We live in a world that is obsessed with weight and body size. There are thousands of diets, diet foods, and diet programs all proclaiming their ability to help you lose weight, and yet the statistics show that for many of us, the number on the scale is going up. Researchers and other experts agree that the long-term success rate for diets is dismal, with many people gaining the original weight back and often even more. And, this weight cycling is inextricably linked to adverse physical health and psychological well-being.
When we have been taught to distrust and dislike our bodies, we can become susceptible to other harmful patterns of attitude and behavior.
While many people equate attaining a certain size with health (and happiness), that is an inaccurate evaluation. Despite persistent bias against higher weight within research and medicine, current studies show that weight shaming and yo-yo dieting are more damaging to a person’s health than their body weight. What if your problem was not your weight, but your relationship to your weight and your body?
Attitudes to Shift for a Healthy Relationship with Your Body
When we have been taught to distrust and dislike our bodies, we can become susceptible to other harmful patterns of attitude and behavior. Here are a few of them:
1. Dieting. You will try and try again, but it is clear from the research that weight-loss dieting doesn’t work. The issue is not that you haven’t tried the “right” diet, or that you were not disciplined enough. It is that all diets are designed to fail. When your diet is unsustainable over the long-term, you will, sooner or later, go back to the way you were eating to begin with. Employing willpower to continually deprive yourself has serious limitations, and it will get depleted from overuse.
2. Rebellion. The restriction that you experience while dieting leads to overeating and binging. Anytime you restrict, you set up the desire to eat. Not only does your body require nourishment, the food that you prohibit will look even more tempting. When you constantly tell yourself, Don’t eat that, you will eventually rebel. When you rebel, you will throw the rules out the window and eat whatever you want and a lot of it. You can’t tell me what to do is a common phrase you might hear in your head: I’m going to eat whatever I want. Watch me! This sounds a little like a two-year-old and makes you feel like one. You end up feeling overly full and maybe even sick as a result.
3. Negative self-talk. When your sense of worth is tied to a number on a scale, you are constantly telling yourself that you are not enough unless you are at the pre-determined magic number. From my personal experience, when I reached the magic number that I was working toward, I was only happy for one second—and my next thought was, You should weigh less than that. Thankfully, I had been practicing mindfulness for some time and saw what was happening. It was a true “aha” moment for me. The inner critic that says I’m not enough will follow you no matter what the scale says. For me, the right choice was to throw the scale out, and I’ve never looked back.
4. Lack of self-love. All this dieting, rebellion, and negative self-talk end up with you having a definite love deficit. It is not your fault. We are conditioned this way by our culture, movies, TV, social media, advertising, and more. If you were to realize that you’re deserving of love and compassion just as you are, you wouldn’t buy things to make you feel better. Much of consumer culture depends on you not feeling good about yourself.
5. Resignation. In the end, you just feel like giving up, and you do. You resign yourself to the way you feel (not good) because you couldn’t succeed at the last diet you tried. Of course, it’s not too long before the next bright and shiny diet shows up and you’re right back at #1. Back to this endless cycle of dieting-binging-giving up.
5 Mindful Ways to Love Your Body
Now for the good news. Instead of focusing on the number on a scale, a more self-compassionate and nourishing attitude toward your body and food can be found through daily mindfulness practices. This will look a little different for every person, and you can experiment to find out what helps your body—and mind—feel their best. Broadly speaking, a mindful approach to your body includes the following:
Instead of focusing on the number on a scale, a more self-compassionate and nourishing attitude toward your body and food can be found through daily mindfulness practices.
1. Explore mindful eating. The antidote to dieting is mindful eating. Mindful eating is not concerned with the number on a scale. It is a kind and curious way of eating that guides you to listen to the body for what, when, how, and why to eat. Mindful eating teaches you to pay attention to your body before, during, and after you eat so that you enjoy all aspects of eating and savoring.
Try It: The BASICS of Mindful Eating guided practice will teach you to breathe and belly check for hunger before you eat, assess your food, slow down, investigate your hunger throughout the meal, chew thoroughly, and savor your