Weight Stigma Awareness Week II

Check out the Binge Eating Disorder Association website http://bedaonline.com/ and look at all the cool stuff they have going on this week.

Enjoy!

National Weight Stigma Awareness Week - 23-27 September

Apologies for not blogging sooner.  Lets just say that breaking your ankle and sitting in a wheelchair for six weeks is just the first part of a lengthy process.  I've just come back from hydrotherapy and know that the rest of the day will be pretty achy and sore.  But enough about me.

As you'll see by the title - next week is devoted to awareness and the challenging of weight stigma.  Society as a whole judges people by their appearance.  People with excess weight are labelled as lazy, stupid and lacking self control.  And, sadly, people with excess weight label themselves as lazy, stupid and lacking self control.

STOP RIGHT NOW!

You cannot rate the value or worth of a person by their weight.  Overeating is a behaviour (albeit an unhelpful one), not a character flaw or personality defect.  We all have coping strategies - some strategies just have more obvious outcomes (you can't see the damaged liver of an emotional drinker).  The use of food to control mood is short term gain (because it works - briefly) for long term pain.  

So take the time in the next week (or right now if you feel like it!) and think about what prejudices you carry about either your own or someone else's excess adipose tissue.  Becoming aware of them is the first step in the process of change.

When you see that 200kg person in the street wolfing down a bacon double cheeseburger, don't think "what the hell are they eating?!"

think

"what the hell is eating them?"  

These are words of kindness and compassion to ourselves and/or those overweight people out there - because we are all worth it (thanks L'Oreal!).

Weight Loss - Five Big Lies

A kindred spirit in the world of eating, weight and emotions is Dr Rick Kausman.  His ground-breaking work has been going on for 25 years and he is very much qualified to call himself an expert in the field. 

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.

 

Where has my self-esteem gone - and when is it coming back?

This is the title of Week Six in the Eat THINK and Be Merry e-course, which will be available for purchase soon.  (The fat lady is just warming up her vocal chords in the dressing room - honest!)

The concept of self-esteem has a lot to answer for.  It often makes people miserable because it is based on above-average achievement - and it is impossible for everyone to be above average.  

Overweight people are very sensitive to this "rating self on the basis of achievement". One's entire focus can be "I am unworthy because I am overweight" or "unless I am slim I cannot have higher self-esteem" - but because we think of ourselves so poorly because of the excess weight, we are never likely to lose the weight.  And so we are locked into this cycle of desperation.  

Self-esteem has worn out its welcome and we now say hello to our new friend, self-compassion.  The three basic principles of self-compassion are:

• Mindfulness. This requires noticing the suffering of self/others without avoidance or aversion.

• Kindness. Treating self/others with care and understanding. This also involves active soothing and comforting.

• Common humanity. Seeing the experience of self/others as part of a larger human experience.

 

Does any of this sound familiar? Kindness is the way we treat other people!!!!! Here's a radical concept - WHY DON'T WE START TREATING OURSELVES WITH CARE AND UNDERSTANDING, TOO? 

The article below appeared in The Age recently and was linked to a visit by Kristin Neff who has a great website called www.selfcompassion.org.  Be nice to yourself, go to her site and listen and learn.  Its free and there are many useful tools available.  I'm currently working my way through her book "Self-Compassion" for both myself and my clients.

As the article says - Have Your Own Back.  

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/life/the-art-of-having-your-own-back-20130710-2ppcx.html

Overeating - You CAN break the habit

I often hear from my clients that they're "out of control", a "total failure" or think  "its impossible for me to change - I've tried".  What is true is that it can be difficult to change - but its not impossible - and our very mindset about change can be holding us back.  

We worry that if we're not perfect, we are a total failure.  One square of chocolate can be seen as a complete disaster.  If one square is a complete disaster, then why not eat the whole bar?

Think back through your life.  There will be examples of things that you have learned, habits that you have changed, ways in which you've made your life better.  No, don't just read this paragraph - think about what you have changed, whether it was to stop smoking or just to stop picking your nose!  It probably took time and caused you some discomfort, but you did it.

There are specific techniques for breaking an unhelpful and unhealthy habit like overeating. Check out this article by Lisa Franchi.  She talks about replacing bad habits and what will help.  One of the key keys(!) is to ask for help - why are we so reluctant to do this?  And don't expect yourself to be perfect - if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.


