FOOD AND WEIGHT: Finding the Path to Sanity

(a version of this article first appeared in Fuel magazine, winter 2007-08)

We live in a world that’s pretty crazy when it comes to food and weight. We’re bombarded by diet advice and fattening food. We hear staggering obesity statistics and the news that a fashion model has starved to death. Whether you struggle with extra pounds that won’t budge or feel worry and guilt after a pizza party, chances are good that eating is not without conflict.

As an eating disorder specialist and diet coach, I’ve come to see myself as a guide through the maze of food and diet craziness. Many of us need to find a path to sanity and peace with our eating—that is, a way of living with food and weight that works for the long run. Without this, life can be miserable indeed, whether because of health problems, loathsome self-esteem, or constant preoccupation with food and diets.

So how do you find a path to sanity when it comes to eating well and carrying a healthy weight? How can this all get easier? Answers vary for different people and aren’t simple. Over the years, I’ve sketched out a few basic rules to go by, however, and I’ll delve into each more deeply in future issues. For now, though, an overview:

1. find a way of eating that you can live with forever. If you can’t live with your diet forever, it will fail you. Slashing calories drastically, overemphasizing certain foods, downing weird concoctions—any such tactic will alter your metabolism in the short run, perhaps help you lose weight. When you return to familiar habits, though, chances are you’ll regain what you’ve lost and more, and you still won’t have learned how to eat sanely.

2. get started. If you’re good at starting a plan all at once, go for it, and keep on going even after you stumble. If you’re overwhelmed, try integrating one or two changes into your diet. Introduce others as the months go by.

3. overcome obstacles. We’d all be working out joyfully, eating our daily 5-8 veggie servings, always stopping at one cookie, if it weren’t for these. Obstacles can be practical, cognitive, or emotional. Identifying and dismantling your own, whether that calls for better planning, changes in your thinking, or finding new ways to soothe yourself—these projects will help bring you to peace with eating and weight.

4. get help if you are not getting where you want to be. I like to quote Dr. Judith Beck, who says “Few people who have struggled with dieting can lose weight and sustain that weight loss without help and encouragement from another person.” For some, friends and family can provide this help; for others, therapists, personal trainers, nutritionists.

Two final ideas complete the picture: you must move if you are going to keep your weight and body healthy. For many reasons, long-term healthy weight maintenance is simply not possible without exercise.

Lastly, relaxing helps ease the obstacles, and not only for the obvious reasons (like stress management without ice cream binges). Lasting change can take time.

People often say, “Well, it’s taken me forty years to develop these habits, so…..” But when it comes to dieting, they lose that perspective and want pounds off now. Developing lifelong healthy habits must be your ongoing work-in-progress, not a goal your reach instantly without ups and downs.

Eating should nourish us, make us feel good, keep us strong. The world around us interferes terribly. There are movements afoot to change our food environment, but in the meantime, we each deserve to find our own personal paths to eating sanity.

Tags: Healthy Foods, Weight Loss

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 4:24 pm and is filed under General, Habit Changes, Weight Loss. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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