Last night as I was getting in bed my husband said to me, “I think you gained 5 pounds but I think I gained 3 pounds.”
Is he an ass, or is he just being observant?
Body dysmorphic disorder is “a type of chronic mental illness in which you can't stop thinking about a flaw with your appearance — a flaw that is either minor or imagined. “ However, I think there is a different class of people- the formerly fat kids- who also suffer from a type of body image issue.
I was the fat kid. The kid no one would sit next to. The kid who was put on a diet and not allowed to have ice cream when her brothers got ice cream. Yet nothing my parents said or did helped me stop eating. I had a sweet tooth, and I ate endless amounts of candy. I knew I didn’t want to be fat. But my almost magnetic attraction towards candy overpowered any voice of reason that might have echoed in my head.
When I was 13 I got this book from the library, called “total girls wellness guide” or something like that, and it marked a turning point in my eating and weight issues. This book explained that how much you weighed depended on what you did over time. It also said that exercise could help you lose weight but that if you hadn’t been doing it at all, you should start slowly and build up.
This gentle, incremental approach was beneficial for me, but when I was 15 I became really obsessed with my weight and my body. I hated my body. I felt betrayed by my body. I wanted to be Barbie. Every calorie was counted. I started jogging long distances. I got down to 140 pounds (I’m 5’ 8” so that is a healthy weight for me). But I realized that I was so obsessed with food and exercise, that it had completely taken over my life.
When I started college and started working, my priorities changed. I worried less about not putting to many calories in my mouth and more about just having the money to buy food at all. My weight bounced around in college from a low of 155 to a high of 180. I never took up the obsessive diet or exercise again, but I was watchful. I made sure I didn’t get too big.
The problem is that the voice of criticism in my head was never really silenced. I still worry about getting explosively fat. I still eat things that I don’t necessarily like because I want to manage my weight. Come on, salad is not as much fun as nachos! Everyone knows it’s true! What about you? Have you struggled with your weight? Or do you constantly feel you have to battle negative self-talk about how you look? What have you found useful in improving your body image?
If you are looking for resources to help you improve your self-esteem and body image, womenshealth.gov has some great information about how to cultivate a positive image at this URL: http://www.womenshealth.gov/bodyimage/