Chocolate for fat people?!

Since I’ve last posted, I’ve had a troubling, food related conflict. Can I dump on you, dear readers? Can I model what I suggest you should do—to express yourselves and reach out for support?

Colleague conflict

I love good chocolate. So it follows that at holiday time I’d want to share the joy as holiday gifts to some providers that refer to my practice. (Remember, this dietitian has a cupcake as the mainpage image on her website. What harm in that, I thought?

Yet in sharing my intentions with a nutritionist colleague, I heard a very different perspective. Namely, that many office employees are trying to lose weight—so chocolates are the last thing they need. Those who are obese hardly need the box of chocolate sitting around the office. And since many are so anti-sugar these days, giving chocolates is simply a bad idea.

Once I moved from my totally speechless state (a rarity with me), I tried to be open-minded. Is it diet sabotage to give a box of chocolates to be eaten in an office with many employees—i.e. with little opportunity to squirrel them away, in the season of New Year’s weight loss goals? Was I sending the wrong message as a promoter of health, that chocolate—ok, they weren’t even exclusively heart-healthy 70% cacao-dark chocolates but simply great tasting Belgian chocolates—are an acceptable snack?

Further, can those of high BMIs be given chocolate (or cakes/cookies/highly-palatable foods)? Are they entitled to enjoy the pleasure of great tasting desserts? Should anyone, regardless of their size or percent body fat be given chocolates as gifts? I mean, should we even be allowed to eat foods we truly enjoy?

Must we live an ascetic life of food deprivation and denial—whether for short-term weight change or for life? Is that a healthy lifestyle? Are we doomed to live secret lives—the model kale-salad-protein-smoothie-ingester in public and guilt-laden, binge eater by night or by car ride?

Still on the fence?

Perhaps Jamie’s Christmas surprise will do the trick. This patient’s sorrow and shame was revisited in my office post holiday, as she described her Christmas disappointment. Her three siblings dug into their chocolate-filled stockings, while she rummaged through hers. Only hers was filled not with her favorite candies but with plastic items.  No chocolate indulgence for this overweight young woman. A helpful, healthy holiday message? I don’t think so. A supportive gesture? Hardly.

Let us not for a moment believe that we are not entitled to enjoy life’s simple food pleasures. Yes, you. Yes, regardless of your size.

For me, the conflict’s resolved.

And for you?

Avoidance isn't the answer. It's time to bear hunt.

Recovery is a tricky thing. You may be making progress with your eating—whether you are working to overcome binge eating, anorexia or bulimia—but may be fooled into believing that you’ve truly normalized  your relationship with food. It may feel like you’ve largely recovered; you’ve started to include ice cream (but only when you’re out, never keeping it in the house). And your binge frequency is close to zero. And surely you who’ve been restricting deserve credit for eating more than you used to—at least of the foods you deem good for you.

But consider this:

No, avoidance isn't the answer.

• Is it really recovery when the only way you feel in control is to fill your days with so much activity (no, not even physical activity) that you don't get to sit with your feelings? You work long hours waitressing, take on extra shifts or extend your work hours only to avoid being with yourself. You struggle to allow yourself to feel hungry—fearing you're not trustworthy to respond correctly. You equally fear fullness, that satisfying feeling of truly getting enough. Would you allow your best friend to carry on this way?

• Is it really recovery when you stop binging, only to restrict your food intake? You stick around family or friends because you know you'd never binge in their presence, but you also struggle to eat enough when they're around—and even when they’re not. If your child see-sawed between binge eating and restricting her food intake, would you say “that's just fine”?

It doesn't have to be so scary.

• Is it truly changing your relationship with food when your solution for managing chocolate cake—or your favorite flavor ice cream or bread or peanut butter—is to simply never have it around? You forbid yourself access—just for now, until you meet your weight goal, or maybe believing you’ll resist these for the rest of your life. Would you suggest this to your parent, or would you hope that life could be much better for them?

• Are you really recovering when the only way to nourish yourself (yes, I know some of you struggle with this loaded expression which implies self care in its fullest sense) is by keeping everything the same, limiting your food choices to just a few "safe" foods? Or, by weighing and measuring all of your food? No, not just for now, but forever? What would you say to your partner if he or she kept to the same restricted allowance, an even number of items to be comfortably ritually consumed, day after day after day?

Time to start living again.

• How normal is your eating if you rely on counting your calories, or your points a la weight watchers? Or if you can't release yourself from exercising when your intake exceeds your ideal or your self-prescribed amount?

Can you truly recover? Absolutely!

Full recovery requires feeling—not avoidance of hunger and fullness. Detaching yourself from these physical sensations, like avoidance of all feelings—sadness, disappointment, fear, hopelessness—only prolongs your suffering (while admittedly for a moment it seems like the only way to get through). Avoiding feeling by numbing out with your eating or your not eating, serves a purpose. But let’s not forget that you lose out on life’s positive emotions and experiences, too.

