Jenn and
Norma have recently posted topics that deal with body image and touched on BDD and it really resonated with me. The negative dialogue in my head has
plenty to say about my appearance.
My bitch voice especially loves to dwell on things that I can't change and haven't yet learned to accept and appreciate (round face, high hips, shortness of stature, way too muscular calf muscles...etc.) So I'd like to share what helps me to shut up and halt, even if it is temporarily, the cycle of negative talk in regard to my appearance. It's what helps me and we all cope differently, prefer different strategies and find different solutions to the same question. I don't know what works for you, but I can certainly share what helps me.
Remember
Maslow's pyramid? I know there are tons of different theories in psychology, and this theory received its share of valid criticisms, but if you keep in mind that there is plenty of overlap and shades of grey, the essentials of this schematic is still useful.
It's not this compartmentalized in real life, but it hold relatively true. Don't roll your eyes yet....hear me out.
When I need perspective from: I'm too fat, this is what helps me. First is the phenomenon that I noticed as I started to lose weight. The more weight I dropped, the fatter I felt. Part of this came from putting the
blinders on when looking in the mirror when I was at my heaviest. I didn't want to perceive my fatness, so I kind of tuned it out in order to function in the meanwhile until I woke up.
When I started to lose weight, I started to pay attention to my appearance, and all of the sudden I started realizing
just how fat I got. This is bitter. It is difficult. I looked at my old pics in horror. Both fit and fat and a defense mechanism goes up to prevent the fat coming back again....... by convincing yourself that you're fat at any scale #.
And the problem is that, I started to mistrust myself for an accurate evaluation. Your brain plays tricks on you. When I look in the mirror now, from time to time I panic.
What if I still have my blinders on? What if I'm fat, but I don't see it? And then I convince myself that I am still fat. This happens fast and most of it is unconscious, until you take the time to verify your assumptions.
Back to Maslow. Why I keep this in mind?
To first obtain perspective when it comes to food. I'm sorry if it's too much, or too lofty, or too whatever, but it helps me to shock myself out of thinking about food only terms of fatness.
I think about what it was like to live through a famine that my grandparents lived through.
I think about world war that my grandfather fought in, the winters, the starvation, the blockade.
And I ask myself: W
ould I worry about my appearance in similar situations? Fuck no.
I'd be worrying about how to secure food for my family. This is extreme,
but it helps me to shock myself out of the cycle. I try to read biographies of individuals who I admire, who lived through a harsh life. My best friend reads the same material and hearing her input and reaction to a memoir, well....my daily problems diminish.
But I can't do this everyday, emotionally. I can't read about struggle all the time. I like to escape in fantasy world (see my book
list), so this is helpful for me to get myself to shift focus.
Notice how love/belonging precedes esteem on the diagram. So even though you hear a lot of messages like: L
earn to love yourself first. Well....this is made easier if you have at minimum some kind of a network: family or friends or significant other who become your source of acceptance first
but especially a source of honesty when it comes to appearance.
If you're lucky, your family is a source of this from the start, if not they might be a source of a challenge to overcome. Excepting that you have a personality disorder that prefers total solitude from people, we are a social animal and because of this, cultural inputs (like photo-shopped magic) hold a strong influence when we are in a process of accepting what we can't change and dealing full force with things we can.
Is it possible to do this without a network? Yes. There are always exceptions, but I'd imagine it would be extremely difficult. Because self-acceptance has multiple components, remember I'm just focusing on appearance, mostly weight. What do we base our evaluation of appearance on? First our parents/siblings serve as proximate comparisons. Which is why children eat like their parents and then struggle with weight like their parents. Most of the time.
Then comes friends/classmates/media. I'll pause here for a while, because this is what helps me: variety & balance & multiple perspectives.
If you consume only American television, newspapers, magazines, websites......you will encounter unbalanced culturally influenced social constructs of 'appearance role models.' They are certainly not universal. Look at Hollywood movies and then watch some European movies (not perfect when it comes to ageism, but a whole lot better than Hollywood) and you'll notice that American actresses (with the exception of few like Meryl Streep) are young, thin....perfect. Foreign flicks? Isabelle Huppbert is in her late 50s, Monica Bellucci is 47 for few examples. And they still have a robust acting career. Granted Monical Bellucci is criminally gorgeous, but you know what I mean in terms of age.
In America? older actresses are expected to retire from lead roles once they hit 40, which is tragic because her talent and skill only begin to mature at that age, in my opinion. I'm just saying...
And don't even get me started on the nightmare that is facebook: manufactured pictorial representations and fabulosity and perky comments of
what you wish your life was really like that even your own pictures/comments become more of a lie than the truth. No one is this fabulous. Not even you.
I came from a culture where age is synonymous with wisdom (not always true) and wrinkles are earned and stretchmarks from pregnancy is something to be proud of: Man hunt! Woman made baby! Grey hair = good genes for survival. Grey is good. Well, not exactly like this of course, but at least age wasn't a disease.
Not entirely true today as globalization via internet is creating an amalgam that's quite different today than it was when my parents were growing up. But US in particular is so much different from the environment that I grew up in:
Abundance of food, (quality and garbage) there are no deficits. A word that I was all too familiar with: meat? deficit; sugar? deficit; butter? deficit. We stood in hour long lines to obtain luxury items like.... fruit. Meat was expensive so we never just ate meat, we rationed meat in soups. Processed food was expensive (not complaining about that one).
Abundance & affordability of luxury items: cars, television, dishwashers, microwaves....We had to put our name on a list that took years to move through in order to purchase a car.
