Weight Wisdom

Affirmations to Free You from Food and Body Concerns

Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, Mary Ellen Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135945435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia anormale

In this powerful guide, Kingsbury and Williams equip readers with simple reflections, vignettes, and everyday analogies that they have successfully used with their own clients to counter destructive feelings and shatter distorted ideas of food and weight. Pithy and positive statements replace compulsive, perfectionist rules with new strategies to cope with blame, guilt, vulnerability, and self-criticism.

Concrete activities help people with eating problems get off the scales, get in touch with their feelings, and make friends with their bodies.

Written by experienced therapists who understand the needs and fears of people with eating problems, the book is a refreshing guide to lasting change and recovery.

The Journey Begins…

You’re Not Crazy, You’re Coping.

“I must be nuts,” Claire said as she sat on the couch in my office. “I can’t handle stress without bingeing. I can’t tell you what I am feeling and most of the time I feel numb.” It was our first meeting, and Claire had described a childhood of physical and verbal abuse, dieting, and overeating. Food was her constant companion. It was her friend. She could count on it when she could not rely on her alcoholic father or her distant mother to comfort her. I looked at Claire and smiled. I said gently, “You’re not crazy, you’re coping.” Food was stable, safe, and reliable when her parents were not. When she was scared of her father as a kid, she would eat. As an adult, when she was scared, she would binge. It made sense to her. “Yeah, I guess you are right. I am not crazy, I am coping!”

Like many women with food issues, Claire blamed herself for using food to get her through difficult times. She called herself names, put herself down, and repeated in her head what she so often heard as a child—that she was worthless. With support and guidance, Claire was able to see her symptoms as coping strategies. “Boy, I must have been pretty smart to use food this way. My sister turned to drugs, and my brother used violence.”

Yes, Claire, like many women, was brilliant in her way of dealing with an abusive childhood. Discovering how your symptoms helped you grow up in a dysfunctional family or handle day-to-day life problems, is vital in recovery. Symptoms need to be respected and appreciated as ingenious ways of getting through tough times. If you are reading this book, you are probably ready to develop healthier ways of coping with stress, anger, fear, sadness, and other difficult feelings.

Healthier techniques such as assertiveness skills, affect management, conflict negotiation, and self-love can be learned. The first step in that learning process is to stop calling your self “crazy.” Instead of name-calling, pat yourself on the back. Give yourself credit for taking the first and often most challenging step of admitting you have a problem with food. Instead of calling yourself “crazy” yell out, ªI am not crazy, I am coping ! º

Helpful Hint:

For one week keep a record of your thoughts and feelings when eating or restricting. Record the time of day; what you ate; how you ate (was it a binge? a meal? a snack?); if you purged or restricted; and what your thoughts and feelings were before, during, and after you ate. After you have recorded this information for one week, review it, noting any trends in negative thinking or difficult feelings. Do you see patterns like restriction when you feel out of control or bingeing when you are tired or purging when you are angry? How might your behaviors with food be helping you? How might they have helped in the past?

There Is No Magic Wand.

How many times have we heard the same question: “Do you have themagic wand?” A person sits and asks us during our first meeting withher eyes wide with anticipation, hopeful we will be the one with theanswer to her eating concern. Each time we tell the individual that thereis no magic wand for recovery, we watch the hope vanish from her faceas her body sinks in the chair. In a society of fast food, quick weight loss schemes, and instant gratification_; it is difficult to learn that there is no quick fix for eating disorders. In fact, the recovery process is slow, long, and often painful. But it can also bring joy, delight, and a sense of self-confidence never felt before. We do not have the magic wand, you do. The magic wand is within you. You just need to find it and learn to use it.

That is what this book is about. It is about finding out what works for you and what doesn’t. It is discovering the color, shape, size; and texture of your own personal wand of recovery. For you do have the power to get well. But only you, often with the help of a good therapist, physician, support group, and/or friend, can discover your true authentic self. While the process of finding, building, and using the magic wand (recovery) is long, it is a lot more rewarding than a quick fix. It will survive the test of time, and is far more fulfilling than the empty promise you will get from your local diet center or nutrition store.

Helpful Hint:

Make your own magic wand. Use clay, crayons, paper, material, or any art supplies to make a magic wand of your very own. What color, texture, shape, and size would it be? What qualities do you have inside you that will make your magic wand work? What are your strengths? How can you incorporate these strengths into your artistic representation of your magic wand? Be creative!

