the beginning of a new psychological stage though, but it is a good one.
As the end of a series of books, movies, or television that many people enjoy approaches, you'll often notice that the attention of the fans and media is heightened. The prospect of having less of it makes what is left more exciting and perhaps even valuable to its consumers. You think about it more knowing it's going to go away than you do when it's always there. When it's gone, you may be desperate to arrange to have more of it. This is what spurs DVD sales even when the conclusions or stories are already known.
This relationship that we have with the experiences in our lives is not unique to entertainment. It applies to relationships with other people, places, and objects. It's where the phrase "absence makes the heart grow fonder" has its basis. It's why we care more about that lost childhood stuffed animal that we can't find now that it is lost than when we had it sitting in a box in the closet for years. When it's going or gone, we want it more. We can even become preoccupied with it for a time until the desire for it fades. We learn to fill the empty spot with some new entertainment.
I'm sure that most of my readers can see where this is going in regards to food. Many people who are overweight don't think much about food as long as they can have as much of it as they want. When they try to lose weight and can no longer have it as often as they like or in the quantity they like (and for many people, not even the types of food they once ate... though that doesn't quite apply to people like me), they become obsessed with it. When you can't have something, it takes on immense meaning, especially when it's something which is so important as food.
The feeling of being preoccupied with food when you're dieting is maddening. In fact, about 5 or 6 months into what I have been doing, I sometimes felt I would go crazy having to think about food all of the time. It wasn't that I wanted to be obsessed with it, but rather that my hungry body and my preoccupied mind couldn't stop. On more than one occasion, I started to wonder if this was going to be the rest of my life. If it was, I wasn't sure if I could stand it.
In my post "Early Fruit", I talked about how I had started not to think about food (or weight loss) all of the time, though later I felt derailed in my post "My Inner Masochist". I'm happy to say that since the week of the later post, I'm back to what can be termed "the new normal". That means that I am not sitting around thinking about food or when my next meal will be all of the time. I don't have to push myself to distraction because through time and lots of mental effort, I've learned to fill the spot with something else. I usually can spend my time productively without considering my weight or eating.
My feeling is that I have come full circle in a peculiar way. When I could eat anything I wanted, I didn't obsess about food. Now, I've learned to put food in a different context in my life and I'm finding that I also am not obsessing about food. Let me be clear about "proper context". I'm not saying that I see food as some neutral, lifeless element in my life. I'm not on the "food is fuel" bandwagon by any stretch of the imagination. I still love food and eat a variety of pleasurable foods. I have given up absolutely nothing, except eating large quantities of anything.
It has taken a lot of hard work to reach this point, and frankly, I think a part of this is also about time. I think I have been doing this long enough to have forgotten what it was like to eat a pint of ice cream, an entire bag of chips, or a large portion of mashed potatoes. The memories faded, though getting them to do so by adopting new routines and a different outlook about portions and hunger took no small effort.
I wish I could teach everyone to do the mental work which would allow them to escape thinking about food and weight loss so much because it is incredibly oppressive. I think that it is so stifling that it has to be one of the reasons people eventually give up on their diets and throw in the towel. Unfortunately, I don't know if what I have done would work for anyone other than me, though the process is all spelled out here in this blog should anyone want to try.
If I never lose another pound, I am going to be happy to have found this sense of peace. At present, I feel neither guilt nor obsession when I eat. I find that my time between meals is spent more productively and creatively than ever before and I don't resent my self-imposed restrictions or buck up against them so hard. I mentioned several posts ago when I was talking about my identity that there was this person I used to be in college (the one who lost a tremendous amount of weight and got down to around 180 lbs.) and I feel like I've found a piece of her again, a piece I thought had been lost forever. This is really only the beginning of a new psychological stage though, but it is a good one.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Obsession
On several occasions, I have spoken rather negatively about a popular weight loss “support” forum. Given my low regard for them, one might wonder why I continue to read them. I'll be honest and say that my primary reason is research. It is my hope in the future to work in weight loss counseling because I feel that my education in psychology and my perspective as someone who has had a life-long problem with weight make me ideal for that sort of work. There's also the fact that I have compassion for those who struggle and fail to overcome their problems.
