You see an obese person and think to yourself “How could she let herself go like that? She has no self-control. She should eat less and do some exercise.” Clever you! You think you have all the answers. But you don’t. Here’s why:
We live in a society that likes to treat the symptom and not the underlying cause. When we have headaches, we swallow some pills, instead of eliminating the caffeine, sugar, xyz that caused the headache. When we block our arteries, we have bypass surgery instead of changing our lifestyle. When our children have ear infections, we give them antibiotics, instead of eliminating dairy from their diets. Similarly, when we are fat, we think that we have to eat less and exercise more.
Of course we do. We became obese by eating too much of the wrong foods and not exercising enough. And in order to lose weight, we need to change those patterns. But this is not the most important aspect of weight loss. (I’m not talking here about someone who is a size 2 and wants to be a size 0, or carries a few extra kilograms – I’m mostly talking about people who are obese.)
Nobody I’ve ever heard of has ever woken up one morning and decided to eat more and exercise less in order to become obese. Nobody wants to be obese. The slide is gradual and happens while we are trying to make sense of our lives. Often this slide follows a trauma to our psyche. A psychologist I used to see explained to me that traumatized people often feel the need to be more solid as a way of protecting themselves – basically it boils down to anchoring themselves.
Deep down, below all the social brainwashing, we all know what is necessary for health. We are born with that knowledge, just as a deer or a tiger is born with that knowledge. We lose it because our society has learned to trust external authorities, instead of ourselves. Instincts are perceived as primitive and we blindly travel along the enlightened scientific path, disregarding our own common sense. The traumatized woman who subconsciously wants to punish herself, will do so in a number of ways. Some will attempt suicide. Some will drink, use drugs, or throw themselves into a cause or career. Some people will cut themselves. Some will overeat – suicide by fork.
All this happens in the subconscious mind. The person is not aware that she is punishing herself. In fact, she believes that she deserves the treats, because of what has happened to her. She owes it to herself! Furthermore, just as some people will use alcohol or drugs (street or prescription) to distance themselves from their emotions, so some people get the same effect with food. In our minds, all the bad things about being fat (the indignities, the discomfort, the social censure, the health concerns, the sheer ugliness) are not as scary as feeling certain emotions. Best we pile some more food on that memory or emotion, lest it comes to the surface and destroys us!
Another central theme with obese people is that they often had a very dominant parent, be it the father or the mother. Especially if they were an only child or the eldest. The parent over controls the child and the result is that the child never learns an internal locus of control. This means that the child, even when she grows up, will always measure her worth and get her cues from outside herself – an external locus of control. She literally has not learnt to control her own impulses – she needs outside influences to keep her in line. She may end up in abusive relationships or become promiscuous – looking for love in the wrong places. All of which will further erode her self-esteem and set the stage for obesity.
The diet industry of course perpetuates the external locus of control, while making it seem as if they are teaching you self-control. That is why I am not so excited about calorie counting, weighing portions, diet clubs, diet potions and pills and diet food. It’s just another way of not taking control. It’s just another way of saying that the solution to your problem is a temporary inconvenience that you need to suffer and then you can let the good times roll again! A.k.a. going on a diet. How many of us have tried every diet we could get our pudgy paws on? Did we lose weight? Often yes, but diets don’t work, because they don’t heal the underlying cause, which is of course emotional, with a good dose of bad habits. First of all they are not teaching you good habits, but they are also doing absolutely nothing for your emotional health and even less for your physical health!
Have you ever prayed, wished or daydreamed that you would just wake up thin the next day? Did you imagine how happy you would be? How nothing in your closet will fit! The excitement of having to get new things! Of seeing the admiration in people’s eyes! But let me burst your bubble… you’ll be fat again in no time. Partly because you will not have learnt what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, but because while you were fat, you believed that you did not deserve to be thin. That belief will only be reinforced if you lose weight miraculously. You will start punishing yourself straight away.
All obese people have a very deep sense of self-loathing. We are offended by our own bodies. We see the disgust in other people’s faces and we just hate ourselves more. We know that we did this to ourselves. We know that we are not good enough. We know that people think we’re lazy, slow-witted and slovenly. Actually, a lot of obese people are very successful in other areas of their lives. They are not weak. They are not spineless.
There is not an obese person on this earth who doesn’t know that he or she needs to lose weight – even those fat acceptance people know it, they’ve just decided to make the best of a bad deal. But there is really no “best” to being fat. Fat acceptance just means that you’ve given up. You are not even going to try and be the person you can be. And by that I don’t mean a thin person, by that I mean a whole person. And don’t tell me you can be fat and whole! You can’t. When you’re whole, you want to be the best you. You are loving and kind to your body, which means that you feed it healthy foods and exercise it.
Please note that I’m not saying that thin people are necessarily whole people. Different people have different coping mechanisms in place, some of them healthy, some of them not. A person who is a healthy size 4, but thinks that she should starve herself to be a size 0 is far from whole. Food can be a weapon or sustenance. Exercise can be healthy, or an addiction.
So what is the answer? The answer is learning to love ourselves unconditionally. How do we do that? I don’t know… I’m just learning this myself.
Daniele posted this link a while ago. It’s the story of a woman, Nancy Makin, who lost 530 lb (about 241 kg)! She says that she didn’t need a diet chart, she needed a life. She got one and then she got thin. Not overnight, but she did it (she used to walk in the cemetery, because she was too ashamed to be seen in public). And you know what? I believe that she’ll remain thin. There seem to be two main reactions to this story among the obese. Some are inspired and happy for her, but others are not so enthusiastic. Why? I believe it’s because she didn’t follow the rules! She didn’t deprive herself, she didn’t count calories and she didn’t agonize over every morsel she put in her mouth. So she didn’t suffer like the poor dieter is suffering! How dare she!
As for me? I’m learning to be kind to myself. Every day. And I’ll count my blessings, not my calories or my fat rolls! I concern myself with the quality of my food more than the quantity. If I can get my heart over the bar, my body will surely follow…
