nibble on biscuits while clearing up. Later, preparing the children’s lunch boxes for the following day, she will open a five-pack of chocolate biscuits, put one into each box and eat the remaining three. Now into full binge-mode, she will continue eating for the whole evening, often indulging in weird food combinations like spooning lemon curd and muesli into a tin of condensed milk and eating it out of the tin with a teaspoon (as you do). She will do this stealthily, keeping an eye on the door in case anyone should come in and see her. She knows why she is fat and tells herself she will ‘start her diet again tomorrow’.
Changing Bad Eating Patterns
When you are greatly overweight, your ‘fat’ becomes the problem and your lack of control both mystifying and depressing. Some doctors classify this as an obsessive-compulsive phenomenon but the issue is the overeating, not the result. You need to identify the problem behaviourally rather than in terms of your appearance.
The best way to deal with this is to give up the notion of dieting (even ‘sensible dieting’ is a contradiction in terms) and substitute a healthy-eating plan encompassing food from every group and cutting out only the food that is not good for your health. Eating is something to be enjoyed rather than feared. A balanced diet is not a biscuit in each hand.
In a following chapter I will show you how to change the words that have made you fat in the past and substitute them for words that will keep you slim. As you are the one who talks to yourself, you are the only one who hears what you say, so you need to keep it positive all the time. This may sound easy, but if you have been a compulsive eater for many years, you are so used to berating yourself about your uncontrolled eating, your perceived weakness and unacceptable shape that these thoughts are a part of who you are. Subconsciously, you may want to hang on to them. Life is much simpler when all roads lead to one destination. You perceive that if all of your problems can be reduced to food and fat, the only solution is to go on a diet.
When you mentally shout at yourself for overeating, you get upset then need to comfort yourself with more food, thereby creating a circuit. If you stop being nasty to yourself and change your words to praise and encouragement, you break the circuit and stop translating all problems into fat. Faced with loads of problems, you’ll need to come up with solutions instead, and sometimes that isn’t easy. Let’s face it: it is often fear of your real problems that sends you scurrying for the food in the first place.
Body-image Versus Self-image
It is time to stop confusing your body-image with your self-image. Body-image is not what you see in the mirror: it is the reaction you have within you in response to what you see. I understand that you want to be different from the way you are now—that you don’t like the shape of your body – but this does not make you a bad person. You say you hate yourself but you are not your body. Consider your character: I am sure you are kind, generous, funny, a good loyal friend. What has that got to do with the fact that for some reason you have eaten too much food and allowed your body to become fat? Some of my very large clients say they feel ashamed to be seen and think that other people are talking about their size. So what? That is their problem. Why should you care? They don’t live with you.
I am not suggesting you resign yourself to being overweight but that you acknowledge what is – without judging that reality. Acceptance does not imply self-delusion. When you accept yourself you simply say, ‘This is how I am right now and it’s OK’. How you look, the number on the scales and your eating habits are neither good nor bad. They just are. As you learn a healthier way of eating, your body will reflect this change and you will get slimmer. For now, however, developing an acceptance of how you look is crucial to resolving your problem with food.
The easiest thing to be in the world is you. © The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be.
The logic of why you binge may still elude you but that logic is there nonetheless. Each person in the course of their development finds ways of coping with life’s experiences. Therefore your eating has simply become your chosen way of dealing with your problems. When you reach for food to comfort yourself, you are reaching back in time. It is something you have always done. So? Is that a reason to hate yourself? Of course not. What you are going to do now is to replace this means of coping with something better, and make the decision that from now on you are going to be nice to yourself.
What We are Going to Do
The aim of this book is to help you identify the foods, thoughts and behaviours that are keeping you fat so that you can make the necessary changes. I want to make you feel better about yourself – not simply to lose weight no matter what it takes. This means that the plan you devise should not be geared towards undereating—or trying to achieve a negative energy balance. Rather, if you can eliminate overeating – meaning eating in excess of your body’s natural requirements—and learn to stay in control, your problem will be solved.
Your objective, instead of focusing on the numbers on a scale, is to develop healthy and sustainable eating and exercise habits, and build a more positive body image. Here are some of the issues we will be addressing in the following chapters:
Step 1: What is Your Specific Goal?
Not a dream, but a real goal, a target you can reasonably achieve? Of course it’s fine to dream (‘I wish I could eat as much as I like and still be slim’) but a goal is something you want to achieve and are prepared to work towards. Is it only your weight that you want to change or some other aspect of your life? What is really keeping you fat? What do you need to change? Be realistic in your answers.
If your goal is to be permanently slim, what are you prepared to sacrifice to achieve this? You now know that you can’t eat everything you want any time you want it. Are you prepared to live without the sort of food you know is not good for your health and shape and just concentrate on putting healthy food into your body?
Step 2: How Do You Intend to Measure Your Progress?
Are you aiming to stay below a certain weight or go for a dress size at which you feel comfortably slim? Again, make this something that is achievable, not wishful thinking.
Step 3: Devise an Eating Plan
This should be a plan you can live with, not too far removed from the way you eat now. I will help you do that in the next couple of chapters. Arrange your environment in such a way that it helps you achieve the results you want. This means making your house and your workplace ‘safe’; stocking up your fridge and freezer with healthy food; and planning an exercise routine that you can stick with on a regular basis. Rely on your strategy, planning and programming, not on your willpower.
Step 4: Assess the Obstacles
To pursue a goal seriously requires you to assess the obstacles realistically and create a strategy for dealing with them. Identify those places, times, situations, other people and circumstances that set you up for failure. Reprogram those diversions so they cannot compete with what you really want. This means getting to know when you are likely to be tempted, and working out your own plan to deal with it. For example, if you always pop into the bakery for a Danish pastry on your way to work, find an alternative route. Avoid buying your evening newspaper in a shop where they also sell sweets and chocolates. If crisps set you off, tell your children not to eat them in front of you.
Step 5: Define