It requires “Going on a bear hunt” so to speak—a reference to Rosen and Oxenbury’s children’s book I loved to read when my kids were very young.

"We're going to catch a big one. / What a beautiful day! / We're not scared. / Oh-oh! Grass! / Long, wavy grass. / We can't go over it. / We can't go under it. / Oh, no! / We've got to go through it!" The family skids down a grassy slope, swishes across a river, sludges through mud and, of course, finally sees the bear…”

It takes trudging through all the uncomfortable challenges—with support, of course—in order to get past your fears. Like the very young kids, you might (at first) run away when you face the bear. But with some work (perhaps there needs to be a part 2 to this classic), you’ll be embracing it and feeling all the better for it.

There’s more to life than yearning for foods you enjoy yet avoid, or regretting the little you did eat. Or struggling after a binge—an inevitable consequence of days, weeks or a lifetime of rigid diet rules, of avoiding eating enough.

You deserve better. Really you do.  I don’t mean to minimize any progress you’ve made. I simply want to urge caution to be on guard for those sneaky eating disordered thoughts and actions. So please consider reaching out to take the next step to push through—to change your thoughts, your feelings and your eating. Push through the tall grasses and the mud. And conquer the bear.

Oh, and please share your thoughts with us!

Thanks.

The 'Life’s Too Short' Diet

Perhaps a little something with that coffee?

Do you fear you’ll be dealing with eating issues in your next decade—when you’re in your 30s, or 40s, 50s or beyond? Yearning to just be normal again? (Again—because at some point in time, perhaps way back when you were a child, you lived free of all these food concerns, never counting calories or giving a thought to when and how much you consumed).  Wrestling to release your self from the hold of anorexia, binge eating or bulimia, and the preoccupation with your weight and the diet du jour? Ready to be free of carb and fat phobia?

Scared? No surprise. You don’t yet trust the next step, but know it’s time to change. Seemingly damned if you do, damned if you don’t change your relationship with food.

There comes a point, a tipping point, when you realize that the cost-benefit of staying stuck is not in your favor. Don’t be fooled into believing that you’ll be happier if only you weighed a few pounds less, because it’s simply a moving target. And the toll that restrictive eating and disordered behaviors takes on your body and your mind is a steep price to pay—even if you thought you’d be happy. It’s not worth the ruminating, the fatigue, the loss of social activities, the isolation, or simply the risk. It’s not worth living with your secrets.

While I no longer struggle with an eating disorder (although my past history of restriction and binge eating was shared in Food to Eat), my tipping point crystalized soon after my diagnosis with MS. It hit me that I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. (Brilliant, huh? Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring! We could be hit by a car or by lightning, heaven forbid.) The awareness that I could lose my ability to walk, or bike or go up the stairs in my home at absolutely any time highlighted for me that the time was now. I needed to start acting like life is short—because it is. I needed to carve out time for me and for my needs and to seize the moment. Putting off travel was no longer an option. Taking care of my body—including minimizing my stress level—was essential. Continuing to eat well and stay healthy—to take charge of the variables I can control—was essential.

So to my readers who want to challenge their status quo, consider the following—life’s too short.

Life’s too short:

• To count your calories, fearing you’ll run short while still hungry for more food;
• To jump on the gluten or milk free, low carb, or fill-in-the-blank-free diet when you have neither celiac, gluten intolerance nor milk tolerance issues;
• To live in your head, ruled by diet rules about when and how much you’re allowed to consume, disconnected from your body and its signals;
• To view foods solely as nutrients, versus the tasty, pleasurable part of your intake they are;

Do you believe this?

• To eliminate categories of foods—yes, even cupcakes and desserts—even if they have little nutritional value;
• To spend the majority of your waking hours consumed by your weight, or size of your hips/thighs/butt/stomach or muscle mass;
• To deny your hunger for the sake of dropping some weight;
• To omit those foods necessary to support your health and any diseases you may live with;

Yes, another one of my weekend breakfasts...

• To fail to attend to your body’s needs for fuel, for moderate activity (if you’re healthy enough to do so) and for kindness;
• To ignore the needs of your soul, denying yourself time for you and embracing your needs for fulfillment;
• To consistently override your fullness because you feel you’ve blown it and you don’t deserve to feel better;
• To abuse your body through unhealthy behaviors, including food restriction, binging, purging, and excessive exercise.
• To wait until you feel deserving to enjoy the food you eat with all your senses.
• To wait until Monday, or January first for change, or until you’re taken through the emergency entrance.

The only thing missing is Enjoy.

So assess your thoughts and your actions. And ask yourself “What do I need to change to improve the quality of my life?” Truly something is in your hands to change.

Because life’s too short.

Thanks for reading—and for sharing your thoughts.