Perfection

I’ve been reading a lot of other blogs lately written by people who’ve been through what I’ve been through: losing a lot of weight and working to keep it off. It’s been cathartic to finally find a community that gets it. Until now, I’ve shared my experiences with people who’ve never been seriously overweight, or conversely, with those who have but think there’s no workable, lasting solution to obesity. To finally talk to folks who’ve been there and done that is thrilling to say the least.

One thing I’ve noticed is that while everyone I’ve encountered in weight cyberspace has had similar experiences, many have drawn very different conclusions than I have. This fact actually excites me because I’ve learned some things and discovered new perspectives that can only help as I move forward on this weight maintenance journey. Even when I disagree with what someone says, I can see where they’re coming from and respect that their opinion was arrived at just as honestly as mine was.

There’s a big idea that many of my fellow bloggers have expressed that I completely disagree with, that we have to deal with mental issues – about food and self-esteem among other things – before lasting weight success can be achieved. I’ve brushed the surface of this topic in previous posts about emotional eating and our relationship with food, but I want to explore one aspect of this a little further. I seem to detect something dangerous lurking beneath the waters and that is the specter of Perfection.

Every person who’s ever been seriously overweight has dreamed of the perfect life they will have when they finally reach whatever magical weight they’ve established for themselves. In fact, one of the biggest challenges to maintaining a large weight loss is mourning the demise of that cherished belief, when you reach your perfect weight and find that a perfect life still eludes you. How different from that is this idea that you have to perfect your mental state before attempting to deal with your weight?

It is undeniably true that people have issues with food. It is also undeniably true that food issues can significantly affect what you eat, how much you eat, and what you weigh. But I believe you can take care of your body and reach a state of health that includes being a normal weight without having to clear out every eccentricity and neurotic cobweb from your head. I’m a perfect example. I’m way crazier about food now than I was 100 pounds ago, but I’ve managed to work with my nuttiness. The key is having a strong motivation, which for me was created out of something that happened seven years ago.

In the summer of 2005, I had relatively minor surgery on my foot and had been told that I would need about a week to recover. My recovery took nearly four times longer than that because I had to use crutches while my foot healed and I was simply too out of shape to do that. During that time period, I was a functional invalid and that realization hit me hard, as I was only 48 years old and thought of myself as resilient. It brought me face-to-face with the future and how I might cope with health issues as a 70-year-old woman who weighed 250 pounds. The terror of that vision set me on this road and I’ve never looked back, neuroses or no.

So, I don’t agree that food issues have to be resolved or healed or made peace with in order to lose weight for good. And there is no such thing as a perfect relationship with food, no matter what you weigh. All I can say is start where you are and do what you can. Whatever happens, it is better than waiting for a perfect opportunity that will always be just beyond your grasp.

It's All in Your Head

There’s something I’ve encountered over and over again in articles about losing weight: the idea that an overweight person will never be successful in keeping the pounds off for good unless she comes to grips with her relationship with food. (I use the word “she” deliberately because this advice seems mostly directed at women.)

The theory is that the obese person’s messed up relationship with food causes them to overeat in destructive ways. We are told that this over-consumption is an attempt to fill a void, heal a past trauma, or find solace from a deep loss. It is a psychological crutch, and once the fat person is able to deal with the real issue, she will no longer feel the need to stuff her face with Hershey bars.

Sorry, but I don’t buy it.

First off, it sounds an awful lot like a one-shot fix. But rather than a magic pill or a magic surgical procedure, this is magic for your head. Get in touch with your bruised inner psyche and presto chango! Thin forever! Well, um, not quite. Dealing with obesity may require coming to terms with the fact that you sometimes eat for reasons other than hunger, but that doesn’t mean it’s all in your noggin. It does mean that you need to change what are likely very ingrained eating habits, which may make the goings-on in your head even more squirrelly!

This idea also focuses the blame on the fat person and their perceived gluttony. But consider, for example, that to reach a point where you weigh 100 pounds more than you should, you need to eat an extra 350,000 calories. That’s the equivalent of about 6500 cups of steamed chopped broccoli. You would have to eat almost 18 cups of that broccoli on top of your regular meals every day in order to gain 100 pounds in a year. Could you stomach that? However, those 100 pounds are also the equivalent of only 200 of Red Robin’s highest-calorie cheeseburger options. You could probably manage that, couldn’t you? Would the current obesity rate, especially the rate of extreme obesity, be skyrocketing if our environment didn’t provide nearly non-stop mega-calorie temptation?

Then there’s the matter of biology. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the hormones regulating appetite, hunger and satiety work differently in overweight people than they do in non-overweight people. Some researchers have begun to believe that the digestive system of obese people is actually broken, along with the homeostasis mechanism that is supposed to regulate metabolism to keep weight stable, not unlike how it keeps our body temperature steady at 98.6°F. Even the most well-adjusted person in the world will have trouble maintaining a healthy weight if their gut is busted!

There’s also the insinuation that obese people must be mentally warped. Good grief! Fat people already have enough to deal with without being treated as not quite right in the head. This idea that our weight is the result of psychological failings does nothing but keep us in a state of self-flagellation and shame, which just makes it that much harder to seek out the help needed to learn a better way to eat.

I think the best way to fix your relationship with unhealthy food is to treat it like an abusive boyfriend. Ditch the jerk and find something better. But that does not require tinkering with your head. It does require the determination to find a piece of paper on which to write a new and improved grocery list. Plus a healthy dose of self-respect.