The Key to Breaking a Bad Habit.

All of us have bad habits that we wish we don’t have or we wish we haven’t even tried in the first place. But it appears that getting rid of bad habits is such a long, agonising challenge. Nevertheless, it is possible to break a bad habit and replace it with a healthier one. Continue reading to know how.

First of all, you want to know why it is so hard to break a bad habit.

Negative habits such as smoking, eating fatty and sugary foods, and gambling create changes in the neural activity in a specific region of our brain called basal ganglia where habits are formed. This region is also involved in addiction and procedural learning. Whilst it is possible to change or alter these patterns, they are not completely erased in our memory, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thus, just a single stimulus can activate the dormant pattern and reassert itself. So there we go – back into the same bad habit. This is commonly seen among smokers and drug users. Even after intensive rehabilitation, some of them fall back to their habit once exposed to a certain trigger.

We Can Replace Bad Habits

Bad habits can make devastating effects in our quality of life and health. Not only that. It can also waste our time, energy and money. Bad habits also make people engage in violence. Think about those people who have harassed or killed someone whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and those who steal or rob money from others just to get enough money to gamble.

Fortunately, it is possible to break negative habits. The key is not to eliminate it because we can’t. It’s like a scar on our brain. The best way to break a habit is to replace it with a good one.

How do we do this?

First of all, we want to look deeper into the cause of our bad habits. For instance, if you smoke, you want to know what triggers you to smoke in the first place. Many people smoke because they wanted to fight stress and keep their minds alert. That’s what they believe cigarettes do. But the truth is that cigarettes simply cause a spike in the brain’s dopamine levels. As a result, the smoker experiences a temporary improvement in mood. But in the long-run, as your brain becomes dependent on them, your tolerance on cigarettes increases that you don’t experience the same improvement in mood just by lighting up a stick. You may find yourself consuming one cigarette after another to feel ‘relaxed’. This becomes a habit.

If you simply cut off smoking in your life without first finding a better source of relaxation and stress-relief, you increase your risk of having a relapse.

There are additional ways or strategies to break a bad habit. Here they are:

Avoid your triggers. If you smoke when you drink, avoid going to the pub. If you tend to eat lots of cakes, ice cream and sweet treats when you are severely anxious, determine what makes your anxiety levels go up and learn to manage them.

Practice stress-management techniques. Often, we build negative habits, from overspending on a shopping spree to drinking every weekend, as a way to fight stress. It’s a sure thing that we can’t completely avoid stress. Everything can become a stressor – even those things you love. However, it is highly possible to manage our stressors and reduce their impact on our health. There are plenty of proven ways to overcome the effects of stress in our body. These include eating a balanced diet, exercising, having enough quality sleep, meditating, and giving time for relaxing and fun activities.

Surround yourself with positive people. If you’re trying to quit smoking, surrounding yourself with smokers won’t help. But if you spend more time with people who observe a healthy lifestyle, you’ll find yourself adapting to their behaviours.

Find someone to help you. Look for a quit smoking buddy, or encourage your partner to go to the gym with you. They say “two heads are better than one”. When you know someone is there on your side, you’ll find it easier to break a bad habit.

Make a Plan B, C, D, and so on. It’s normal to slip and fall back into your negative habits again and again. Most people who try to break negative habits fail several times before finally succeeding. They key is to never stop trying. Always have an alternative plan. Don’t forget to assess what went wrong with your previous plans so you can formulate the best strategy to break bad habits.

Seek professional help. Counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy are among the most effective interventions for people who want to get rid of bad habits, especially addiction. A professional therapist can guide you all the way towards replacing those negative habits with positive ones.

Perseverance is the key. You may find yourself failing several times. Just don’t give up. You’ll sure achieve success.

How terrible is fat?

I've posted this before, but sessions with clients over the past week have let me know the importance of repeating this over and over again.  Without "getting" this, you will not be able to move to lifelong healthy weight.  Its that important. That's why I've made it LARGE.  

Fat is a fact, not a flaw.

Apologies for the long drink between blogs.  As you will have read, I have a broken ankle which has confined me to barracks and driven me mad for the past six weeks.  It has also given me a large left calf (compensatory use) and I've lost 2kg - silver lining.

More to come soon, but a client sent this through to me and I had to share. Thanks, Belinda.  

Remember, being overweight is SOMETHING about you, not EVERYTHING about you.