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No More Hunger Games: Unlearning a Lifetime of Habits and Societal Norms with Intuitive Eating

January 24, 2012 By 1 Comment
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By Valerie Kusler

Since I sat down 30 or 40 minutes ago to prepare for writing this post, I have been distracted not only by adorable cat pictures and Facebook, but also by my appetite. Twice, I’ve gotten up and made it as far as my bedroom door before deciding it’s not quite dinner time. (How apropos, given the topic at hand, right?)

When I was first introduced to the principles of intuitive eating during my eating disorder (ED) recovery, it was an “aha” moment for me. Of course, I already knew that I had been completely ignoring my body’s hunger signals by starving or binging. But I realized that even before the ED came into my life, I had actually been ignoring my body’s hunger and fullness signals on a daily basis. Further pondering it, I realized that most people I knew without an eating disorder also disregarded these cues, and – so far as I could tell – our society in general. Damn… a whole society in which everyone is expected to eat a precise number of meals (three) of a standard portion (usually the amount put on the plate in front of you) at three specific times (more or less). How do these cultural standards coincide with listening to our bodies’ signals of hunger and fullness? That’s the problem; they don’t.

For those of you new to the concept of intuitive eating, let’s take a look at how three of the movement’s leaders conceptualize it and what their guidelines are for practicing it.

Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA

Evelyn and Elyse are the authors of the original book on the topic, Intuitive Eating, now in its 2nd edition. Their website has a wealth of information on the topic including a fantastic resources section.

In their words, “Intuitive Eating is an approach that teaches you how to create a healthy relationship with your food, mind, and body–where you ultimately become the expert of your own body. You learn how to distinguish between physical and emotional feelings, and gain a sense of body wisdom. It’s also a process of making peace with food–so you no longer have constant ‘food worry’ thoughts. You begin to realize that health and your worth as a person does not change because you ate a so-called ‘bad’ or ‘fattening’ food.”

Tribole & Resch’s 10 Principles for Intuitive Eating

  1. Reject the Diet Mentality
  2. Honor Your Hunger
  3. Make Peace with Food
  4. Challenge the Food Police
  5. Respect Your Fullness
  6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
  7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
  8. Respect Your Body
  9. Exercise [for the right reasons]–Feel the Difference
  10. Honor Your Health–Gentle Nutrition

Geneen Roth

After 20 years of dieting and over 1000 pounds gained and lost (via dieting, binging, and a full-blown eating disorder), Geneen began writing about her journey away from dieting. Her books, Breaking Free from Emotional Eating, When Food is Love, and Women Food and God (among others) along with regular workshops and retreats, have helped millions of people make peace with food and their bodies. I actually credit one of Geneen’s retreats I went to in 2005 as a significant piece of my ED recovery and repairing my relationship with food.

Geneen’s eating philosophy is her personal variant of intuitive eating. Her seven eating guidelines include:

  1. Eat when you are hungry.
  2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
  3. Eat without distractions. Distractions include: radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety-producing conversations, and music.
  4. Eat only what your body wants.
  5. Eat until you are satisfied.
  6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.
  7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto, and pleasure.

Susie Orbach

Susie revolutionized the field of body image with her 1978 book, Fat is a Feminist Issue. In one of her most recent books, On Eating, Susie offers a compassionate, to-the-point guide to intuitive eating with what she calls “the five keys.”

First Key: Eat when you are hungry

Second Key: Eat the food your body is hungry for

Third Key: Find out why you eat when you aren’t hungry

Fourth Key: Taste every mouthful

Fifth Key: Stop eating the moment you are full

As you can see, there’s a lot of overlap among just these three examples. I would encourage you to check each of them out and see which one speaks to you the most, because each author brings something different to the table.

I am proud to say that through a combination of support and hard work, I am fully recovered from my eating disorder. Intuitive eating has become such a part of my everyday life that I could no longer tell you what the exact principles were according to which expert—which is why I had to look them up to provide for you here! To me, that’s a good thing. At one point, I needed constant reminders. These days, it feels like second nature most of the time. Key words: “most of the time.” This evening, however, I let myself get too hungry (note to self: pack car snacks). But instead of picking up fast food and gorging it on the way home, I waited until I got home and had some hummus and crackers to tide me over so I could wait to make a meal I’d actually enjoy rather than inhale.

Then, I sat down to write. Shortly after my snack and the aforementioned procrastinating (curse you, Zuckerberg!), I convinced myself I was hungry for dinner. Really hungry, like, definitely couldn’t wait until this was written hungry. But en route to the kitchen, I froze. I suddenly realized that I was confusing what my brain wanted with what my body wanted. Was my body actually hungry? No, I had just had a filling snack. But my brain wanted to avoid having to be productive for a little bit longer, and eating seemed like a good excuse/alternative (as it often does when our brains want to avoid thinking about/feeling/doing ________.) I laughed out loud, thinking, “Did I seriously just fool myself into creating fake hunger while trying to write a post about intuitive eating?!”

The point of me sharing this anecdote with you is because, after years of practicing intuitive eating, I thought it became second nature: Eat when I’m hungry, stop when I’m full. Yet, I found myself in a situation where I was manifesting hunger in my brain, but not in my body. The longer I have followed intuitive eating, the more often my brain and my body are in sync about hunger. For example, at least once a day, I crave chocolate but it doesn’t take a ton to satisfy me. I also crave vegetables daily, which I used to eat purely because they were low-calorie or because I was “supposed to.”

But as I witnessed tonight, sometimes things come up that throw your body (letting myself get too hungry) or your brain (wanting to avoid something) out of whack. Even though I have a lot of practice listening to my hunger and fullness cues, situations like this remind me that unlearning a lifetime of conditioning is an ongoing process. That means I may occasionally slip up, or sometimes may need to refocus my attention in the moment and remind myself of some of the guidelines above. But the payoff is huge. When you become more familiar with your body’s signals and follow the principles of intuitive eating, it is an amazing feeling. It’s also the be-all, end-all diet killer. Your body will reach its natural set weight, perhaps fluctuating a few pounds here and there, often seasonally. For some people this means losing the extra pounds they’ve always struggled to drop. However, a cautionary note: As discussed over at Body Love Wellness, “practicing intuitive eating with the expectation of weight loss really screws up your ability to eat intuitively.” (If you still need more incentive to ditch the diet this year, check out our recent post.)

