The Artist’s Wahay!

Does my head look big in this?

I’ve been struggling writing my book. Those of you who know me will know this. I’ve done lots and lots and lots of research into dieting, weight loss and overeating and I’ve been teaching what I’ve learned – and people seem to want to pay me for this knowledge. And this is all great but the book is still pretty much trapped in my brain. I’ve got a great literary agent sitting there waiting for it – a REALLY good literary agent.

It’s taking a very long time to get this book out of me. I keep on writing and writing and writing but none of it is the book. I can talk about it for hours and I know what I’m talking about. I help people. I change people’s lives. I get fan mail!

I know I’m bigging myself up here, but there’s a point to it.

People ask me: “How’s the book going?”

And I make excuses about it being very difficult to write a book and that it takes a long time.

So out of total desperation, I’ve been doing The Artist’s Way. Those of you who know Julia Cameron’s work will know that it’s a ‘course to discovering and recovering your creative self’. And I’ve been on this course for just two weeks and suddenly there’s some book!

Amazing.

All I did was a couple of thinking exercises and a few days of ‘morning writing’ and this perfect book outline bubbled up to the surface. Better than the tentative and uncertain plan I had before. It’s definite and solid and right.

What caused this change?

The Artist’s Way Time Travel exercise.

A simple exercise in thinking about all the negative things anyone’s ever said to me to keep me in my place and then the writing out of a little story of just one of those times.

Here it is.

John Gordon 1997

I’d written an article about body image and I showed it to John Gordon (he was my boyfriend at the time).

John Gordon

He said: “But this is just your opinion. No one will want to publish that. Who’d be interested in what you’ve got to say?”

I remember being really angry and indignant and determined to get it published, but also smaller and more insignificant in my own eyes because I saw myself the way he saw me.

I sent the article off to the Telegraph. They accepted it right away and published it two weeks later on their features pages. It came out on the day John and I were travelling to Indonesia for a few months. I bought the paper at the airport and showed him. I was really excited.

He said: “Yes, well, it’s a bit late for that. You should have done it years ago.”

I didn’t speak to him for the whole flight. All the joy and pride had gone out of getting the article published. I felt smaller still and didn’t write anything for quite a long time.

When we got back from Indoenesia a few months later there was a stack of letters sent from the Telegraph from readers who were thanking me for the article and one of them was from Anita Roddick. I didn’t show them to John.

That’s all I wrote for the Artist’s Way Time Travel exercise but seeing it there along with the list (giant list) of other similar incidents where boyfriends, friends and family, teachers, colleagues and bosses have tried to keep me in my place and ‘be realistic’, I could finally see it for what it was.

I realise that I’ve made a huge mistake in letting it build up into evidence that I am not capable of doing anything special.

That’s where the block has come from and as soon as I could see it the book started to appear. And now I’ve been accepted on an MA in psychotherapy at Nottingham Uni purely on the basis of my research and experience helping people with disordered eating!

I haven’t made my mind up whether I’m going to do it or not but I wouldn’t have even bothered to apply without the Artist’s Way because I’d have thought I’d never be accepted. The Artist’s Way gives you the feeling that you can do anything.

The whole point of this is to tell you not to listen to those who try to prevent you moving forward. Just to say that I’m not especially a victim and I’m not a poor downtrodden thing that has been picked on more than anyone else. This is pretty much the same experience that everyone has. Whenever you do anything that threatens insecure people (and they are everywhere) you will be seen as getting above yourself and you will be manipulated back into ‘your place’.

What happened to me is all my fault for listening to them, I know. But I just wanted to stop other people from believing those negative whispers that destroy progress. Nothing that anyone else says to you is true. Don’t let the bastards bring you down. You CAN do anything.

www.foodfreedom.net

Fat fat fat is bad bad bad – or is it?

Quick! Call an ambulance! These women are about to die!

I bet you think that if you’re overweight you’re more likely to die and that being overweight is really really bad for you.

That’s because you read too many newspapers and watch too much telly and you soak it all up like some dumb sponge. No offense. I’m not suggesting you sit there dribbling with your tongue lolling out of your mouth letting all information download into your brain unquestioned. Well, I suppose I am. Because maybe minus the tongue and the dribbling (which is offensive and I apologise for it), that’s what you do!