Where was I? So, when I forget all of this, I have to remind myself where I came from. All of the sudden, my life looks pretty awesome. But I still catch myself normalizing stuffed grocery stores, until I make a conscious effort to remind myself about this 'normal.'
So I try the same approach with appearance and weight. Balance. In this case, balancing your convictions with other sources.
The negative talk is so full of lies and in order to quiet it down,
it helps to analyze it for its accuracy.
How does one do that? Where does one obtain this information? From people who you trust. The network that is a source of your support.
Your true friends: family, friends, significant other.... will be honest with you if you're willing to hear the truth. When I was HEAVY, everyone in my family confirmed this and supplied this verification (not that I needed it at that point) with concerns about my health. My point is, they didn't sugar coat it. I can get a fake compliment if I really wanted one from elsewhere, because honesty is a scarce commodity.
Your negative dialogue has to be broken up and compared with a source that you trust. Because there is no other place to verify if our "I'm too fat" is accurate. Well, that's not entirely true, you could pay someone (physician, trainer, nutritionist, yes even a dietitian) to tell you straight. But we don't really know these people. And our self-preservation instinct tells us to believe people we know really well, and therefore trust. And if you have a great relationship with "bought input" providers, it will help. And it could be a combination of family/friends and other sources.
What do your children want for you? For you to be healthy and live a long life and not be a source of jokes because of weight, because that will hurt them. And they need a model for good nutrition/fitness so that they struggle less when they are adults. Your partner also wants you to be healthy and feel beautiful. But if your partner's ideal is a supermodel's pics....well, that's another problem.
But what do you do when your trusted network disagrees with you? Do you have a trusted friend that you secretly think is not telling you the truth about your appearance? Part of the problem might be the source. But before you ignore their input, ask them why they answered the way they did. This is important. If their answer is that you're not fat in comparison to most people that she knows... So clarify your goals/ambitions.
For example. My oldest sister's ideal beauty and health for a woman is a bit softer than what my younger sister and I consider fit. So when I need an honest opinion on where I stand (aside from pouring my worries and obsessions into my blog to spare my sister) in terms of fatness, I ask her. She is brutally honest. And I respect her ability to do this for me. When I was fit, her input reflected this pretty accurately, although I struggled to believe it, over time I realize that it was true. So if you don't have someone who understands what you're striving for, you need to find a source and
trainers are kind of awesome when it comes to this.
But clarify your goals: what do you want to look like? Fit? How fit?
But what happens when I don't believe what they say? Then of course, the problem might be with me.
Duh! We already know this! Why did you waste so much time to get to this part? Because if you skip above steps, well...it helps me to go down the process in that order.... And there are no simple solutions to this. It's a lot of work to break down your negative talk, but you have to start questioning
why you think the way you think,
analyze why you think you're still fat.
Do you still have the blinders on? Do you mistrust your eyes at any weight?
Then while you work on this, you absolutely need a source of accurate information to check/verify your weight. Which is why I went over having someone you can trust.
Because recalibrating your brain to perceive your own reflection more accurately takes time! And it's great to find sources of inspiration, but..... I hope it's not from magazines of super skinny, emaciated (read: cocaine, because you have to have energy from somewhere) models. If you're past:
I want to be skinny issue and moved to
I want to be fit, again take caution with
magazine/internet illustrations of fit. It's better than skinny models, but it's still a double edged sword.
They are pictures. They are selected from tons of shots after spending hours on make-up and tanners and body oil and the perfect lighting, etc....Step away from this and start comparing (in moderation) to real people at the gym.
Wait, did you just tell us to start comparing ourselves to others? Yes. It would be a perfect world if our future fit self could be our inspiration (or past fit self) but....because our brain plays tricks on us when we look in the mirror, it might be helpful to begin the process of shifting the focus from "fakeland magazine pics" towards real people and then eventually just you.
Again,
trainers are great, but obviously not perfect for this. Their job is to work out and inundate their brains with everything fitness, but it's a great start because at least you see them in person. And they don't bring in special lighting to look awesome while training you.
And then what? Well.... self-esteem is build by many components, and appearance confidence is no exception. And it takes work to build it up and find sources of realistic expectations. I certainly love finding pics of body parts I'm working on. But I'll never look like that. I will look like me only hopefully better.
Hopefully with time, you'll begin to trust your sources more and it will help you negate the negative talk. It certainly won't happen all of the sudden, but if remind yourself of what people you trust told you, it should help over time.
Anytime you hear a negative statement it will first take a lot of work. Ask yourself:
How do I know this is true? If it's because you "look like you're fat" - again, recalibration,
but honest calibration, and that requires outside input.
If you have a difficult time describing your target....that may be a problem too. How much weight do you want to lose? Why? What are you unhappy about? Body part? Your whole body?
Now...pretend that your daughter grows up to look
just like you weight/fitness wise and imagine yourself talking to her. This is extremely difficult, because your negative talk will automatically shut off since you love your daughter and
want only what's best for her. What is best?
Healthy. If she's making herself sick by getting to her goal, you will work your hardest to help her understand why her goal is so important and if you spend enough time, you might find really interesting motivations that have absolutely nothing to do with appearance.....
If she's not honest with her nutrition/exercise and slacks off, well...you will absolutely tell her the truth. If she did gain weight on her vacation, you would lie to her, knowing that it will be much harder to lose 20lbs than 10 or 5lbs....See where I'm going with this? Now try to find a person like that and start calibrating your perception of yourself by comparing to outside input. In time you'll stop relying on outside sources and will be able to argue back against lies that you tell yourself:
