A few weeks ago I was working with another dietitian on a presentation about eating disorders and I was reminded of some ideas that could be helpful to those of you who are struggling with your weight.
A lot of how you feel is based on your perspective: Your perspective of yourself, your weight, your appearance; whether you call yourself "good" or "bad"; whether or not you feel you have willpower, or if you tell yourself you're out of control, or have ruined your day with a certain behavior.
The Beck Diet Solution talks a lot about this idea of perspective. We're encouraged to take a step back and see "what is really true in this situation"? In fact, eating something not on our food plan has not ruined our day, made us into a bad person, or shown us that we have no control. It can be viewed as a learning experience, teaching us what led to that behavior and helping us figure out how we can avoid that particular action in the future.
Note the language that dieters often use, placing blame when an extra food is consumed, or exercise is skipped: "I cheated", "I was bad today", or "today was a complete failure" are what we often tell ourselves.
And that's not true. You weren't a bad person because you made a bad decision.
And that's the key: learning to separate YOU from your actions, your behaviors and your weight.
To change from "I was so bad" to "I made a bad decision earlier today and now I'm going to fix it by adjusting my calorie intake/exercise"
To change from "I am fat" to "I have some extra weight I am working to get off my body".
Because the truth is, YOU are not your body fat any more than you are your hair or your feet or your fingernails. These are all parts of us that we strive to take care of and make nice, but when we have a "bad hair day" we never say "I am a bad person because my hair is frizzy" or "I am so out of control because I haven't fixed my nail polish chips"!
The truth is, maybe something was more important today than taking the time to get a pedicure or put on moisturizer. Maybe we had a sick child to take care of or a work emergency or a family crisis.
We strive to take care of our entire body--and all its parts--every day, but we are not perfect.
Say aloud, "I have some extra fat on my body I am trying to get rid of".
How does that feel?
Do you feel more empowered because the fat is not you?
This week, try to separate what you do and what you look like from who you are.
Let us hear your experience with this experiment below in the comments section.
I think the harder/other part is catching ourselves when see have this internal dialogue.
ReplyDeleteMost of it goes on unconsciously, and it happens in a fraction of a second, so (I think) we miss most of them.
Obviously we do catch ourselves sometimes & it's important to re-frame and change our reactions & decisions.
I would be curious to know how to better understand/catch the times it happens unconsciously.