That being overweight or obese is bad for your health is not a proven fact, it is merely an assumption. There is no absolute scientific or medical evidence for it. For every trial that shows a link to obesity and overweight with illness or death there is a trial that says that obesity has no effect on health AND – check this out – there are also equal numbers of trials that show that obesity has a positive health benefit and that being overweight protects against illness and death!

Conversely, there are also trials that give evidence that being thin is linked to the highest death and illness rates.

You don’t hear about NHS spending on ‘skinny related diseases’ do you? You don’t see magazine articles with weight gain advice for those in the dangerous position of not having enough fat on their bodies, do you? You don’t even get to hear much about the health benefits of being overweight. Reporting research finding anything positive about fat is accompanied by disclaimers, caveats and every effort to minimize its significance

You, as a consumer who spends lots of money on trying to lose weight, are led by the nose towards those stories written from the results ‘proving’ that fat is bad, bad, bad.

Mind you, there’s a gap in the market there. Maybe if the media, fashion, diet and fitness and pharmaceutical industries could try to squeeze us all into one very narrow (average) weight margin they could reap the profits from both ends of the weight spectrum.

Hmmm… I’d watch out for that if I were you. It’ll come.

www.foodfreedom.net

What’s the difference between dieting and healthy eating?

Gillian Mckeith: supporter of healthy eating

Eh? Come on. Tell me. You can’t figure it out can you (at least not sensibly). And that’s because there is NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE!

If science has proved that dieting directly causes you to lose control over food (which it has) and the more you try to diet the more likely you are to gain weight in the long term (which is true) and you put that together with the fact that there’s no difference between healthy eating and dieting…

…think about the implications.

Slowly, slowly, churning, churning. Bingo!

Next time someone says to you: “To lose weight all you have to do is eat healthily,” punch them in the face.

Body image

Things need to change. If you look at blogs and the Internet for alternative looks, you can find lots of them. Websites devoted to ‘big is beautiful’ and campaign after campaign for positive body image and this is leaking into the mainstream. I’ve seen some pop videos (Lady Ga Ga and Beyonce, for example) starring more normal sized dancers than I’ve seen in years.

Things are changing but thin is clinging on in there as the ideal. There’s nothing wrong with being thin, of course, it looks great, but it’s not the only look. It’s not the only good, nice or beautiful look.

It would be very conventional (and boring) of me to now go into a tirade about how the thin ideal causes eating disorders and quote shocking percentages at you about death rates and costs to the NHS, but I won’t (even though it’s true). And I can’t be bothered to keep on spouting the same old stuff as everyone else. I just want to say that not only does the thin ideal cause anorexia, bulimia and disordered eating (yawn) but it also causes compulsive overeating – which, if you’re any good at putting two and two together, also means that it causes obesity.

Obesity, in a great big circle of ridiculousness, is then condemned in favour of thin (which causes it!).

It’s all so obvious and while I do understand that we’ve all heard it before that it’s all about profit for the diet industry and media coercion and consumer spending etc etc etc, and that it is getting a bit old-hat to join the bandwagon, the damage that it wreaks in the psychological health and happiness of ordinary women (like you) is shocking. So I’m going to keep on talking, keep on campaigning and continue to be angry if you don’t mind.

So normal bodies everywhere please (yes, including the thin ones if they’re physically and psychologically healthy and meant to be thin!). Here are some photos to help buck the skinny trend.

Beauty is not a narrow concept

Feast your eyes

The Five Types of Overeater. Type 1: The Yo-yo Dieter

You'll seek out new diets no matter how many failures you endure

In the next five posts I’ll be describing the five types of overeater and asking you to spot which one you feel most closely fits your type. These ‘types’ are really stages in the lifecycle of an over eater and all overeaters experience at least one (sometimes all) of these stages.

This first overeating type is the most obvious one and if you are at this stage in the overeating life cycle, you will already know that you’re a yo-yo dieter, but this won’t spur you to try to get out of the trap – you’ll just passively keep on yo-yoing out of a belief that there is no other option.

I’d like to introduce you to Wendy who has been in the yo-yo dieting stage since she was a child. She is now 42.

“I’ve been dieting since I was 10. I must have been on every diet going and I have lost quite a lot of weight in the past and for my wedding I managed to get to my target weight with Weight Watchers. I’ve put it all back on again though. I’ve tried Weight Watchers again a few times since then, but I just don’t seem to be able to stick to it. It feels boring. Same old, same old and I get a sinking feeling when I start.