I hope that you’re encouraged to become more familiar with the principles of intuitive eating and tweak the guidelines to make them fit for you. As you become more in tune  with your body’s cues, it can be helpful to keep a journal where you can track your hunger and fullness before and after each time you eat. As Susie Orbach wrote, “Undoing years of chaotic or unhealthy eating takes time. Learning to eat in a new way, a way that will work for you for the rest of your life, is like an injured person learning to walk or talk again.” It won’t come overnight, but the results are worth it.

If you have any thoughts or experiences with intuitive eating, or if it’s a new concept to you, we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments. On that note, my body is telling me it’s finally time to eat!

Related Content:

Dare to Resolve to Ditch Dieting

Girls and Dieting: Then and Now

How Diets Decrease Your Self-Esteem and Not Your Size!

Three Steps to Transform the National Weight Debate

Scale Back: It’s International No Diet Day!

 

 

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Dare to Resolve to Ditch Dieting

December 27, 2011 By 6 Comments
Official logo for the Ditching Dieting campaign.

Dieting is toxic to your health.

By Sharon Haywood

Aside from bikini season, late December and early January is the other time of year that we’re especially susceptible to feeling bad about our bodies. Special thanks to the media and the diet industry for ensuring we do by reminding us that we overindulged during the end-of-year festivities and we must resolve to lose (at least) that holiday weight come the new year. Weight Watchers in the UK is making certain you hear that message loud and clear. On January 1, 2012 almost all the major UK television networks will simultaneously air a three-minute Weight Watchers commercial aka music video worth over US$23 million. In it, Weight Watchers proudly parades 180 clients, mostly women, who have lost a total of 5908 pounds using its trademarked ProPoints program launched just a year ago.

What I’d like to see is how many of those slimmed-down success stories will have kept the weight off by New Year’s Day 2016. According to the studies, within four to five years most of them will have regained the weight, and at least 60 to 120 of them will weigh more than their pre-diet weight. Yes, I said diet. Regardless of what Weight Watchers (or SlimFast or Jenny Craig or any other system or product designed to lose weight) calls it, a diet is a diet. And diets don’t work. Sure, if you eat only protein and avoid carbs or measure your portions or adhere to a system of points that limits your caloric intake, yes, you will lose weight… initially. But research[1] clearly shows that any weight lost is sure to creep back within five years.

Researchers at California’s UCLA sought out specific evidence on the long-term results of dieting by analyzing every published diet study—31 in total[2]—that monitored participants’ weight from two to five years after their initial weight loss. The study’s lead author, Traci Mann, summarized their results:

“You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back. We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.”

You may have already heard this information but you may have very well just resigned yourself to playing the losing and gaining game. It’s understandable considering how barraged we are with the message that fat will kill you. But the truth is fat can actually protect you against certain diseases including osteoporosis, chronic bronchitis, and some cancers.[3] Furthermore, the evidence strongly supports that continued yo-yo dieting or losing and gaining weight repetitively does real damage to your body, not to mention the mental and emotional self-abuse that dieting demands. The research is clear: weight cycling plays a large role in various ailments, ironically often attributed to obesity: high-blood pressure, congestive heart failure, diabetes, and even premature death.[4] Unfortunately, the studies that attract the most press are those that support weight loss as a means to health; such studies are substantially funded by the pharmaceutical[5] and weight loss industries. And these industries are certainly not lacking in profits; in only two more years, the worldwide weight-loss market is predicted to be worth a staggering US$586.3 billion.

It’s time to say “No” to big business making money off our bodies. Enough of believing the propaganda that fat is the enemy. Enough of trusting that the label ‘overweight’ or even ‘obese’ obtained from an unsound BMI chart translates to ill health. As the year comes to a close and you compile your list of New Year’s resolutions, dare to do something different. Dare to listen to your body. Dare to ditch dieting. And know that you don’t have to do it alone. Across the pond, the Endangered Bodies campaign, launched by the Endangered Species International March 2011 Summit, is in full swing. The Endangered Bodies (EB) team in the UK[6], led by Susie Orbach, launched its Ditching Dieting campaign last month at UK Feminista’s national conference where they invited attendees to “speak out against the misery caused by the diet industry.” And you can, too.

Anyone, anywhere can hold a SpeakOut in the name of Ditching Dieting. You can organize a few friends around your kitchen table or you might fill an auditorium. The point is to create a safe space where the suffering caused by dieting can be expressed and validated. A SpeakOut and the subsequent support group that can emerge from it offer similar peer support that diet clubs such as Weight Watchers provide; however, instead of focusing on working against your body’s natural impulses, a SpeakOut club facilitates strong bonds as you explore collaboratively with other members how to truly take care of yourself. In the words of the UK EB team:

“In general, the aim is to become really aware of where dieting puts you, and to start making important choices about how much you want to play along with a game that is making you miserable… It is about taking on the challenge to accept and understand how natural it is to eat happily, in response to your hunger, and without guilt.”

Learning how to eat intuitively is a process that takes time, especially if you’ve historically relied on external factors, such as a meal plan or a point system to guide you on when and how to eat. Diets teach us to ignore our internal cues, which only contributes to eating disorders and obesity. As Susie Orbach has asked many times,

“If dieting worked, why would we need to do it more than once?”

Let’s kick off the New Year off by Ditching Dieting and move toward eating “happily ever after.”

* * *

Whether you’re in the UK, the US, Canada, or Europe, consider hosting your own SpeakOut. For more information visit www.ditchingdieting.org and write to info@any-body.org to obtain a SpeakOut package.

Currently in the UK, a Body Image Inquiry is underway looking into the causes and consequences of body image anxiety. If you’re based in London, take the day off work on January 16, 2012 and join the UK EB team in speaking out against the diet industry at Parliament. Full event details here.

[1] Gina Kolata, Rethinking Thin, New York: Picador, 2007, 188.

[2] Contrast that with the fact that the obesity “crisis” was primarily borne out of four studies. See Paul Campos’ The Obesity Myth, New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004, pages 13-20 for more details.

[3] Linda Bacon, Health at Every Size, Dallas: BenBella Books, Inc., 2008, 138-139.

[4] Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth, New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004, 32-33.

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Scale Back: It’s International No Diet Day!

May 6, 2011 By 15 Comments
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By Sharon Haywood

“I worked out today so I can treat myself to a piece of cake.”

“When I lose these last ten pounds, I’ll go to the beach.”

“Next week I’ll eat more. I’ve got to fit into that dress this weekend.”

