None of us can be truly objective about our appearance. We we can only
perceive ourselves from within, while other people view us from outside.
Even our mirror image is distorted — it’s not how others see us.
But some people, often those with eating disorders, distort their body
image to an abnormal extent. A person with anorexia or bulimia often
perceives her body size as significantly larger than it really is.
Insisting you are fat when others see that you are emaciated is one of the
classic signs of an eating disorder.
And when the patient’s self-image becomes more accurate, that’s a sign of
recovery. This change happens through the course of therapy and starts with
acceptance of the problem.
But how does a person with an eating disorder start understanding that they
have a distorted view of their body, and that distortion is hurting them?
It starts with the individual’s recognition that the eating disorder has
not given them the happiness and perfection that they were seeking but,
instead, has brought them tremendous pain and suffering. That’s when it’s
possible to face the fact that other people’s perceptions are more accurate
than their own, at least when it comes to body size.
What are signs of a significant body image distortion?
1.      No matter how much weight you lose, you still think your body is too
big.
2.      People describe your size in a significantly different way than you
do.
3.      It’s hard for you to accept compliments about your appearance.
4.      You feel fatter on days when you’re upset and thinner on days when
your mood is good.
5.      You feel significantly heavier or lighter from one day to the next.
6.      You react to adversity by suddenly feeling fat or unattractive.
You don’t have to have a full-blown eating disorder to have body image
problems. Many women and even some men let their focus on their bodies get
in way of living.
It’s also true that there are plenty of people of all sizes and shapes who
never let what they look like get in their way. They may be perfectly aware
that they don’t meet society’s definition of beauty. They just know that
life is too short to worry about not having a perfect body.
Who do you know that worries incessantly about their body image and is also
truly happy and fulfilled? Just like you can’t be both anxious and relaxed
at the same time, you can’t enjoy life when you’re hiding away from the
world, fearful of exposing your imperfect body.
As with any problem, to make positive changes in body image what you need
most are the desire and the determination to change.
Sometimes it takes working on self-acceptance and understanding that having
a fulfilling life is more important than meeting social expectations.
Some people may need a little support from a counselor to start viewing
themselves more realistically and rationally.  Other people may need
intensive psychotherapy.
The point is, it’s possible to change how we see ourselves so that we don’t
let our body image get in the way of life and all the wonderful things it
has to offer.

Previously published in the St. Petersburg Times

Most people with problems controlling their eating think that it’s caused by some weakness on their part. In reality the problem has more to do with the human brain.

Compulsive eating problems are not rare today, but for the person experiencing the problem, it feels like no one could possibly understand what it’s like. Sadly, the person with compulsive eating problems or binging often thinks that the problem would go away if only they could gain more control. The cause of most compulsive eating is a control issue, not a lack of control, but rather a problem with over-control.

Why Diets Fail

Ninety percent of dieting attempts fail and most of these dieting attempts involve diets that have the following in common:

1. Are too rigid – Rigid rules in dieting, such as dictating exactly what should and should not be eaten, do not teach a person how to change his lifestyle. Lifestyle change is important for lasting weight loss.
2. Eliminate particular foods or food groups completely – Usually the foods eliminated by diets are those that the person likes the most. This creates a situation of psychological deprivation that leads to diet failure, overeating, and even binging with the foods that were eliminated.
3. Do not provide enough calories – Not eating enough calories slows down metabolism and creates a situation where the body stores fat more efficiently and burns it more slowly. This is the opposite of what the dieter wants to achieve.
4. Dictate what to do but not how to do it – People know what they should do to lose weight (eat well and exercise) but find it difficult to get themselves to do it. Most diets just tell a person what foods to eat or not eat; a few suggest exercise. These things are “easier said than done” because there are psychological barriers that are common to everyone and can get in the way.

Dieting and the Brain

The human brain responds well to some things but not to others. Most diets are designed counter to how the human brain thinks, leading to loss of control of eating and ultimate failure of the diet. However, there are ways to approach weight loss that will lead to long-term success. These involve how the person works with their brain. The brain responds best to the following:

• Flexibility – The more flexible an eating plan is the more likely it is that a person can follow it for the rest of their lives, resulting in a lifetime of health and leanness rather than yo-yo dieting.
• Praise – Just like a child learns better if praised rather than put down, the brain is motivated, encouraged, and energized by praise, not punishment or criticism. Pointing out successes and efforts, no matter how small, will lead to more success in the long run.
• Small goals – Large goals are overwhelming. Breaking large goals down into smaller ones and focusing on one small goal at a time will prevent stress and, instead, lead to more motivation.
• Focus on behaviors rather than numbers (e.g. calories and weight numbers) – Behaviors are what make a person lose weight, not numbers.
• Adding things rather than omitting things – Psychologically, it’s easier for a person to think of adding things such as increasing the number of fruits and vegetable eaten, rather than omitting things like not eating sweets.