Ultimately, the best way to understand the way that people other than myself feel about the processes of weight loss and their feelings about their bodies is to read such forums. It is the reason that I also read fat acceptance and HAES (Heath At Every Size) blogs even though I don't agree with some of the things they say or promote, such as dieting can kill or that anyone who tries to lose weight is mindlessly conforming to a societally imposed notion of beauty. These are all places where I can gain a richer understanding of how others feel.
Following weight loss forums provides food for thought about various ideas. When those ideas spend several days occasionally rolling around in my head (usually when I'm walking around or in the shower and not otherwise occupied), I tend to find myself in need of a post on this blog to clarify and organize all of the notions.
Recently, a young woman posted something about her boyfriend saying she was “obsessed” with weight loss. Most of the thread that followed was occupied by people attempting in various ways to justify their obsession. Very little of what was there involved any sort of self-reflection or deeper consideration of the notion beyond the post made by the woman who started the thread. I'm not sure that anyone really helped her with their replies, but I can't be in her shoes. Some people said that they can't succeed unless they are obsessed. One likened the tools used to monitor weight loss processes to those which are for used for budgeting while saving for a house. A few said they were concerned about their preoccupation with weight loss. One said weight loss was like her “hobby".
The thing that most surprised me was that those who feel they “need to be obsessed” to succeed failed to see the inherent risk involved with that type of thinking. If you have to be preoccupied to succeed, then the moment you can no longer spend an inordinate amount of your mental energy thinking about food and weight loss, you will fail. I wonder if this is yet another factor that contributes to the high number of "regainers" after initial weight loss.
My personal experience has been that one does need to be very preoccupied initially with weight loss and the processes that contribute to success. You need to have more focus at the beginning in order to overcome the inertia of your body's preferred state, your current habits, and your emotional attachments to food. Without some “obsession” at the start, it's hard to get started and remain on track. Through time, however, I have found that you acquire the habits and the knowledge of how to live each day in a state which contributes to losing weight.
The same level of preoccupation should not be required in order to maintain your status quo as time goes by, if you are effectively learning and conditioning yourself to exercise new habits on a regular basis. If you require constant obsession, then you likely are in a lifestyle pattern which is too restrictive and you must focus at all times to walk the tightrope you've strung before you.
Personally, I see weight loss habits as being a bit like studying a subject for the first time. Imagine that you are a child with no knowledge of the human body, but you are planning one day to be a doctor. Starting from nothing, you learn little by little and build upon that knowledge. You do not have to run back to the books and re-study the names of the bones, nerves, etc. every day in order to maintain and use that knowledge. Though you may initially have to study very hard and cram for tests, you eventually work from the stored skill set and knowledge that you have. The process of learning is hard, but the practice becomes easier once you have the fundamentals down. Weight loss processes should be the same. You may need to learn about portion sizes, calories, etc. initially, but once you know these things, there should be no need to obsess about them in order to keep to your plan.
The line between necessary focus and obsession is not a difficult one to draw, but people seem to willfully avoid doing so. My guess is that this is mainly related to a need to validate and justify ones choices and behaviors. Perhaps people have so little confidence in their ability to stay within the guidelines of their lifestyle change that they feel it's like driving a car. If they take their eyes off the road for a moment, they will lose control and crash.
The very basic line between obsession and necessary application of weight loss techniques can be drawn at the point at which your thinking about diet and exercise or carrying out activities related to such things serves no useful purpose. When such behaviors become an end to themselves rather than a means to an end, you are obsessing. Examples would be:
The risk that comes along with obsession is that you become one-dimensional. Someone who is inordinately preoccupied with food, exercise and weight is not a whole person. They are not interesting to be around nor to live with. They are essentially disordered, whether they are fat or thin. There is more to being "normal" than just not being fat.
Ultimately, the best way to understand the way that people other than myself feel about the processes of weight loss and their feelings about their bodies is to read such forums. It is the reason that I also read fat acceptance and HAES (Heath At Every Size) blogs even though I don't agree with some of the things they say or promote, such as dieting can kill or that anyone who tries to lose weight is mindlessly conforming to a societally imposed notion of beauty. These are all places where I can gain a richer understanding of how others feel.
Following weight loss forums provides food for thought about various ideas. When those ideas spend several days occasionally rolling around in my head (usually when I'm walking around or in the shower and not otherwise occupied), I tend to find myself in need of a post on this blog to clarify and organize all of the notions.