“I can’t eat that! It’ll go straight to my hips.”

Sound familiar? Have you put any thought into the actual quantity of time that you spend thinking about your body and/or food? Pay attention. You might surprise yourself at how much brain space is devoted to calculating calories, self-loathing, and deprivation. Have you ever imagined the relief you would feel if you could abandon the quest to obtain the ideal body? If you haven’t, it’s time to liberate yourself from the no-win game of dieting. May 6th is the perfect day to start.

Since 1992, May 6th has been designated International No Diet Day (INDD). This body-loving campaign is associated with combating eating disorders and honoring the people who have suffered because of one. For this day, we can thank Mary Evans Young, a UK feminist, the founder of the British anti-diet movement, Diet Breakers, and author of the best-selling book, Diet Breaking: Having It All Without Having To Diet (Hodder & Stoughton, 1995).  She started INDD after recovering from anorexia, although the day isn’t just about eating disorders. This movement draws attention to the fact that a great many of us suffer from disordered thinking regarding food and our bodies, not just those afflicted with anorexia and bulimia.

INDD is more about not depriving yourself for a 24-hour period. It beckons you to make peace with your body and your relationship with food. And not only for your mental health. Various studies show that yo-yo dieting has been found to be damaging to one’s physical health in conditions such as congestive heart failure, hypertension, and clogged arteries.[1] What’s more is that investigators have evidence that illustrate a significant correlation between thinness and shorter lives.[2]

As you savor in the freedom and pleasure of eating exactly what you please this May 6th, contemplate that every single day could be diet-free. Easier said than done. Chances are, if you diet you’ve been counting calories for a long time. Abandoning the habit isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s a process – one that leads to greater self-acceptance. Start small. If you need some help, choose one of the following actions to start creating a new diet-free reality:

  • If you regularly weigh yourself, cut down how often you do with the goal of getting rid of your scale completely. Celebrate by throwing a scale-smashing party.
  • Stop asking, “Do I look fat in this?” Make the commitment to stop questioning your friends, your lover, and especially yourself for a full week. Then, at the end of that week, commit for another week and then another, until you have deprogrammed that question out of your awareness.
  • Listen to your body. If it asks for a brownie, don’t give it a carrot. You’ll just end up eating a bag of veggies before succumbing to your true craving. If you deprive yourself, you’ll probably eat not just one brownie, but rather, a plateful. Your body knows what it needs. Learn to respect its innate wisdom.
  • Eliminate one diet food from your grocery list. Anything labeled fat-free and light falls into this category. Choose another low-calorie item to phase out of your food choices until your fridge is filled with exactly what your body wants, not products that you think will get you thinner.
  • Do at least one thing that you’ve been postponing until you have lost weight: Buy that new outfit, sign up for dance class, or ask your crush out on a date.

Although May 6th helps raise awareness regarding eating disorders, use it to take a look at your own body and your relationship with it. Take the INDD pledge and spread the word. The more of us that reject the pressure to diet, the less it will be touted as the norm. And that will translate to a happier – and healthier – society.

[1] Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth (New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004, 33.

[2] Crespo et al., “The Relationship of Physical Activity and Body Weight with All-Cause Mortality: Results from the Puerto Rico Heart Health Program,” AEP 12, (2002): 543-52.

Related Content:

Girls and Dieting: Then and Now

How Diets Decrease Your Self-Esteem and Not Your Size!

Three Steps to Transform the National Weight Debate

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Body of Lies: Debunking the BMI

May 4, 2011 By 13 Comments
antique scale

By Ashley-Michelle Papon

It’s that time of year again: swimming pools are opening, students are jogging, and if you’re a mom, you’re probably getting fat. According to a new study released in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, young mothers are more likely to make poor dietary decisions, less likely to exercise, and have a higher Body Mass Index, most commonly known as the BMI.

The United States has a firm history of economically punishing teenage mothers by denying them access to better resources including healthier food. Still, the most troubling pretext of the article has little to do with the gender disparity or economics skewed to keep the poor poor, but the implication that the BMI of young mothers is an indication of just how unhealthy they are.

Though the BMI has long been touted by medical and athletic communities as the greatest tool of measurement to determine someone’s health, stricter academic scrutiny and authentic scientific study is finding that the BMI as a gauge of health is flawed. Contrary to what you have probably heard several times over, the BMI is not an accurate indicator of how “overweight” you are. And it’s certainly not a viable indicator of your health.

In July of 2009, Keith Devlin of the National Public Radio shared with the world 10 reasons why the BMI is bogus. Urging listeners and readers to take the BMI—and their next meal—with a grain of salt, he patiently explained that, at its core, the BMI was a nonsensical, physiologically inaccurate formula created by mathematician Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet in the early 19th century. Quetelet’s method to create a measurement was calculated by dividing one’s weight in kilograms by the square of their height in meters.

Although it may seem scientifically sound at first blush, the methodology creates no distinction between the weight of muscle versus the weight of fat, despite the fact that fat takes up roughly four times the space of muscle. In other words, there can be quite a difference in your weight and size based on your body type. By failing to evaluate the two body features separately, the BMI delivers faulty results that make being classified as overweight a virtual certainty. And though BMI has some level of success with whole groups of people, its use to determine how healthy one adult can be is questionable at best.

But the biggest weakness with BMI would have to be how it attempts to lock people into rigidly defined categories for underweight, ideal, overweight, and obese. The scale, ranging from 1 to 100, becomes overweight at 25 and obese at 30; it is transfixed in such a way to suggest that when individuals reach 25 or above, they’ve crossed into the territory of being unhealthy. This conclusion begs the question of what unhealthy actually looks like. By relying solely on the BMI for the numeric answer to this question, the aesthetics often don’t bear out to compliment the BMI’s ranking.

And although people think they can eye it the way they can parallel parking, a true visual assessment of one’s physique isn’t something that can be winged. In one of her earliest criticisms of the BMI, blogger Kate Harding launched a photo project showcasing woman with their height, weight, BMI, and a commentary about the accuracy of the BMI’s rating. One volunteer, Laurie, 5’0 and 130 pounds, carries a BMI of 25.4 percent. According to the BMI, Laurie is “overweight,” despite being a size 4. For emphasis, Harding showcases several curvier women, warning viewers not to get too attached because the BMI’s validation that they’re unhealthy suggests they will drop dead of heart attacks and diabetes soon.

