Don't Die-t... Live-it

A client of mine suggested I write about  my “philosophy” regarding healing weight/food/body image issues.  I thought this was a great idea since it is a large part of my practice and I have yet to address the subject specifically on my blog.  I had the pleasure (and challenge) of being the lead nutritional counselor at Ai Pono Out Patient Eating Disorder Clinic on Maui for about 5 years. I’ve witnessed the spectrum of eating issues and disorders. Life threatening addictions including anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating are certainly the extreme side of the spectrum. No doubt about that. But there also exists a pervasive under current of food issues threaded throughout our body conscious culture. This more subtle manifestation is more like water torture. Not really noticeable or even painful at first but over time it etches away at our self esteem, our joy, our sense of freedom, and empowerment. My first challenge in writing on this topic was finding where to start as it’s vast and I find I have much to say.  I guess I’ll start where many of us do when we are contemplating our weight. Diets. (and by diets I mean eating a specific way with the goal to lower your weight)


Ok so here’s the big news about diets. They  don’t work. No shocker there right? Not only are diets totally ineffective but they , although disguised as the solution, are in reality part of the problem. I even hate the word diet. I don’t want voluntarily to do anything that has the word “die” in it. That said, I must ask, how many of you have been on a diet at some point in your life? How many are on a diet right now? Look around. Come on hands up.  Probably most of you. And did it work? If your like 95% of us you’ll gain back that weight you lost and probably more. You read right, diets have a success rate, meaning weight lost and kept off, of about 5%. You want more proof of the ineffectiveness of diets? The sheer number of them. There are hundreds, with new books coming out every year.  Eat protein, don’t eat protein, high carbs, low carbs, low fat, no fat, lemonade fasts, cabbage soup, vegan. I could go on. The fact is if diets actually worked there wouldn’t be the need for so many. In fact, looking at obesity trends the more diets there are the bigger we get. It’s not new news that the obesity rates in our nation is staggering, as is the increased incidence of type 2 diabetes and other related health issues.  Diets are certainly not the only factor in our increased weight trends, but my point is this, the only people having success with diets are the people making them up. Our gain is there gain. To the tune of $68.7 billion in 2010.

So, why don’t diets work? There are many reasons. Some are biological ( Our body wants to stay alive and resists any hint of starvation) and many psychological. We humans are rebellious animals. And often crave the very thing we deny ourselves. Try this. Don’t think of pink elephants. What are you thinking about now? How about, you can never have ice cream again. Never. What do you want at this moment? So dieting creates obsession.  I want that, but I can’t have that, now I want it more and more and more.
Restricting and fasting which will ultimately lead to binging (those pink elephants again -at some point we succumb). Then when we “fail“, and the vast majority of us will, we feel like failures. We put the blame squarely on ourselves.  If you took your car to a mechanic for a routine check up. Spent time and money and it didn’t work would you blame yourself? No but when we “fail” at a diet we are the ones with no willpower, even though by their very nature, diets are the things that are broken- not us.. We  feel worse about ourselves which just makes us want to eat cake which leads to more weight gain. So we try another diet because “we must get this thing under control once and for all”. Dieting is like a Chinese finger puzzle. The more you pull the more trapped you are.

Now what? What I do first when working with my clients is make clear that food has actually has very little to do with weight issues. I’m a nutritionist that resists diet plans like the plague- especially at the beginning. Food is just the caboose on the train. It’s along for the ride. What’s driving the train is what we need to discover, listen do, and pay attention to. It’s a language of sorts and together we break the code. To make the connection between food and feelings. Food is a great distraction from what we really need to confront but don’t want to. We get distracted with good foods. Bad foods. Eating at this time of day and at that. We think if we lost weight we’d feel better. Our lives would be better. It doesn’t work that way. Even if you lost weight you’d still have the same issues and feelings. You’d just be thinner feeling sad, shame, fear, bored, or angry.

So if food is the caboose what’s driving the train? What truths are trying to emerge but you are distracting with food- eating or restricting? Although, the focus is food there is a deep hunger for something else. What is it? Do you fall into that caretaker role and “feed” everyone before yourself and then “treat’ yourself later? Even the word “weight” is important. What are you “weighting for(waiting)” What/ who’s weight are you carrying? Even the foods you crave speak this language. There is a fascinating list that correlate food cravings with feelings. For example, crave salty foods? That’s anger. Crave carbs like breads? You’re actually craving nurturing. Crave chocolate? You guessed it -intimacy is what you really crave.

 The fact is we are eating (or not eating) for reasons other than hunger. And you’ll never solve an emotional problem with eating. Not once. Never. But if you are courageous enough to really listen to what your soul hungers for and not your ego. If you can really allow your self to be in your authentic expression of self. If you can connect to that part of you that is a soul having a physical experience. Then the journey of empowerment  can set you free and food can be just food again.

www.alekasky.com