Learning to Eat
In my former blog I used to get myself into a lot of trouble speaking out against various tenets of Fat Acceptance. Yeah well.
Of course I can agree with the idea that a person's physical traits should not define their value as a human being. There's pretty much no defensible argument against that concept. I was quite overweight for all my life and I certainly did not want anyone applying stereotypes and making unfair judgments about me because of it.
But some people try to wrap up this basic concept in a whole bunch of other ideas they feel support and reinforce it and are consistent with it. Like this well-known blogger whom I think is off the scale in her fundamentalist, hardline perspective. Oh you bet I have my issues with this HAES stuff.
What is it? "Health At Every Size." And yes some folks do mean EVERY size. I consider the tenets of HAES to be so totally subjective that I don't see how they make any kind of reasonable statement at all. I'd say a paraphrase of the Pro-Choice slogan is more appropriate to make the point I think the HAESers are after:
KEEP YOUR UNATTAINABLE BEAUTY STANDARDS AND OPINIONS OFF MY BODY
I was thinking about my post of the other day about how I archived memories of experiences to deal with food situations as they arise. One of the tenets of HAES is this statement which I find profoundly contradictory and ironic given the context and presumed intention:
Normalized Eating: Support for discarding externally-imposed rules and regimens for eating and attaining a more peaceful relationship with food by relearning to eat in response to physiological hunger and fullness cues.
You can only have a "peaceful" relationship with food if you "relearn" how to eat only when hungry and stop eating when you're full? THIS IS THE ENTIRE ISSUE OF DIET COMPLIANCE!! Hardly anyone actually does that with complete compliance. ANYONE.
I recently read a post by the blogger referenced above about how she believes you should feel free to respond to your hunger signals by eating. She is over 300lbs and 5'2". I'm sure she eats whenever she thinks she's hungry! I believe she ignores two important concepts:
1. She assumes that dieting to lose weight always means ignoring your real hunger and therefore denying your body something it needs. A correct diet should meet your nutritional and energy needs. When we talk about the pain and discomfort and denial of "dieting" we really are talking about denying ourselves from responding to other needs by eating from psychological hunger. Those of us who have gotten very educated about weight loss regimens know that allowing our bodies to reach a certain level of hunger regularly is counter-productive and triggers the body's famine defensive responses to reduce metabolism, preserve bodyfat, and raise calorie-use efficiency. We don't want to be hungry, dang it!!!
2. She assumes that all hunger signals are legitimate and necessary biological requests by the body for food. With respect to the tenet of HAES, she's assuming that people can and will eat when they're hungry in some natural way. But we don't really do that! It's probably safe to say that failure to recognize psychological hunger cues is the primary cause of obesity!!!
It has helped me greatly to do some research into understanding hunger cues so that I can understand and deal with my own. Give this some thought and I'm sure it will make sense to you:
Physical hunger builds up gradually starting with a little internal grumble and growing into hunger pangs. Psychological hunger usually comes on suddenly.
Physical hunger can wait if you have to. Psychological hunger seems to demand your attention and causes distraction.
Physical hunger appears a reasonable time after you've last eaten. Psychological hunger can happen at any time.
Physical hunger is usually a general desire for food and will precede the desire for something specific. Psychological hunger is often a powerful fixation on a specific food.
After eating, physical hunger goes away. Psychological hunger is not always completely quelled by the desired food. The root need may still feel "nagging."
You are more likely to eat to a comfortable fullness when responding to physical hunger. Psychological hunger often results in overeating, even to the point of inducing physical discomfort.
Eating for physical hunger brings a feeling of satisfaction (assume eating to a comfortable fullness and not overeating). After eating for psychological hunger, you usually feel guilt and regret.
Do you see your own behaviors here? Everyone deals with this!! If this were so simple to "re-learn" no one would struggle with obesity or ANY food issues! One of the most powerful tools you can take into your arsenal is to simply learn to STOP and reflect even for a moment on WHY you want to eat something. As I mentioned in an earlier post, ask yourself "Am I hungry right now?" How often will you find yourself saying NO! Stop and try to assess what you are really feeling at the moment you believe you are dealing with psychological hunger. Which points out the REAL advantage of learning to identify psychological hunger cues: You can address THE CAUSES. Which you may find are issues in your life that need to be resolved with something other than a brownie!
No matter what happens, even if you give in and find yourself feeling regret, guilt and anger later, remember that incident and learn from it. You can learn from a mistake just as well as you can from a success. And over time perhaps you will be able to make your successes outnumber your mistakes!
Take this step and you will begin to find the power that is in you!! You may make significant discoveries about yourself! Be kind to yourself and seek out guidance if those discoveries reveal an issue that distresses you. Give yourself time and be patient. Forgive yourself for your mistakes by learning from them and reducing their frequency the best you can. This is very, very difficult but it is NOT impossible and it can help you grow in very positive ways.
