When Trish asked me to guest post about myself, my first thought was what in the world could I talk about that would be of real value to her readers. I've written so much over the years about dealing with eating and weight struggles without dieting, in a compassionate way, and so many other folks are talking good sense about it now, I was at a loss. But then I started thinking about what I would say about myself to my children, if they had a blog about eating and weight struggles (which I dearly hope they'll never have the need for) and wanted me to guest post.
I'm 60 years young and have a loving family, a fun personal life and a fulfilling professional life. But it wasn't always that way. I spent much of my life ashamed of my body. No surprise that it created major problems for me, much like it does for the millions of people who feel similarly about their bodies. And that's regardless of what those bodies really look like. We have pictures of ourselves in our minds that often bear little relation to reality.
What I now know at 60, however, is that I wasn't as ashamed of my body as I was ashamed of myself. For whatever reason, throughout my life I have constantly questioned myself, not in a good way such as constructively examining my thoughts and behaviors, but to question the things I said or did that I worried would cause people to look at me askance, wondering what planet I was from, or worse yet, wonder how someone could be as stupid as I was.
The insecurity that behavior fostered showed itself as a focus on my appearance. That was probably the result of being singled out as a child for my appearance, but regardless, my self-questioning and focus on appearance was a distraction. After all these years of looking at it, I think what was really going on was that I -- again, like so many others -- didn't know how to deal with my feelings, or even what they really were. Instead of taking the time to look inside, figure out what I was feeling and then help myself deal with those feelings, I ran to the familiar though uncomfortable place of self-doubt and criticism. Which for many women in this era translates to worry about how we look because, well, it's a worry that's ingrained in many of us from our earliest years.
So as my contribution to Trish's great blog, I offer this insight for anyone who finds themselves doing what I spent so much of my younger years doing: Stop trying to change the wrong thing. As far as advice from professionals who work in the area of eating and weight goes, this is no great shakes in the telling of it. It's fairly standard advice. But in the living of it, well, it is great shakes. Because when we put our energies towards the real problems we face, we can solve them, or at least learn how to live around them.
Of course, the trick is figuring out what the right thing is. Sometimes it's physical; sometimes it's emotional. There's no easy shortcut to figuring it out, but it does requires feeling. If we're out of touch with that, to take the time and make the effort to get in touch. It can be a long process of discovery, but it's oh so worth the journey.
There are a wealth of resources for helping us start to feel what's really going on. When it comes to physical issues getting in the way, we've recently introduced a Food as Medicine program at Green Mountain that helps women start to uncover underlying physical issues that may create problems with eating well/feeling well. Problems such as gluten sensitivity or other food sensitivities, or gastrointestinal problems that seem to be rampant these days.
For emotional eating problems, one of our favorite resources is the book Eating in the Light of the Moon. Here's a review of it on our website that focuses on overcoming emotional eating, which is another way to describe how we use food to distract ourselves from our real issues. I also recently finished Women, Food & God by Geneen Roth. As I wrote on our blog A Weight Lifted, I found it extremely powerful. So much so, all I could really do was recommend it, rather than try to explain her premise.
What do you think? Is your eating and weight your real challenge? Or is something else going on that's surfacing as eating struggles?
Thank you Marsha!! Green Mountain looks like an absolutely amazing place and if I ever get the time and circumstances you can be sure I will be visiting for a stay.
As always I close comments here so be sure to go and visit Marsha on her sites and enjoy all she too has to offer.
Trish
