MIND MOVES: I IMAGINE reading a supplement devoted to obesity might not be easy for some of us. We don't particularly like our bodies, which is probably why we are so responsive to everything we hear and read about how to make them look younger, fitter, slimmer, in other words, more acceptable.
Uneasiness about our bodies can become a source of painful “body shame”. We feel acutely ashamed when we look at our bodies. Catching sight of ourselves in an unflattering photo or an unkind full-length hotel mirror, our stomachs churn.
We may be shocked to see that our mental image of how we look – our “body image” – bears little relation to how we actually look or, even worse, that the mirror confirms our worst fears. In that moment it can feel like a part of us has died, a younger, fitter unselfconscious “me” who radiated confidence and moved with grace.
Many of us try to hide our bodies, to pretend we couldn’t care less how they look. We tell ourselves that it is a person’s character that matters, that only someone of a very shallow disposition would judge a person by the width of his or her hips.
At some level we know and believe this to be true, but for someone who is ashamed of being overweight, I suspect this truth gives them little solace.
Many of us would love to drop a few pounds, even a few stone. Not because obesity puts us at risk for almost every major physical ailment, but because we would love to walk into a room with confidence, to look at ourselves in a mirror and feel good about ourselves.
However, we don’t believe we have it in us to stick to a regime of exercise and better nutrition. There may be too many other stresses in our lives that put weight control way down our to-do list or maybe we avoid change because we believe we don’t deserve to look and feel better than we do.
Some years ago, I worked at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, on its weight-reduction programme.
One of the favourite clichés bandied around that clinic was “It’s not what you’re eating, it’s what’s eating you”. The key to its approach was an emphasis on changing a person’s relationship with food, rather than on trying to have them stick to rigid diets.
Food can mean different things to us. Eating can provide an easily accessible anaesthetic to help us to forget, to calm us down. It can become a reward for making it through another tough day, or it can be our preferred way to spend time with people and celebrate our lives.
When moments of indulgence are occasional, they probably don’t do anyone any harm, but when our eating becomes compulsive, when we give over to food the power to regulate our mood, we are in trouble.
To give control of our lives over to any person, a substance, a habit or any mood-altering behaviour, invariably lands us in the territory of addiction. Recovery from food addiction, like any other, means taking back the power that we have given away.
At the University of Penn weight-control clinic, there were people who binged on food and felt great guilt and shame when they did. Some of them signed on to the programme in the hope of turning themselves into someone “acceptable”, but their efforts often ended in tears.
There were also people who were very overweight, but who were clearly more at ease in their own skin. They liked themselves, even though they were “on the heavy side”. They signed up because they didn’t enjoy the discomfort of being overweight; they wanted to fit more comfortably into their clothes, they were tired of feeling tired all the time. For the most part, they had a good outcome.
We noticed in that clinic that people were more likely to succeed when they signed up to lose weight because they liked themselves, rather than to make themselves likeable.
Our research confirmed that people do better when they separate issues of self-worth from their weight. Our weight doesn’t make us any better or worse as human beings, regardless what it is. Failure to see this is what drives anorexia and bulimia. When we separate the issues of our weight and our worth, losing a few pounds becomes a lot less tortuous and the chances of success are considerably greater.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – the National Centre For Youth Mental Health (headstrong.ie). His new book,
Coming Through Depression
, (Gill Macmillan, €12.99/€14.99) is out now.