Find a Safe Place to Heal

Weight Wisdom was written to provide inspiration to our readers. If reading this book is your first step in recovery, we are thrilled that you found it. If you have been working toward recovery for a while, we hope this book provides reflections, which will be useful in your work. It was not our intent for Weight Wisdom to be your only source of treatment. Full recovery from most food and weight concerns requires professional help. Therefore, we strongly recommend that, if you have not done so already, you enlist an eating disorders professional to conduct a thorough psychological and medical assessment.

An assessment may include a physician, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a licensed counselor or social worker, and a nutritionist. Due to the fact that an eating disorder is a multifaceted problem, all of these aspects of your health need to be evaluated. Once this assessment is complete, a professional will help you identify the underlying issues that led you to disordered eating. The clinician will collaborate with you in developing a treatment plan and treatment team that will best meet your needs. It is vital that you feel comfortable with your treatment providers, especially your individual therapist. While the therapeutic work will at times cause discomfort, the personal match with your therapist should not. As with anything new, give it some time. But if you go for a few sessions and do not feel like it is a good match, talk to the therapist and/or other treatment team members about finding a better fit.

As your treatment progresses, you will discover therapy can be a safe place to heal. The therapist will become a support and provide a place to talk about your relationship with food without judgment or criticism. He or she can offer education to you and to your family, teaching your loved ones how to best support you during this healing pro-cess. The clinician will provide important links to resources in your local area. But most of all, a trained therapist will help you develop and practice the skills discussed in this book and incorporate them into your daily life.

While starting therapy can be intimidating in the beginning, it often becomes a safe place for you to share your fears, worries, and victories during your recovery. Due to the denial inherent in the illness, it is best not to be the only judge of the seriousness of your problem.

Many people feel weak if they need help to get better. But it shows strength, not weakness, to seek professional care. It takes courage to pick up the telephone, call your doctor or local eating disorders referral agency, and ask for help. It is unrealistic to do it alone. So find a safe place to heal. The road to recovery is best traveled with a companion.

Helpful Hint:

Review the questionnaire entitled “Do I have an eating disorder?” found in the resource section of this book. Based on the results, make an appointment for an assessment with an eating disorders professional in your area. If you do not know where to find help, refer to the resource list.

It Is Not Your Weight, It Is the Weight of Your Issues.

Why do people develop eating disorders? Simply put, they develop the symptoms in attempting to solve a problem. It may be that they use restriction, dieting, or bingeing to cope with difficult feelings or situations in life. Feelings such as sadness, loneliness, anger, and fear are burdensome, heavy emotions. These feelings can make us believe we weigh a million pounds. We falsely believe that if we focus on reducing our weight or changing our body size and shape, we will feel lighter. However, the burden of our issues remains unchanged.

If you are new to the recovery process, you may still see your weight as the problem. Well-meaning friends and family members may reinforce this idea by commenting and worrying about your weight and your symptoms rather than about the underlying causes of your struggle. You and your support system need to learn that the real road to recovery has much less to do with your physical weight than it does with the emotional weight of the psychological issues you have or are currently facing.

Let’s take an example all can relate to. How many people do you know who have gone on a diet after the breakup of a romantic relationship? Losing someone is heavy stuff. The pain of the loss may feel like a big boulder sitting in your stomach. Only time will make the boulder of sadness shrink. In a society of quick fixes, we seldom wait for feelings to pass naturally. We get busy buying the latest diet book, going to the gym, and skipping meals with the hope that by reducing our dress size, our dating quotient will increase and the pain will end.

However, the heaviness in our stomach remains until the time necessary to heal has passed.

A diet does not ease emotional pain. Instead, it is a poor temporary distraction. In the short run it may help us forget the pain of our loss, but when the diet is broken or the weight does not come off, we feel worse. The pain of the loss is compounded by the negative feelings associated with falling off the diet wagon. The only way through a feeling is to feel it. Time needs to pass. Emotions need to settle and dissipate. Your heart needs to heal. There is no way to reduce the pain involved in being a human being. The answer lies in recognizing, examining, and coming to peace with the emotionally laden problems of living.

