Archives for September 2006

This is the second part to my post about diet mentality:

First of all, I’m really not there, but still trying. And for those of you who didn’t read my too long series about non-dieting and weight-loss, this is how I look now:



(When I first saw this picture I thought, “That can’t be me. I’m not that thin.”

But here they are, 11 ways to get out of diet mentality:

1. Focus on what’s right with your body. Is it living? Breathing? Able to walk, talk, think, nurture? Good.

Jon Kabat-Zinn says somewhere (sorry, but I didn’t find it again) that as long as you’re living there’s more right with you than wrong.

2. Learn to love your body the way it is now. And dress in clothes that feel and look good.

I know, that’s a tough one. But it works. Stand in front of the mirror each day (preferably naked) and say to yourself what you love. Be specific. Imagine that you just fell in love with this person. The least you can say is, “I love that you carry me through my day.” “I love that you gave birth.”

3. Focus on positive change. Set intent (Christine Kane says it better than I ever could.) Follow through.

When you fail (and you will), pick up yourself, and start over again.
Diets don’t work. Ever. Not for losing weight. Not for becoming happy. They do work, when you have a food-related illness like diabetes.

So the trick is to concentrate on things to do. Like when I’m hungry in the evening and crave chocolate, I’ll drink a cup of tea instead. (Well, that’s the plan.) Or I go to bed instead. My craving for chocolate is not a sign of hunger bur of tiredness.

4. Get rest. Sleep enough.

(And no, contrary to popular myth, not all adults can exist with a max. of six hours of sleep per night. I need 8 1/2 and so do most women.)

5. Do something nice for you every day. That’s an order. And nice does not mean chocolate every time.

Sit down with a cup of tea, read a book, do something different, smell the roses, nurture your sense of wonder and adventure.

6. When you find yourself thinking about being fat ot what to eat, think about something really important instead.

Like your music or your writing, your blog or your children.

7. Do the thing you love. The thing you really love.

For me that is making music. It works every time. I sit down, cranky, bored and not willing to play, and after some playing and working, and improvising – instant happiness.

8. Eat real food that tastes good. Geneen Roth adds to this that you should eat one warm meal every day.

Try to have quiet and enjoyable mealtimes. (I know how hard that is with children around.) Really taste your food. And be mindful of your body while eating.

9. When the meal is over, stop eating. No grazing, no stuffing leftovers in your mouth.

10. Focus on the life you want to live.

Do I really want to be someone who is stuffing herself with junk food all the time? Does it really feel good? No, it doesn’t. So until I become healthy and sane, I’ll fake it. Pretend until it gets real.

Technorati Tags: Debra Waterhouse, diet, diet mentality, FlyLady, Geneen Roth

(A friend of mine read my recent post about summer break and asked me how I’d define “diet mentality”. Here’s the answer to that. Part two will deal with ways out of diet mentality.)

• Diet mentality means going through your day thinking, “I’m fat. I’m fat. I’m fat.”
• And, “I shouldn’t have eaten this. Should I eat this? I shouldn’t eat this. Oh, what the heck. Now I’ve eaten it. I shouldn’t have eaten this. I’ll make up for it by not eating [insert food or meal of choice here].”
• Diet mentality means that you’re defining yourself and your worth by the number on the scale.
• Diet mentality thinks, if only this number were right, everything would fall into place.
• Dieting means, you’re trying to starve yourself or live on a restriction for a finite amount of time and then your life (and your eating) can turn back to “normal”.
• Diet mentality focuses on the number of the scale like, “Oh, I lost 2 pounds already. Now I can reward myself with ridiculous amounts of chocolate.” Or, “Oh, I gained 2 pounds. How could that have happened! I’ll eat only bread and water (or more likely vegetables, yoghurt and water) until they’re off again.” (Unless you believe in water-retention like I do.)
• Diet mentality means trying to fight for losing the same 5 pounds over and over again.
• Diet mentality means that if you’d only manage to be good for a few weeks, everything will be fine again.

But guess what, nobody’s going to give you a medal for “being good” or losing weight. (Well, apart from Weight Watchers, maybe.) And like Geneen Roth says,

“Thin people get cellulite, get sick and die, too.”

(I couldn’t find the source of this quote, but I can recommend all Geneen Roth‘s books. For starters try “When you eat at the refrigerator, pull up a chair.“)

And when you’ve finally lost that elusive two pounds, there will be the next goal:

• When I weighed 84 kg, I thought, “If only I were back at my pre-pregnancy weight of 78.”
• When I weighed 78 (before that) I thought, “If only I were back at 71.”
• When I was at 71 I thought, “I’m real fat, if only I were back at 69.”

And then 67, 65, 63, 60, 56. There it stopped, because I never weighed less as an adult or teenager. I was 16, I was love-sick, I was depressed, and I looked like a stick figure with ears for handles.

Look, stick-figure Susanne:

And here big Susanne:

Which one looks happier? (I know you maybe can’t see it, but big Susanne is much happier than stick-figure Susanne. Even though she feels fat all the time.)

So, the question is: How do you come out of diet mentality?
Stay tuned…

Technorati Tags: diet, diet mentality, Geneen Roth