In this article below from The Age by Kasey Edwards he lists the top five falsehoods that keep overweight people miserable and the weight loss industry rich.
What do you think about what's written below? Are you ready to apply less willpower and more self-compassion around eating, weight and emotions?
"Dr Rick Kausman has been running a weight management and eating
behaviour clinic for 25 years. He’s a director of the Butterfly
Foundation, a fellow of the Australian Society for Psychological Medicine, and
the author of If Not Dieting, Then What?
1. Weight loss is a simple matter of willpower
We’ve all heard that weight loss is easy. People just
need some good old-fashioned will power. This myth is so ingrained in our
culture that it’s assumed that a person with a fat body is lazy and
undisciplined which can lead to discrimination
in employment opportunities and by health care professionals.
"Most people try to use willpower and determination
to lose weight. Weight loss is the wrong goal to have
(we’ll get to that in a moment) but, nonetheless, willpower is not the right
skill to use to achieve that goal," says Dr Kausman.
"Willpower is a terrific skill to have but it’s a short-term skill.
You use willpower for things like studying for exams. But you wouldn’t have
enough willpower to force yourself to study for exams every day for the rest of
your life."
"Weight loss and healthy eating is the same. People just
run out of willpower, they run out of the ability to deprive themselves.
Willpower is not the right skill to use to try to achieve long-term sustainable
change."
2. You can shame yourself (or other people) thin
We raise our eyebrows when we see an overweight person eating carbs and
wonder if we should say something to our fat friends and family ‘for their own
good’. We think humiliating fat people in shows like Biggest Loser is
‘tough love’ and we ask our friends to police our eating
and weight loss and hate ourselves when we inevitably fail.
"A much better skill to use to be the healthiest we can be is
self-compassion," says Dr Kausman.
"We should work on being kinder to ourselves. The research shows
that if we can be kinder to ourselves then we tend to look after ourselves
better. We will do things that will help us look after ourselves better rather
than punish ourselves or set ourselves targets that are impossible to
achieve."
3. Doctors and health professionals are experts
in weight management**
"Weight management and the psychology of eating is a
relatively new area of health," says Dr Kausman.
Doctors, dietitian and psychologists are experts in many areas, but
according to Dr Kausman weight management and the psychology of
eating is very often not one of them.
"In a short period of time we have seen weight gain for a
significant number of people, as well as a thin ideal that is almost impossible
to achieve" says Dr Kausman. "The education and training for health
professionals has not caught up to deal with this problem."
"On the whole, GPs, dietitians and psychologists are very poorly
equipped to support somebody who might come in and say that they feel they are
above their most healthy weight and looking for advice on what they
should do about that."
4. The weight loss industry
are weight loss experts
"The weight loss industry just has to die,"
says Dr Kausman.
"All weight loss organisations are businesses that
do a brilliant job of masquerading as health providers. They are not health
providers. They are geared to what is going to make the most money and not what
is most helpful for their clients, so they are never going to be helpful."
"The mere idea of weight loss companies offering a
life membership is a joke. The whole premise is ridiculous because it’s the
opposite of what you want to be doing. They should be aiming to free people
from the distress and disempowerment of counting, measuring and weighing."
"I don’t want my patients to be a member of my practice. I want to
work with them to make this issue really quiet in their life. Whereas
the weight loss industry wants to hang on to you, disempower you to
keep you as members," says Dr Kausman.
Kausman is not alone is suggesting
that weight loss companies do more harm than good. A 2007
article in American Psychologist which reviewed 31 weight loss
studies reported that, ‘One study found that both men and women who
participated in formal weight-loss programs gained significantly more
weight over a two-year period than those who had not participated in
a weight-loss program’.
"The evidence is really crystal clear that dieting doesn’t work and
that it can lead to eating disorders. Yet
these weight loss organisations have managed to stay one step
ahead of the general public’s, but also health professionals’, awareness about
these issues. But they are being wound in as we speak," Dr Kausman says.
5. Diets lead to weight loss
"What we know — and we now have the science to prove it — is
that dieting doesn’t work, certainly in the medium to long term but often in
the short-term as well," says Dr Kausman. "We also know that, for
most people dieting causes weight gain. And that the most common path
to an eating disorder is weight-loss dieting."
"We need to shift the focus away from weight as the goal
and onto looking after ourselves. We need to stop focusing on the end point and
start valuing the process."
"Weight is a terrible measure for healthy, anyway," says
Kausman."
Kasey Edwards is the best-selling author of 4 books 30-Something
and Over It, 30-Something and The Clock is Ticking, OMG! That's Not My
Husband, and OMG! That's Not My Child. www.kaseyedwards.com
**I certainly agree with Kausman on this point. Most psychologists list weight management as part of their area of expertise, but very few specialise in it or have a specific methodology that addresses the use of food to control mood.