Anything that adds stress and focuses on negativity tends to make the brain resistant to a person’s intentions and goals. This is especially true when dealing with weight loss. Having control of eating is not so much a function of willpower or discipline but rather understanding how the human brain responds to characteristics of the weight loss plan being used. The smart way to go about losing weight and controlling eating is by working with, not against, the brain.

Copyright Lavinia Rodriguez. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

Weight-loss talk is heard too often these days. If there’s a new fad diet going around, you hear about it and its so-called “successes.” • Weight-loss success ought to be defined not by how much weight has been lost, but by how long the weight loss is maintained. • People who have had long-term success with weight seem to be relatively quiet. You don’t usually hear, “I’m going on 10 years of managing my weight successfully,” or “I haven’t binged in 15 years!” • There are plenty of weight-loss myths that get in the way of weight-loss success. Here are some real-life examples, with names changed to protect patient privacy:

Myth 1: The Less You Eat, the More You Lose

Jeanie walked into my office sharing her frustration at a life filled with one diet after another. “I’ve tried every diet,” she told me. “You name it, I’ve tried it.” It quickly became clear that Jeanie subscribed to the myth that you have to keep eating less in order to lose more. Her diets became more restrictive through time. After years of such diets, her body had compensated for her starvation attempts by slowing its metabolism, making it more difficult for her body to burn fat and easier for it to store it. Without her realizing it, Jeanie’s diets were contributing to her weight problem.

With education, Jeanie was able to restructure her thinking and behavior. She started to eat more often, stopped skipping meals, and avoided long periods without eating. She focused on nutritious meals that were satisfying, preventing extreme hunger and feelings of deprivation.

She learned to allow time for her body to start burning more again. After all, she had been abusing it for a long time. Those kinds of physiological changes don’t happen overnight.

Once Jeanie understood how her body worked, she was able to give up the belief that the less you eat the more you lose. Then she started to gradually lose weight. By being consistent she made these changes part of her lifestyle and was able to manage her weight successfully.

Myth 2: If You Have a Busy Life, That’s Exercise

George was a busy guy. His work kept him on the move. Through the years, his body had put on an unattractive spare tire. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “I’m busy all the time at work. Why can’t I lose weight?”

George had confused busyness with fat-burning exercise. The type of exercise that burns fat is sustained activity that gets the heart pumping, creates deep but relaxed breathing, and lasts 30 minutes or more. Most of the busyness that George thought should be fat-burning exercise was stop-and-go activity.

George decided get up a half-hour earlier to get a run in each day. He started out slowly and worked up to running 30 minutes at a time. In addition, he used the run to decompress from the stress of work. Gradually, George’s body started to show the fat loss he was looking for.

Myth 3: Carbs Make You Fat

Leni was a believer in the no-carb craze. She was proud that carbs never touched her lips. Never, that is, except when she binged on carbs several nights per week. “Why can’t I control my eating?” she said. “I know I shouldn’t eat carbs, but I lose control!”

Leni didn’t realize that the reason she was bingeing was precisely because she was trying to eliminate carbs. Although some carbs are not very nutritious, they don’t, in and of themselves, make you fat. If they did, all people who eat bread and pasta would be fat.

Leni loved carbs. Her stringent rule of no carbs was actually causing her to lose control by making her feel deprived. This psychological deprivation made her preoccupied with carbs. It’s no wonder she lost control. Once she understood why she was bingeing, Leni was able to work on letting go of her rigid expectations, eat high-quality carbs and feel satisfied. Gradually, she regained natural control of eating, the binges stopped and she lost weight permanently.

• • •

There are ways to lose weight, but only a logical approach will keep it off. It pays to take the time to be honest with yourself about approaches that are only perpetuating the problem and start down the right road to a life of leanness. Even if the weight loss is slower, it’s not nearly as frustrating as losing and regaining the weight again and again.