Harding’s point was drastic, but the photographs of everyday women unable to meet these unrealistic body standards hammer home the damage done by the promotion of outdated rubrics employed to shame our bodies. What was pioneered in the interest of helping advance medicine has become a modern tool of extremely organized bio-power. The cultural and social obsession with weight management for women has always gone hand-in-hand with the desire to render them less powerful. In a very real sense, the physical reduction of their size is a stripping down of their agency. Since Kevin Smith gave up directing movies and became a factivist following his ejection from a Southwest flight for being “too fat,” this schism has widened to keep persons of size from inheriting power, often out of concern for their health.

Except that that brings us back, full circle, to why the BMI is completely bogus. The BMI is billed in a way that if someone has a BMI that places them in the “overweight” range, they are immediately considered unhealthy. Yet new research is finding that heavier people actually have more protection against a number of illnesses and chronic conditions, from kidney failure to infectious diseases and lung issues.

Despite this, it’s not going to stop the diet industry from using the BMI to keep pushing their products. Social attitudes notwithstanding, sources like the International Obesity Task Force and the American Obesity Association are treated as completely legitimate entities when they use the BMI to explain how we, as a society, are doomed because of our size. Despite authoring the majority of the World Health Organization’s obesity reports, both organizations are primarily funded by pharmaceutical and weight loss companies. Is it any wonder that these folks (and others associated with them) have been aggressively campaigning to have obesity classified as a disease? As Paul McAleer over at BigFatFacts concludes, “The ‘obesity epidemic’ is worth billions to the pharmaceutical, diet, weight loss, media, and government agencies fueling it.”

This should leave every person asking themselves: do I want to keep banking my health on a tool designed to tell me my body is flawed so that the companies employing that tool can continue creating a billion-dollar industry?

Related content:

If You’re Fat, Your Paycheck Might Not Be

 

 

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“Shut Up, Skinny Bitches!” Tells Readers To Love Their Bodies—Or Else

March 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment
shut-up-skinny-bitches

 

By Valerie Kusler

“In America, we no longer fear God, or the communists, but we fear fat,” stated David Kritchevsky, a former professor with Philadelphia’s Wistar Institute and long-time advocate of health and nutrition issues. This is just one of many poignant quotations that Dr. Maria Rago and her friend and co-author Greg Archer borrow for their new book, Shut Up, Skinny Bitches! (The Common Sense Guide To Following Your Hunger and Your Heart), first published by NorLightsPress in January 2011. The book – though guilty of sometimes oversimplifying complex body image issues or adopting a forceful tone with its readers – offers important messages about overcoming fear of food, body hatred, and how serving the community can help you “see your body as an instrument, not an ornament.”

Rago, who runs an eating disorder treatment program in Naperville, IL, first got the idea for the book when one of her patients came into her office angrily clutching the bestseller, Skinny Bitch, by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin.  Rago was in disbelief at exactly how far Skinny Bitch had taken the message that happiness requires thinness, at any cost – including shaming and demoralizing readers into feeling that their worth is absolutely dependent on their size.

Although Shut Up is not intended to be a direct response to Skinny Bitch, discovering the book lit a fire in Rago, who enlisted her childhood friend and writer, Greg Archer, to team up and write a manifesto on how to find real happiness by making peace with food and your body. The book drills in the idea that dieting doesn’t work, supporting it with plenty of salient research studies. It also deems society’s obsession with unattainable thinness the “Skinny Bitch Mindset,” or “SBM” – which it notes is a “real form of bullying.”

Well-intentioned as they are, the first couple of chapters may be difficult for some readers to get through. Throughout the book, Rago and Archer seem to trivialize exactly how complex body image and food issues can be, and that even the most educated, self-aware individuals can struggle immensely with these issues, which can be as mentally destructive and difficult to overcome as full-blown eating disorders. Of course, Rago must be acutely aware of this given her profession, but the tone of Shut Up – which aims for “cool” and informal with a side of tough love – sometimes comes across as harsh, punitive, and patronizing in its oversimplification. While the issue is most obvious at the beginning of the book, some cringe-worthy examples of this tone are sprinkled throughout:

“You can either force-feed the SBM – a mindset that only lets you feel good about yourself when you starve and are skinny – or you can open the refrigerator door of life and enjoy the smorgasbord. Do the latter more often, and surprise! You won’t be a bitch.”

“Let’s face it, skinny bitches sit in their popularity castles and try to rule the world by sticking their bony derrieres out there for all mankind to see.”

“Myth: I could always be more beautiful if I was thinner.

Reality: Shut up and go eat something. Every person is beautiful in every size. Yeah, it’s true. We will always be beautiful if we’re loving and grateful in our lives.”

“Yes, the best alternative to dieting is happiness. The best thing you can do is get happy. Now is good. You can start by not bitching. Think about it; how much progress can you make in moving any part of your life forward when you’re constantly harping on yourself and others?”

Nowhere in the book do the authors explain that this punitive tenor, and repeatedly telling the reader to “shut up,” is intended to be tongue in cheek – which is starkly contrasted with statements telling readers how beautiful, awesome, and worthy they are. Additionally, Shut Up does not acknowledge individuals who are naturally thin and may feel hurt by others assuming that they are “bitches,” who surely must constantly diet and hate their bodies. Given how many times the book tells “skinny bitches” to “shut up,” this message begs to be included.

In an interview with the Santa Cruz Sentinel about Shut Up, Archer clarifies, “What we’re doing is we’re saying shut up to a mindset, a belief, a form of bullying, which insists on and pressures us to look a certain way, be a certain way, don’t eat this or that, be something other than what we are … We’re taking a stand for anyone who’s ever been teased or bullied or pressured to look or feel a certain way, especially thin, in order to be happy.” It’s certainly hard to argue with that explanation, but it is one that should be included in the introduction of the book, not just in the minds of the authors.

Beyond these misgivings, the book has a lot to offer for readers who are looking for validation that they don’t need to buy in to the hysteria of the Hollywood ideal. Rago and Archer offer concrete steps to take for re-learning how to listen to your body’s hunger, how to integrate exercise into your life in a healthy way, and the all-too-real dangers of eating disorders when dieting gets out of control. They also don’t neglect to include guys in the equation, devoting a whole chapter to the body image and food challenges men face, especially the stringent physique expectations placed on gay and bisexual men.

