When my job (and my whole living situation) changed a little while back, I was thrown into body image crises I hadn’t experienced since my early 20s – hating the way I look. Feeling bad about my eating. Zero interest in moving my body. Weight gain.<\/p>\n
It is tempting, always so tempting, to rely on the panacea of dieting (or whatever term you like to give to intentional weight loss attempts<\/a>) to fix these problems. Because, at least in the short term, it can. And when you’re feeling horrible RIGHT NOW, naturally, a quick fix is incredibly attractive.<\/p>\n Here’s how I deal with that urge: I allow myself to have these feelings. <\/p>\n I am not a Body Image Superhero, despite being a Health at Every Size and fat acceptance activist. I go through many more good times than bad, thanks to HAES and FA – but I still live in this culture, and I get all the same messages<\/a> everyone else does about how I’m yucky and gross and no one will ever want to have sex with me, ever. <\/p>\n My body image is, and likely always will be, a work in progress.<\/p>\n As part of that process, I rely on a Body Image Crisis Algorithm – a sort of Socratic series of questions I ask myself to get to the root of, and solutions to, the crisis. Let’s begin.<\/p>\n So, what’s going on under the hood, beneath disliking my weight or “feeling fat”? What does that really mean?<\/em><\/p>\n It means feeling shitty about myself. Feeling undesirable. Not liking the way I look. Feeling socially anxious. Feeling like I am not welcome, and do not belong in this world. Sometimes, it’s feeling physically unfit, and like my eating is very disorganized and chaotic.<\/p>\n Has losing weight in the past helped any of these things?<\/em><\/p>\n No, actually. I did like certain things about how I looked when I was losing weight, but it also made me feel weirdly disconnected from my body, and I kept holding myself to higher and higher standards of how I should<\/em> look. It’s also never helped to make my eating or exercise more healthy and enjoyable for the long-term, and actually caused some disordered stuff there. No. We all know that. The failure rate<\/a> is somewhere<\/a> between 80-98% after five years. And given my body’s apparent propensity to gain weight, and given how triggering I find the barest hint<\/em> of possible food restriction, I seriously doubt I would be one of the lucky ones.<\/p>\n Are there more direct ways of dealing with these problems?<\/em><\/p>\n Well, yes. There are body image exercises<\/a> I can do. There are social anxiety exercises I can do. There are practical, immediate things I can do to help my eating, like eating my meals and snacks on time, offering myself a variety of foods at each meal and snack, and giving myself permission to eat what I want, and NOT to eat what I don’t want. And I have actually been doing that, and I have been feeling a lot better about eating. <\/p>\n [Ed: eating is complicated for me because, ironically, as part of my job I eat strange foods at strange times of the day with my clients. Which makes structure<\/a>, the part of eating competence that I especially rely on to feel sane around food, uniquely difficult.<\/em>] <\/p>\n If I’m concerned about weight gain, I can go get a physical – I already know what the factors are that likely have influenced my weight (new medications, major life changes like moving and changing jobs, episodes of depression.) I already know that my blood pressure and blood sugar are good.<\/p>\n What about not feeling welcome in the world?<\/em> <\/p>\n This one is trickier. It goes to a somewhat philosophical place.<\/p>\n Well, first of all, when you see someone as fat or fatter than yourself, do you feel like they shouldn’t exist?<\/em><\/p>\n No, of course not. But then, I’m not a total asshole.
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\nEven if it did, or could, help these feelings, is losing weight likely to be a permanent fix?<\/em><\/p>\n
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\nDo you believe most people are total assholes?<\/em><\/p>\n