Recently, a young woman posted something about her boyfriend saying she was “obsessed” with weight loss. Most of the thread that followed was occupied by people attempting in various ways to justify their obsession. Very little of what was there involved any sort of self-reflection or deeper consideration of the notion beyond the post made by the woman who started the thread. I'm not sure that anyone really helped her with their replies, but I can't be in her shoes. Some people said that they can't succeed unless they are obsessed. One likened the tools used to monitor weight loss processes to those which are for used for budgeting while saving for a house. A few said they were concerned about their preoccupation with weight loss. One said weight loss was like her “hobby".
The thing that most surprised me was that those who feel they “need to be obsessed” to succeed failed to see the inherent risk involved with that type of thinking. If you have to be preoccupied to succeed, then the moment you can no longer spend an inordinate amount of your mental energy thinking about food and weight loss, you will fail. I wonder if this is yet another factor that contributes to the high number of "regainers" after initial weight loss.
My personal experience has been that one does need to be very preoccupied initially with weight loss and the processes that contribute to success. You need to have more focus at the beginning in order to overcome the inertia of your body's preferred state, your current habits, and your emotional attachments to food. Without some “obsession” at the start, it's hard to get started and remain on track. Through time, however, I have found that you acquire the habits and the knowledge of how to live each day in a state which contributes to losing weight.
The same level of preoccupation should not be required in order to maintain your status quo as time goes by, if you are effectively learning and conditioning yourself to exercise new habits on a regular basis. If you require constant obsession, then you likely are in a lifestyle pattern which is too restrictive and you must focus at all times to walk the tightrope you've strung before you.
Personally, I see weight loss habits as being a bit like studying a subject for the first time. Imagine that you are a child with no knowledge of the human body, but you are planning one day to be a doctor. Starting from nothing, you learn little by little and build upon that knowledge. You do not have to run back to the books and re-study the names of the bones, nerves, etc. every day in order to maintain and use that knowledge. Though you may initially have to study very hard and cram for tests, you eventually work from the stored skill set and knowledge that you have. The process of learning is hard, but the practice becomes easier once you have the fundamentals down. Weight loss processes should be the same. You may need to learn about portion sizes, calories, etc. initially, but once you know these things, there should be no need to obsess about them in order to keep to your plan.
The line between necessary focus and obsession is not a difficult one to draw, but people seem to willfully avoid doing so. My guess is that this is mainly related to a need to validate and justify ones choices and behaviors. Perhaps people have so little confidence in their ability to stay within the guidelines of their lifestyle change that they feel it's like driving a car. If they take their eyes off the road for a moment, they will lose control and crash.
The very basic line between obsession and necessary application of weight loss techniques can be drawn at the point at which your thinking about diet and exercise or carrying out activities related to such things serves no useful purpose. When such behaviors become an end to themselves rather than a means to an end, you are obsessing. Examples would be:
- Weighing yourself multiple times a day.
- Thinking about food or food planning when you are engaged in other activities (like work) and are not actually hungry and being cued by your body to think about food. Obviously food planning is important, but it should not preoccupy you during times when your mental energy should be engaged otherwise.
- Worrying about whether or not you have exercised “enough” on a regular basis when your exercise routines are average or above average.
- Fretting over incidental amounts of calories or whether or not the number of calories reported for a given food are 100% accurate.
- Weighing food multiple times or fretting over fractional differences in portion sizes.
- Tweaking or entering caloric data into tracking programs multiple times or frequently checking multiple web sites for caloric values.
- Talking about little else but weight loss with those around you.
- Adding up calories eaten and calories burned in some sort of effort to find a “perfect” balance on a frequent basis.
- Frequently comparing your size to the size of others around you in casual situations. This behavior shows that you are more concerned with weight than with socialization and that you objectify others as a means of thinking more about weight and weight loss.
- Posting to weight loss forums and asking for sanction for lapses in habits that are of very little or no consequence. The classic example that I have mentioned before was a woman who was saying she was "bad" for eating a pickle (which has zero or nearly zero calories).
The risk that comes along with obsession is that you become one-dimensional. Someone who is inordinately preoccupied with food, exercise and weight is not a whole person. They are not interesting to be around nor to live with. They are essentially disordered, whether they are fat or thin. There is more to being "normal" than just not being fat.
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