Perhaps the most unique and intriguing topic in the book is that of giving back to the community as a method for healing and redirecting your life focus from the thinness obsession to what really matters. As the clinical director of the Eating Disorders Program at Linden Oaks at Edward hospital, Rago created a treatment intervention program called “Real Meals,” in which the patients must shop, prepare, and serve a meal to a group of homeless individuals, and then eat the meal with them. This program was the subject of a 2008 article in O, the Oprah Magazine and penned by Archer himself. The concept behind Real Meals is to show the patients what true hunger looks like, and thus, the real value of food as something that we all need to survive. One participant shared in the O Magazine article,

“Here I was taking food for granted and denying myself, and there was this group of homeless people who needed food and couldn’t get it. Once we were in the actual process of making the meals, it was suddenly like I didn’t have an eating disorder. It became natural just to eat and talk with the others.”

If you can get past the book’s occasionally overpowering informal tone, it offers a serious dose of passion and action steps that can help you reevaluate your approach to food and your body. Just be prepared for a little tough love.

For more information about Rago & Archer’s book, visit their site at  www.ShutUpSkinnyBitches.info

Or connect with them on Twitter at @suskinnybitches

 

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The Truth About Celebrity Weight Loss

March 22, 2011 By 8 Comments
jennifer-hudson-before-after-photos1

By Claire Mysko

In Hollywood, female stars who shed pounds get glamorous photo shoots and breathless “How She Did It!” cover stories. But not all slimmed-down celebrities are falling over themselves to shout their new stats from the rooftops and share their diet and exercise tips with the world. Their reluctance to do so points to the reality that weight loss is not the unequivocal triumph the diet industry would have us believe it is.

Sure, smaller numbers on the scale get validated and celebrated in our thin-obsessed culture. But all the fanfare can be overwhelming. Suddenly, it’s The Weight Loss that takes center stage. The red carpet pictures are everywhere. The new form-fitting outfits become big news. Never mind that the person wearing them has a lot more to offer the world than a thinner body.

Three stars recently opened up about the complexities of losing weight under the spotlight.

Jennifer Hudson

As a spokesperson for Weight Watchers, Hudson is being paid to talk a big game about her smaller size. Yet she didn’t seem entirely comfortable in this role judging by her Oprah appearance last week. She (and her WW leader) tried to avoid the question of exactly how many pounds she had lost, but relented* after Oprah rejected the idea that a fixation on pounds might not be healthiest approach, insisting that she claim her number as a “victory.” Because we’re all waging war with our bodies, naturally.

“You have never looked better in your life, I think…Do you feel like this is the best you’ve ever been in your life?” Oprah asked giddily [emphasis mine]. Whoa, see how that happened? The weight loss quickly got conflated with who Hudson is on some existential level? Let’s keep in mind that this is a woman who experienced a family tragedy just two years ago, when her mother, brother and nephew were murdered. She’s also a new mother. To say that she’s faced some life-altering emotional upheaval in recent years would be quite the understatement. But back to The Weight Loss! Hudson sheepishly answered that yes, she believes this is the best she’s ever been, although it’s not easy getting used to the body changes. She admitted that sometimes she doesn’t recognize herself and feels conflicted about the attention she’s getting.

“I’m like, ‘Don’t look at me—listen to me. I want you to hear me sing because that’s all that ever really mattered to me,’” she said.

*My episode cut to the breaking news of Mubarak’s speech at the precise moment that Hudson was about to cave and reveal how much weight she’s lost, so I missed the big moment. Nothing like a history-making revolution to put the diet talk in perspective.

Raven Symone

The expectation that any star who loses weight must be just bursting with more confidence than ever before also ignores the fact that said star might have been feeling just fine about herself all along, thank you very much. Raven Symone has been on top of her game since she was a wee little one stealing laughs on The Cosby Show. She went on to star in her own mega-hit show, That’s So Raven!

Symone has built a hugely successful career on her talent, so she’s not thrilled that everyone’s focus has now shifted to her size. The gushing praise of her new look stings like a backhanded compliment. She has never lacked confidence in her appearance. However, it’s clear to her now that others obviously had issues with her weight.

“I thought I looked fabulous before and nobody else did,” she told People magazine. “So, whatever… Actually, now I wear bigger clothes because I don’t like the way people stare at me,” she says. “I liked it before. Now, you’re just looking at me for the wrong reasons. Before, you were actually looking at me for a real reason.”

Crystal Renn

Model Crystal Renn has a different kind of problem. Her recent weight loss has actually sparked some pretty harsh criticism. Renn made a name for herself as the leading plus-size models in America (she used the term “plus-size” to describe herself in the bio included in her book, Hungry: A Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves), but it’s pretty hard to find her curves these days.

She first signed with a modeling agency at the age of sixteen and developed anorexia and exercise bulimia with the words of a modeling scout echoing in her head: You could be a supermodel. But you’ll have to lose a little weight. Her disordered eating went on for years, she writes in Hungry: 

“Until one day I realized that if I wanted to live, I could no longer starve. I had to get off the crazy-making treadmill. I had to nourish my body and feed my soul. So I ate and ate. And I returned to my natural size 12—the size of the average American and the size I was when I really made it big.”

Now that she’s considerably slimmer than a size 12, Renn is rejecting categorization altogether. In an interview posted on the Ford Models website, she details her frustration with people’s need to have her conform to the image they want her to be.

“I feel pressure from, more than anyplace…the public, and the media. I think by placing a title on my head, which is “plus size,” and then the picture that these people have created in their mind about what plus size actually is, I basically fail you. I couldn’t possibly live up to that.”

Of course Renn is not likely to admit to feeling any industry pressure in a video produced and distributed by the modeling agency that cuts her checks, but the fact remains that speculating about the motivations for her weight loss won’t get us very far. At the end of the day, Renn is the only one who can shed light on that question. And as she correctly points out, it’s impossible to get the full picture of her physical and emotional health just by sizing her up.

Body changes of any kind can bring up complicated feelings. When what we see in the mirror looks different than it did before (even if those changes move us closer to some “ideal”), accepting a new reflection requires some work–the kind of work that can take a minute. And that just does not compute with the glossy media formula: thinness = instant happiness, no strings attached.

* * *

Claire Mysko is the author of You’re Amazing! A No-Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self and the co-author of Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat? The Essential Guide to Loving Your Body Before and After Baby.