Helpful Hint:

The next time you start worrying about your weight, stop and ask yourself the following question: If I was not worried about my weight, what would I be worried about? Often our discomfort about life gets projected onto to our physical body. Asking this one question is a great technique to help you start identifying the “weighty issues” you may need to address in therapy.

If Thin Is In, I Don’t Want to Win.

There is an assumption in our society that thin people are healthier than fat people. The diet industry fuels this belief, while the medical profession often reinforces it. The trouble with this way of thinking is that it does not consider the whole person. Other factors_; besides the number on the scale, must be considered in assessing someone’s health. These other factors include a person’s cardiovascular strength, nutrition, physical fitness, blood pressure, cholesterol level, and emotional well-being. While these items do not show up on the scale each morning, they are a big part of your overall health.

Many people, especially those with food and weight concerns, battle weight concerns with the belief that those who are the thinnest win. The old saying “You can never be too rich or too thin” becomes a personal mantra. But what are the costs of trying to be the thinnest? Whether you struggle with anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, or you find that you are perpetually dieting and worried about your weight, the costs are great. The medical risks associated with anorexia include emaciation, slow heart rate, low blood pressure, gastrointestinal disorders, menstrual irregularities including amenorrhea, loss of muscle tissue, osteoporosis, altered brain function and size, anemia, and impaired renal function. The medical complications from bulimia include fluid and electrolyte imbalances, tooth decay and gum erosion, enlargement of saliva glands, esophagus tears or ruptures, gastrointestinal disorders, muscular weakness (remember your heart is a muscle!), edema, vitamin deficiency, and central nervous system disturbances. With binge eating disorders, some of the risks are the same, but also include diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. The ultimate risk of any eating problem is death. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness!

Why don’t people with eating concerns just stop their behaviors once they realize the medical and emotional tolls they entail? Eating disorders occur on a continuum from chronic dieting to food and weight obsessions to life-threatening anorexia and bulimia. The more severe the eating disorder, the less concerned one is likely to be about her physical health. The illness distorts how one thinks about medical problems. Some people even go so far as to use the medical side effects as a measure of success, believing statements like “If I am not at death’s door, than I am not a good anorexic.”

Due to the denial factor and the medical risks involved, professionals and support systems need to monitor the unhealthy behaviors you are engaging in, as they can be dangerous. Routine visits to the doctor are important. Eventually, with help, you will realize the risks are too great, and you are worth too much to continue your unhealthy behaviors. Do you really want to play the game of Russian roulette?

Life is better when you learn to accept your natural weight. By no longer engaging in dangerous dieting habits, you avoid all the medical complications and restore your physical and mental health. So next time someone tells you that you can never be too thin_; yell back, “If thin is in, I don’t want to win!”

Helpful Hint:

Make an appointment with a physician, nurse practitioner, or physician’s assistant who is educated about eating disorders. Have a full physical examination. If you are uncomfortable with your current doctor, call one of the national eating disorders organizations in the resource section for referrals in your area.

You Are Not Your Dress Size.

The day Oprah Winfrey, a successful talk show host, wealthy business-woman, and talented actor, pulled a wagon full of fat onto stage and exclaimed, “This is the happiest day of my life,” was a sad day for us all. She told the audience she was the proudest of her weight loss than any other accomplishment in her life.

Oprah, like many women struggling with food and weight concerns, missed the point. She had mistaken her physical size as a measure of her success. She had confused her self-worth with her dress size. Since that time, Oprah regained and lost the weight again. Over time, she has discovered dieting is not the answer and has found a better-balanced program of self-care, which includes exercise, healthy eating, and spirituality.

Many women with food and weight concerns confuse personal happiness with fitting into a size 6, 10, or 18 dress. They forget that their physical appearance is only one aspect of who they are as a person. Many forget that regardless of the size on the tag, they are needed as mothers, wives, lovers, and friends. They forget that their contribution to the world has much more to do with who they are as people than it does with what they look like to others.

When was the last time you picked a friend or a business associate based on the size of their clothes? Do you even know the size of your friends’ and associates’ clothing? In most instances, probably not. It sounds absurd to judge others in this way, but every day millions of women judge themselves by these arbitrary numbers. We often learn to ignore our special internal qualities such as kindness, compassion, intelligence, wit, and perseverance, when evaluating our worth.

So the next time you look in the mirror and say to yourself that you are a bad person for not fitting into your “thin” clothes, remember you are not your dress size. And by...