“New diets are the way to go because there is feeling of hope and novelty. I am swiftly running out of diets though! I seem to have done them all. I’ve even done 100 days on a liquid meal replacement diet called LighterLife, I did lose a lot of weight but my hair fell out in chunks and I felt very ill so I had to come off it. I maintained my weight for a while because I’d got used to eating so little, all meals felt enormous! I eventually upped my intake again, began overeating and regained all the weight.

“Most recently I went to Slimming World and I thought that would be my saviour at the time because it allowed me to eat so much. But then I began to feel depressed and I burst into tears when I was out having a meal with my girlfriends. They said not to do the diet and to have a night off if I was getting so upset about it. So I did and after that something took over me and I went on the rampage – stuffing down all of the things I couldn’t have on the diet for two whole weeks. I don’t understand it. It seemed so easy at first and I wasn’t hungry for even one moment.

“I’m a bit stuck as to what to do now and am thinking of trying Atkins once more as you can eat lots of cream and fat, which I like. Although last time I did it I craved bread so much I thought I was going to go mad. I was dreaming about it!

“I think I’m weak and I feel ashamed of myself when I think about how often I’ve let myself down. I am worried about the future and all I can see is ill health and struggling to get about because of my weight. I am so tired of dieting but I don’t think I have a choice if I look at the alternative.

As you can see, Wendy has been on and off diets ever since she was a child and has never succeeded at getting out of this trap. She is convinced she lacks willpower and that it is her fault she can’t stick to a diet. She reads the diet magazines and sees the many successes and doesn’t understand why she can’t do it and they can. Despite all the evidence for her repeated failure, Wendy is still on the lookout for a diet that will ‘work’ for her.

If you’re like Wendy and a Type 1, you’re likely to be stuck in the yo-yo dieting trap. Convinced you lack willpower but that there will be one diet out there that will work for you, you either hunt through different diets or ‘healthy eating plans’ trying to find the one that will work or you keep on trying the same one that worked once or twice before for you but which ultimately failed…

…Each time you begin a diet you feel determined and a little high on the promise of what your life will be like when you’re thin. But you eventually (or sometimes immediately) give in to the overwhelming cravings to eat things that are not allowed on your diet plan. You go into an overeating phase, making the most of your temporary freedom, promising yourself that you will start the diet again soon, usually ‘tomorrow’ or ‘Monday’.

You will be heavily influenced by diet industry marketing. You will ignore your own internal evidence that you’ve never managed to stick to a diet and the evidence in your immediate surroundings (most of your friends might be yo-yo dieters too) and that you don’t really know anyone personally who has lost weight using a diet and kept it off for more than five years and you will focus on diet industry’s use of temporary success stories in magazines and advertisements as your guide to reality.

You will never make any decisions yourself about what you want to eat and will always be following someone else’s guidelines. When you’re in a binge phase, you will eat all the ‘bad’ foods but always feel deep down like you ’shouldn’t’ be eating what you’re eating, although this will remain largely unconscious and be barely perceptible. Always thinking: “I’ll get back on it, I’ll get back on it.”

Then you will “get back on it” and the whole yo-yo cycle begins again.

If you’d like to find out about the other four types of overeater, you can! They’re in the archived issues of my newsletter. Please email me at sue@foodfreedom.net to join my mailing list and get access.

Please respect my copyright. You’re very welcome to use anything off my blog. If you wish to use all or part of this post for any kind of public display, please add this byline: by Sue Thomason and provide a link to this page: http://antidieter.wordpress.com. Thank you.

What type of overeater are you?

Eating and overeating are different

How old were you when you first started having problems with food and your weight? When did you start your first diet? This is relevant because compulsive overeating, chronic yo-yo dieting and weight problems follow a definite cycle, just like drug addiction. Where you are in this cycle is dependent on many factors and the age of your first diet is just one of them. The younger you were, the further you’re likely to be down the road that is followed by all overeaters.

There are five stages, which I’ve named ‘types’ for the sake of clarity.

The next five posts will examine the five types of overeater and if you have any problems with controlling food, worrying about weight gain or inabiltiy to stick to a diet, you will be sure to spot your own situation in one of the types.

I have labelled these stages as types for the simple reason that it helps you to see the process that you go through more clearly. In reality you could be at a crossover stage or you could find that you identify with characteristics from several of the types, but there will be one type that stands out as most like you. Whichever type you feel more strongly reflects your thoughts, feelings and behaviour around food, weight and dieting is your type.

Bookmark this page or simply keep an eye out or subscribe to the RSS feed to read the next five posts that will help you to discover where you are in the overeating life cycle.

Please respect my copyright. You’re very welcome to use anything off my blog. If you wish to use all or part of this post for any kind of public display, please add this byline: by Sue Thomason and provide a link to this page: http://antidieter.wordpress.com. Thank you.

Thin is in – or is it?

Things have changed - or have they?

We all know that ‘thin is in’. Through movies, TV, adverts, magazines, billboards and the conventional side of the Internet, the media presents us with images of a world where 99 per cent of women wear their skin as near to their skeleton as they can get. Thin is beautiful. And so it is!

The reality is that we are a planet teeming with life. We are animals. We come in a variety of shapes and sizes and, thankfully, we also come programmed with what is essentially an uncontrollable sexual and aesthetic preference. For the sake of clarity if we ignore that, for most of us, attraction isn’t entirely physical, thin is beautiful to a percentage of the human population. What you don’t usually hear is that fat is beautiful to an equal number of people. And another group appreciates all the sizes in between fat and thin.

What we find beautiful is subjective. The media is trying its best to make it objective.

Why? Well, it makes a lot of money for a lot of businesses but we won’t go into that here.

The fact is, if you find fleshy men or women more attractive than the more slender type, there is actually not a thing you can do about it. You can pretend in order to fit in. You can try to persuade yourself that you don’t like the bigger look so that you can remain cool in your own eyes or through the eyes of your peers. Which is what a lot of people do. They deny it, again because of the media pressure to accept a received appreciation of beauty.

Just like if you’re gay and pretending to be straight, this will make you miserable. All efforts to live up to an image that is not mirrored with what you actually feel will create an unhappy life. Truth has an annoying way of foisting itself upon you.

Despite the overwhelming, in-yer-face coercion to take on a received idea of beauty, there are still many people out there who are intelligent and awake enough to prevent themselves from being anaesthetised by it. Happy and whole, who don’t feel they have to fit in or be cool or live in denial about what they are attracted to. Thank God for the Internet and the technology that means that we have a future where all voices can be heard.

I am not a member of the fat acceptance movement (although I accept fat and all other body shapes and sizes including the very thin). I am not saying that the compulsive overeating that causes the storage of fat on the body (for some) is something any of us would want to live with – because it is actually a very painful way to live. But the pressure to be what has lately become almost skeletal is one of the direct causes of compulsive overeating and other eating disorders.

Imagine how wonderful the world would become for all of us if everyone were truthful about what they find attractive. Imagine if movies and TV and magazines and adverts reflected reality. Look around you and wake up to the real world. Everyone is different. Everyone likes different.

Why passively receive a message that makes you unhappy when you can be free? There is nothing more exhilarating than thinking for yourself. Self reliance and self trust increase self esteem and this makes you happy. External dependency, trying to fit in and approval addiction decrease self esteem and will cause you nothing but misery and emptiness.

Low self esteem is closely linked to compulsive overeating. Think about that.

Please respect my copyright. You’re very welcome to use anything off my blog. If you wish to use all or part of this post for any kind of public display, please add this byline: by Sue Thomason and provide a link to this page: http://antidieter.wordpress.com. Thank you.

Welcome to my weight loss, body image and self esteem-based blog

If one diet worked, you wouldn't need all the others

This isn’t just about dieting, it’s about the whole subject of weight loss, body image, food and self esteem. It will inform and surprise you and it will sometimes even shock you. Most people’s knowledge and understanding about their weight and eating is obtained through the media, which is often straight from businesses that make a profit from them – and most of it is made up of lies, myth and half truth.

You are kept in the dark. This blog will help you to become enlightened – in more ways than one.

The information that will appear on these pages will go against the mainstream view but it will all be the truth.

I have been helping people to overcome overeating for three years full-time and I am a qualified and experienced coach. I dedicate my life to helping people out of the overeating trap. I won’t be linking to my business site here for the moment because this blog isn’t about marketing, it’s about genuinely helping people to see the truth.