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Carrie Fisher Joins the Ongoing Star War Against Fat

March 3, 2011 By 5 Comments
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By Ashley-Michelle Papon

Carrie Fisher, the woman who launched a thousand nerd fandoms as heroine Princess Leia from “Star Wars,” has recently joined the ranks of Kirstie Alley and Valerie Bertinelli in pimping out subscription diet plans. As the newest face of Jenny Craig, Fisher discusses the pain associated with being fat.

“The world is a hostile place for a fat person,” she states in her 66-second promo. “There is a very thin person in here, trying to get out.”

She then tells viewers that losing weight alone is difficult to do, making her Jenny Craig consultant essential to losing weight. She signs off by reminding the world that size reflects how one feels, and admitting she didn’t realize she “felt this bad” in gesturing towards her ample body size.

As her commercial asks in the opening fragment, what happened to Carrie Fisher? Better yet, what’s happened in Hollywood that hawking diet products seems to be the only way for female entertainers to revive careers stalled by their entrance into middle age?

When Cheers actress Kirstie Alley first became the spokesperson for Jenny Craig in 2004, it was after several years of speculation that her career was over. Long considered one of Hollywood’s “sexpots,” the then-53-year-old’s star had dimmed as her weight increased. During her three-year run with the company, Alley slimmed down to 145 pounds and also starred in a semi-scripted reality TV show called Fat Actress. Even after Alley and Jenny Craig parted ways in 2007, Alley continued cashing paychecks on the back of her diet struggle.

Celebrities endorsing fad diets and prescriptions is nothing new, and has become a prosperous venture for the young Hollywood elite such as Jennifer Hudson and the Kardashian sisters. But for those cut from the same time period as Alley, pitching diet plans and services seems to be illustrating a way to resurrect a stalled or even dead career. When former sweetheart Marie Osmond signed on to endorse Nutrisystem, it wasn’t long before she was courted by Dancing with the Stars. Valerie Bertinelli had a similar revival after she became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig and then landed her first recurring role in almost a decade with TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland.

Although it may seem like progress to see so many older actresses receiving paying gigs, but in reality, the success of these comeback queens is a double-edged sword. The message? You can be successful as a middle-aged actress, but only if you treat a few extra pounds like a serious addiction and wage a very public battle with the bulge.

The end result? Millions of women being told, on a daily basis that they are incapable of managing their weight on their own—the question of why they need to manage their weight is never posed—and are in need of guidance. If celebrities, with all of their access to personal trainers and/or equipment, opt for the every woman program of food modification and points calculation, it becomes easy for viewers to see the commercials as a guiding light.

Yet most of the public is unaware of just how involved the celebrity spokesperson actually is with the companies they’re promoting. Much like Rosie O’Donnell criticized Star Jones for failing to attribute her weight loss to gastric bypass surgery, there’s a reason commercials for weight management programs like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers have to carry a disclaimer that the impressive results showcased on television are “not typical.” Many of the testimonials don’t reveal how much weight that particular star lost, instead explaining the system, formula, or in some cases, advertised discount for the service.

The reason for the deception is patently obvious. If dieting worked, and worked as well as companies would like people to believe, you would only have to do it once. As Susie Orbach explains in her book Bodies, an exploration of the Western obsession with being thin, companies peddling diet solutions rely on customers failing the unrealistic standards of maintenance contained in the requirements.

“Diet companies rely on a 95 per cent recidivism rate: a figure that should be etched into every dieter’s consciousness,” she writes. “One wonders what forces prevent prosecution under the Trade Descriptions Act. Diet companies require return customers who will come back again and again to buy their products and services. Their profitability depends upon failure and their programmes ensure that failure happens.”

Orbach highlights a troubling prospect, that diet companies put programs into place that they know will ultimately spell failure for the participants. This might be considered a byproduct of opting to join such a program, except that society has a deeply ingrained prejudice against people of size. This time last year, director Kevin Smith was famously ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight because he refused to buy two tickets under their “Persons of Size.” It was a stark reminder that in most states, people of size have no protection from discrimination. Add in the painful reality that employers can impose weight restrictions and insurance companies have the option to carve out benefits based on size, and it’s incredible that there are still Americans who haven’t tried the snake oil of managed weight loss.

The issue becomes particularly thorny for women, who have the added sexism to compete with while confronting backwards body assumptions. In April of 2009,  Michigan State University released the results of a study that found that plus-sized women were more likely to be fired than thin women, men of size were more likely to be promoted.

It’s worth noting that while Jason Alexander’s use of Jenny Craig is the worst-kept secret in Hollywood, the former Seinfeld sidekick has yet to shoot his own commercial endorsement of the company. Simply put, it’s unlikely the man who originated George Costanza could be as motivating as Fisher, whose career largely sprang from her ability to cover a barely-there gold bikini in “Star Wars.” And it’s that angle companies like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers count on. In this respect, stars are encouraging the cultural war being fought against persons of size to essentially be lost.

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Jennifer Jonassen: A Sizeless Star

Lagerfeld Sets Aside Fat Phobia for Renn

Weight Stigma: Breaking it Down with Advocate and Activist Marilyn Wann

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Newest Diet Fad Offers False Positive

January 31, 2011 By 3 Comments
800px-Pregnant_belly_button

800px-Pregnant_belly_buttonBy Ashley-Michelle Papon

As I prepare to celebrate my daughter’s fourth month of life, it only takes a quick glance at my stomach to wish I could burn through the baby weight. My complaint isn’t unusual; after all, losing weight has become America’s pastime. According to the Aug. 12, 2010 edition of PR Newswire, most Americans would rather give up sex than gain weight, and even more would sacrifice their iPhones and laptops for a toner tummy. Interestingly enough, as my hormones work to stabilize themselves out postpartum, pregnancy may actually be the secret weapon to winning the battle of the bulge once and for all.

Advocates are now raving that the key to weight loss success is “hCG.” Short for human chorionic gonadotropin, they insist that the concentrated form of the hormone helps kick-start the metabolism, encouraging pounds to fall off. During pregnancy, hCG commands the hypothalamus to mobilize fat stores, bringing nutrients to the placenta to help facilitate the growth of the fetus. Practitioners of hCG tell dieters that the hormone is essential in burning through fat cells in order to achieve substantial weight loss, and encourage the purchase of the hormone in bulk. Folks are even given a choice between injecting themselves or spraying a mist under their tongue. And there certainly isn’t an absence of people willing to share their amazing stories of losing large quantities of weight by using the hormone as directed, and closely subscribing to the food plan.

That’s right—food plan. In order for hCG to be effective, dieters have to follow a strict, well, diet. Flipping through the books published in tandem with the promotional materials of hCG, dieters are treated to the outlining of recipes with mouthwatering names for entrees such as “Orange Asian Chicken,” “Tasty Cajun Chicken,” and even desserts like “Chocolate Strawberry Shake.”

Bolstered by testimonials claiming an average weight loss of between 25 and 50 pounds in as many days, at first blush, hCG seems to be the answer to weight loss for the busy American. Two adages of common sense meet here: beauty is only skin deep, and if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. That certainly appears to be the case with hCG.

Consider the claim of hCG as a homeopathic alternative to modern methods of weight loss. As identified above, hCG is a hormone. It’s present in both men and women, but the increased presence of hCG is generally what tips off pregnancy tests that a woman has conceived. The hormones are being billed as authentic on just about every online hCG retailer. Rest assured, most probably are, because the hormone is ridiculously easy to harvest. All you need is a few dozen pregnant women willing to give you their urine.

Think about that for a minute. The way to lose weight apparently rests inside the bladders of pregnant women.

This isn’t a part of the diet that is particularly publicized, obviously. Most retailers sell hCG in powder form, requiring dieters to mix it with other solutions to create the appropriate administration of hCG. Attempting to get any seller to acknowledge the role of urine in their product is nearly impossible, or will invite some hat trick to avoid actually addressing the topic. In an entry dated July 19, 2010, the author of the HCGDiet 411 blog writes, “It’s not pee! Well not entirely anyways. Yes, it’s true, the hCG Hormone is extracted from the urine of pregnant women.” That’s a roundabout way of acknowledging users are consuming urine, regardless of how diluted.

In addition to some dishonest branding, hCG presents a far more troubling, if ironic, possibility in the ever-changing landscape of thinspiration. Pregnant women are reminded daily that their figure is beautiful for the brief time they’re carrying their children to term. Yet there is an incredible disconnect immediately following the birthing process, when magazines, TV shows, and even fashion designers focus on burning the baby weight and fast. For pregnant women to now present the solution to weight loss success will not signal a cultural shift for society to be any less offended by their post-birth bulging bellies, ballooning backsides, or blossoming breasts. Postpartum women will once again have their bodies stripped of relevancy.

The most problematic aspect of the hCG craze, however, is that hCG may be unfairly receiving credit for work that, frankly, it isn’t doing. The diet plan discussed above? As yummy as those recipes sound, they’re incredibly low in calories. In fact, participants of the hCG diet can only eat 500 calories a day, which is just a shade above starvation. Many critics of the hCG diet assert that the hCG itself is irrelevant to the diet, and the starvation element of hCG may be responsible for the weight loss. Oh, and all of the fun side effects that go with it, including hair loss, inability to concentrate, and irritability. Since 1975, the Food and Drug Administration has required hCG supplies to be labeled with a disclaimer informing citizens that hCG hasn’t been conclusively linked to weight loss.

Although it goes without saying that diet fads have taken Americans to some pretty low places, it’s hard to imagine what could top injecting urine in the endless quest for an unrealistic body. The idea that we could love women for who they are rather than for what they produce, particularly when it comes to pregnancy and body size, is a radical proposition under the current cultural attitude of beauty. And the hCG diet is a neat way to package up our ambivalent relationship with pregnant and postpartum women, regardless of how ineffective.

Coming of age in a society where people would rather starve themselves than carry curves, I’m all too familiar with the pressures to achieve a body I’m simply not meant to have. Those pressures didn’t let up just because I was pregnant; they were just couched with new terms designed to deliver the same anti-woman, body-hating rhetoric that hCG likewise capitalizes on to goad folks into losing weight. It’s interesting how we can encourage people to lose weight through methods like ingesting diluted urine from pregnant women but not embrace their post-pregnancy shape.

My challenge to society is simple: if you’re taking urine in your quest for weight loss, you should respect the bodies that urine is coming from. I can’t say that I’ve ever donated mine to any facility looking to harvest hCG but my postpartum body is still worthy of respect and acceptance.

Related Content:

The Skinny on Pregnancy Weight Gain

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EDNOS: The Eating Disorder You Haven’t Heard Of

December 7, 2010 By 11 Comments
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pills-and-measuring-tapeBy Michelle Cantrell of VenusVision.com

When I received the diagnosis of Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) two years ago, I had mixed reactions. On the one hand, the label didn’t seem to fit. Me? With an eating disorder? I wasn’t underweight, and in fact was technically on the edge of being “overweight.” I had intentionally thrown up from time to time, but certainly was not bulimic. I had tried starving myself periodically in an attempt to get my weight under control, but I definitely wasn’t anorexic. At the most I considered myself a chronic dieter, or someone who at times could be a little obsessed with healthy eating and exercise. I could agree that my eating was very disordered but to identify myself as someone with an eating disorder made me squirm in my seat a bit. (For more on the differences between disorders and disordered eating, read Disordered Eating or Eating Disorder?).

On the other hand, after hearing my therapist tell me I had an eating disorder, I felt relief. After all, I was there to get help, and if I could label my problem, perhaps the solution would come more easily. I was ready to silence the voice in my head that made me obsess over my body and food 24 hours, a day 7 days a week, and if giving that voice the name ED (for Eating Disorder) would help, I was willing to accept it.

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week is February 20-26 in 2011, which is a good opportunity to bring attention to this lesser known sibling of anorexia and bulimia. Everyone knows about anorexia and bulimia, but EDNOS, which has only recently begun to receive recognition in the mental health community can be as equally dangerous and life consuming as its better known counterparts.

So what does eating disorder not otherwise specified mean? Well, the short answer is a “category [of] disorders of eating that do not meet the criteria of a specific eating disorder,” according to the most recently updated version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Ultimately, the definition is more anecdotal, which explains why it is often harder to identify; however, according to the publication Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, 50% of individuals who present for eating disorder treatment receive the diagnosis of EDNOS, which affects 4 to 6% of the general population.[1]

Although many of the criteria for EDNOS may closely mimic anorexia or bulimia, some behaviors are less obvious, and in fact, within our diet- and body-obsessed culture, can appear perfectly normal. What may look to an outsider as just another diet involving close monitoring of caloric intake and exercise may in fact become — if not already — an unhealthy and unnatural way to control weight based on an intense drive to be thin combined with an unrealistic body image. On the flip side, EDNOS also includes the sub-category of Binge Eating Disorder (BED), which is often overlooked as a simple lack of willpower. Regardless of where a patient lies in the spectrum of EDNOS, it is important to realize that the emotional trauma suffered as a result of the disorder is equal to that of anorexia and bulimia, and should not be seen as anything less than a serious illness.

The introduction of EDNOS as an accepted diagnosis “gives a voice to sufferers who don’t fit into the narrow diagnostic categories of anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder” said Shannon Cutts, author of ANA: How to Outsmart Your Eating Disorder and Take Your Life Back, and founder of Mentor Connect, a community of people in recovery from eating and related disorders.

Cutts, who herself suffered from anorexia, bulimia, and EDNOS feels grateful for the recognition of EDNOS, and encourages sufferers to seek help:

“If you know that your symptoms, thoughts, and behaviors are affecting your quality of life, then you both need and deserve help. Use your voice and ask for help. Do not assume you are the only one who ‘doesn’t fit’ into a category and therefore you don’t deserve help. There are many people who suffer from EDNOS and you help not just yourself but everyone who suffers from it when you demand the care you deserve. Search out a medical professional who is familiar with eating disorders rather than struggling to educate an unsympathetic doctor or therapist. Be your own health care advocate. You know better than anyone else when you are struggling and need help. Eating disorders kill, and just because your symptoms don’t fall into the three most commonly-recognized categories does not mean they are not equally deadly.”

The health complications that arise from eating disorders are extensive, and include low blood pressure, slower heart rate, a decrease in bone density, a disruption in hormones that sometimes leads to infertility, and more. Even more alarming is the fact that eating disorders have the highest rate of death among any mental disorder — just one episode of bingeing and purging can cause an electrolyte imbalance that may lead to sudden death. That is why it is so important to recognize that eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes and present themselves in a variety of ways.

Is there treatment for EDNOS? Though whole rehabilitation centers have risen to address the problems specific to anorexia, bulimia, and even BED, there is help for other non-specified eating disorders. The effort to overcome any eating disorder is extensive and should not be downplayed. Most of the times, the help of a mental health professional is necessary, and the journey through recovery is never quick and painless. But when you consider the alternative of living a life plagued by self loathing, fear of food, and serious health risks, the effort is one that must be undertaken to break free and live a full and happy life.

As for my own journey, to be honest, it’s an ongoing process. Sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back. But as Jenni Schaefer, author of Life Without Ed and Goodbye Ed, Hello Me likes to say, “fall down seven times, stand up eight.”

Michelle owns and operates VenusVision.com, which encourages women to be the best they can be. She has written for US Airways and I Am Modern magazines. Michelle is working on her first novel, which follows the yo-yo dieting and mommy adventures of a suburban housewife. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband, two daughters, a Lab, and a ball python. When not writing or enjoying family time, she enjoys travel, good food, and wine.

Additional Resources:

Remuda Ranch

The Renfrew Center

EatingDisordersOnline.com

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Discrimination and EDNOS: One Woman’s Story

Expressing Disorder: Art Therapies for Eating Disorder Treatment

Celebrating Eating Disorder Recovery: Inaugural NEDA Walk in Texas

Study: Black Girls 50% More Likely to be Bulimic than Whites

Multicultural Women & Body Image

You Don’t Have to Have an Eating Disorder to be Image Obsessed

[1] Cited from the web site Disordered Eating.

 

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The Skinny on Pregnancy Weight Gain

December 3, 2010 By 1 Comment
Photo by Paulus Rusyanto
Photo by Paulus Rusyanto

Photo by Paulus Rusyanto

By Julie M. Green

As soon as you fall pregnant, suddenly everyone is an expert extolling advice, whether you want it or not. Whole bookstore shelves are jam packed with “manuals” telling you what to do and what not to do when you’re expecting.  One such “commandment” recommends a 25-35lbs weight gain during pregnancy, regardless of your starting weight and general body shape. Unfortunately, like most one-size-fits-all guides, this approach fails to consider the individual woman. And even more unfortunately, it encourages pregnant women to obsess about the numbers on the scale at a time when they should be focusing on being healthy and happy.

As someone who has always had something of an issue with weight, I knew pregnancy was going to pose a challenge for me. In fact, most of the teasing I endured in the playground stayed there; it was my own family who carried the torch, relentlessly commenting on how fat this or that person was, and quietly monitoring everything that did — or didn’t — cross my lips. A stark reminder that you can pick your friends, but not your family. Although I never had an eating disorder per se, I came perilously close one summer, close enough to scare myself back into eating well.

However, just when I thought I’d put those demons to rest, and mortised the cellar door, back they came the minute I fell pregnant. Even the most innocuous maternity fashion depicts a six-foot-something model with twigs for arms, bean sprouts for legs, and the most infinitesimal bump (more kumquat than watermelon). Far from being in proportion, she hasn’t gained an ounce of flab elsewhere on her body the way real-life pregnant women do. In short, she looks as alien as the average catwalk model does in correlation to the average non-pregnant woman. Fortunately I take this media ploy for what it is, savvy and grateful that I am no longer quite so impressionable. But insecurities die hard. Having my mother recently delight at the width of my rear end, and repeatedly remind me to make sure the midwife checks on my weight, well, I snapped.

The truth of the matter is, my midwife has never taken any interest whatsoever in my weight gain. In fact, not once has she made me set foot on a scale. Rightly so, I think, provided she has no bona fide medical cause for concern. As long as I am eating healthily, and not consuming an excessive amount of Häagen Dazs, as long as I feel well (or, as well as a woman in her final trimester can), let the scale gather dust! My aunt gained a whopping 80lbs with each of her pregnancies, and then lost the weight. Not that I’m advocating an all-out binge fest, but surely pregnancy is the one time we as women can, and should relax in our (stretching) skin.

For the first time in my life, ironically, I love my shape and feel confident enough to parade around in a bikini. I believe my husband when he tells me I look beautiful, because I really do feel beautiful. The female form is amazingly resilient. Through the transformative powers of pregnancy, I am developing a new found respect and admiration for my body – even the extra 50lbs of it.  My eyes no longer appraise it as harshly as they once did. With any luck, some of that esteem will linger into the years beyond my child’s birth, when no doubt I’ll have more important things to worry about, like loving my son …

You can connect with the author of this piece her blog and on Twitter

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Newest Diet Fad Offers False Positive

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