Previously published in The St. Petersburg Times July 17, 2010

Warning Signs of Body Image Distortion

There are people who insist that they are overweight when others continually tell them that they’re not. They see fat where others don’t. Who’s right?

Everyone distorts her body size to some extent. After all, people can only look at themselves from within or through a mirror. They can never see themselves from the perspective of someone else. Having some body image distortion is normal.

However, there are some people who distort their body size to such a degree that it is considered abnormal. For example, an anorexic patient weighing 77 pounds might view herself as obese in the mirror to the astonishment of those around her. This, of course, is the extreme; but generally when someone sees her body size as significantly different from how others see her body it is an indication of a body image distortion disorder.

Some Characteristics of People with Body Image Distortion

People with abnormal body image distortions tend to be:

• people with low self-esteem
• people who are perfectionists
• men in sports with weight requirements such as jockeys and wrestlers
• people with eating disorders
• people who have had a significant person in their lives who continually criticized them about their size

Warning Signs of Body Image Distortion

• No matter how much weight you lose, you still view your body as unacceptable or too big.
• People describe your size in a significantly different way than you do.
• You have difficulty accepting compliments about how good you look or how thin you are.
• You feel large/fatter on days when you are upset, and smaller/thinner on days when you feel good.
• You feel significantly heavier or thinner from day to day, although realistically you know your body couldn’t have changed drastically overnight.
• After feeling fine emotionally and physically during part of a day, something goes wrong and you react by suddenly feeling fat and or unattractive.

Steps to Recovering From Body Image Distortion

Although it is difficult and time-consuming it is possible for a body image distortion to normalize. Here are some essential steps in achieving recovery:

1. Learn to accept that you are distorting based on the overwhelming evidence coming from the outside world who views your body more realistically than you do.
2. Decide that you’re going to trust other people (the world in general – not a single person) more than yourself when it comes to how big your body is since they are more accurate than you are at it.
3. Work on accepting that although you perceive yourself and feel fat, it is not true because there is too much evidence to the contrary.
4. Remind yourself at every instance that it’s impossible to suddenly be fatter than you were a few moments ago so it has to be a distortion.
5. Use self-talk to keep reminding yourself that the distortion will change as you learn to accept yourself unconditionally and trust that the problem has nothing to do with the size of your body.
6. Focus on other things in life that bring enjoyment and activity.
7. Dare to do the opposite of what your mind is telling you. If your mind is telling you to not go out because you are fat, purposely go out. If it says not to wear something because you’re too fat, purposely wear it.
8. Trust that you can get past this and recover. Life is meant to be enjoyed not to be miserable about your body.
9. Get a life apart from your body size.
10. Leave the past behind.

A body image distortion gets in the way of a person’s happiness and is a serious problem. It is not unusual to need help dealing with it. Professional help is best if you’re not able to follow the steps mentioned above on your own. There is life after a body image distortion – a happy one.

Previously published in www.Suite101.com June 19, 2009

Food problems and addictions are  similar only on the surface.

“Overeating and drug addiction may converge on some of the same neurons,” says Endocrinologist Barbara Kahn. “but other pathways are also involved. And from a biochemical point of view, the two are not the same thing. Drug addictions are much stronger.”

Unfortunately for people who have weight and food problems, theories about  food addiction are not only inaccurate, but they do a disservice to people who are struggling to lose weight.  Sure, some people eat compulsively and some even binge.  This type of eating behavior can be chronic.  It can really look like it’s an addiction.  The “food addict” experiences strong cravings and feels out of control when the compulsive eating is taking place.

There are more differences, however, than there are similarities when it comes to compulsive eating and true addiction.  Here are some of those:

• A person can live without addictive drugs but they cannot live without food.
• People can recover completely from compulsive overeating and binging problem without having to deprive themselves of any particular foods.
• Humans have always been drawn to sweet and salty tastes.  It is a universal trait.
• When people are deprived of the foods they like, it creates a state of psychological deprivation that leads to compulsive eating.

It’s not addiction that causes addiction-like behaviors of compulsive eating and binging – it’s psychological deprivation.

By only looking at the surface of a problem, it can mislead.  Thirty years of experience treating the most severe cases of eating problems (eating disorders) and seeing that they can completely recover from losing control of food is evidence that food addiction is a myth.

That should sound like good news.  Who wants to think that they have an addiction to food that in incurable?  Isn’t it better to think that the addictive-like behaviors can be a thing of the past and that a person can once again become a normal-eating individual?