As always, I wish you STRENGTH!
Of course I can agree with the idea that a person's physical traits should not define their value as a human being. There's pretty much no defensible argument against that concept. I was quite overweight for all my life and I certainly did not want anyone applying stereotypes and making unfair judgments about me because of it.
But some people try to wrap up this basic concept in a whole bunch of other ideas they feel support and reinforce it and are consistent with it. Like this well-known blogger whom I think is off the scale in her fundamentalist, hardline perspective. Oh you bet I have my issues with this HAES stuff.
What is it? "Health At Every Size." And yes some folks do mean EVERY size. I consider the tenets of HAES to be so totally subjective that I don't see how they make any kind of reasonable statement at all. I'd say a paraphrase of the Pro-Choice slogan is more appropriate to make the point I think the HAESers are after:
KEEP YOUR UNATTAINABLE BEAUTY STANDARDS AND OPINIONS OFF MY BODY
I was thinking about my post of the other day about how I archived memories of experiences to deal with food situations as they arise. One of the tenets of HAES is this statement which I find profoundly contradictory and ironic given the context and presumed intention:
Normalized Eating: Support for discarding externally-imposed rules and regimens for eating and attaining a more peaceful relationship with food by relearning to eat in response to physiological hunger and fullness cues.
You can only have a "peaceful" relationship with food if you "relearn" how to eat only when hungry and stop eating when you're full? THIS IS THE ENTIRE ISSUE OF DIET COMPLIANCE!! Hardly anyone actually does that with complete compliance. ANYONE.
I recently read a post by the blogger referenced above about how she believes you should feel free to respond to your hunger signals by eating. She is over 300lbs and 5'2". I'm sure she eats whenever she thinks she's hungry! I believe she ignores two important concepts:
1. She assumes that dieting to lose weight always means ignoring your real hunger and therefore denying your body something it needs. A correct diet should meet your nutritional and energy needs. When we talk about the pain and discomfort and denial of "dieting" we really are talking about denying ourselves from responding to other needs by eating from psychological hunger. Those of us who have gotten very educated about weight loss regimens know that allowing our bodies to reach a certain level of hunger regularly is counter-productive and triggers the body's famine defensive responses to reduce metabolism, preserve bodyfat, and raise calorie-use efficiency. We don't want to be hungry, dang it!!!
2. She assumes that all hunger signals are legitimate and necessary biological requests by the body for food. With respect to the tenet of HAES, she's assuming that people can and will eat when they're hungry in some natural way. But we don't really do that! It's probably safe to say that failure to recognize psychological hunger cues is the primary cause of obesity!!!
It has helped me greatly to do some research into understanding hunger cues so that I can understand and deal with my own. Give this some thought and I'm sure it will make sense to you:
Physical hunger builds up gradually starting with a little internal grumble and growing into hunger pangs. Psychological hunger usually comes on suddenly.
Physical hunger can wait if you have to. Psychological hunger seems to demand your attention and causes distraction.
Physical hunger appears a reasonable time after you've last eaten. Psychological hunger can happen at any time.
Physical hunger is usually a general desire for food and will precede the desire for something specific. Psychological hunger is often a powerful fixation on a specific food.
After eating, physical hunger goes away. Psychological hunger is not always completely quelled by the desired food. The root need may still feel "nagging."
You are more likely to eat to a comfortable fullness when responding to physical hunger. Psychological hunger often results in overeating, even to the point of inducing physical discomfort.
Eating for physical hunger brings a feeling of satisfaction (assume eating to a comfortable fullness and not overeating). After eating for psychological hunger, you usually feel guilt and regret.
Do you see your own behaviors here? Everyone deals with this!! If this were so simple to "re-learn" no one would struggle with obesity or ANY food issues! One of the most powerful tools you can take into your arsenal is to simply learn to STOP and reflect even for a moment on WHY you want to eat something. As I mentioned in an earlier post, ask yourself "Am I hungry right now?" How often will you find yourself saying NO! Stop and try to assess what you are really feeling at the moment you believe you are dealing with psychological hunger. Which points out the REAL advantage of learning to identify psychological hunger cues: You can address THE CAUSES. Which you may find are issues in your life that need to be resolved with something other than a brownie!
No matter what happens, even if you give in and find yourself feeling regret, guilt and anger later, remember that incident and learn from it. You can learn from a mistake just as well as you can from a success. And over time perhaps you will be able to make your successes outnumber your mistakes!
Take this step and you will begin to find the power that is in you!! You may make significant discoveries about yourself! Be kind to yourself and seek out guidance if those discoveries reveal an issue that distresses you. Give yourself time and be patient. Forgive yourself for your mistakes by learning from them and reducing their frequency the best you can. This is very, very difficult but it is NOT impossible and it can help you grow in very positive ways.
As always, I wish you STRENGTH!
posted by Dagny at
6:12 AM
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