image via Wikipedia
I broke my bathroom scale the other day. There’s an ugly black gash down the middle of the read-out to remind me. Okay, so I broke it by tripping on it while mopping—not with the crushing force of my body weight. It is sort of symbolic, though, as I am topping the scale at my highest body weight of all time. Let me be clear: I am not that overweight. Certainly, I am more at the Hobbit-esque-pleasantly-plump end of the spectrum, rather than the show-you-from-the-neck-down-on-an-obesity-news-story end of the spectrum. To be objective about it, I am about 22 pounds over “normal” weight for someone of my height, according to the US government’s Body Mass Index (BMI) chart. I am about 40 pounds over my ideal weight. I have been a bit chubby since right after college a decade ago, and have been flagellating myself about it ever since. Worse, I have started yo-yo dieting. I know the problem is not having mastered the art of cooking for myself and eating at home, combined with basically neglecting exercise.
Psychologists, like others in the helping professions, tend to feel guilty about their own flaws and hypocrisies, and with good reason: people don’t respect the professional advice of those who can’t practice what they preach. Who wants to be told to quit smoking by the doctor they just saw sneaking a smoke break? As a perfectionist and a psychologist, my personal struggle has been with weight loss and healthy behaviors. I’m aware that a few extra pounds is not a terrible cross to bear, relatively speaking; nevertheless, it has done a pretty good job of keeping me stuck in a cycle of guilt, self-blame, and an infuriating struggle for change. I’ve spent a stupidly long time—the whole decade of my 20’s—gaining and losing the same weight, berating myself for my weak will, and hating my body. What a waste of my hottest years.
I have tried over this past decade to use my knowledge of behavior change strategies and psychological functioning to “psychologize” myself. Surely, I’ve told myself, if anyone can be a shining example of mental and physical health, it’s you. While I don’t have the money for a full-time personal trainer and chef like Oprah does, I do have an embarrassment of other personal riches—a loving husband, caring friends, emotional stability, ok finances, and the ability to be completely selfish that is only possible when you don’t yet have kids. This clearly hasn’t solved the problem, although I’ve had numerous “aha moments” where I thought I had successfully “fixed” myself, once and for all. I have—to be fair to myself—had several true successes. I quit smoking and relapsed so many times that I finally kicked it for good. I’ve kept the weight off in the past for significant chunks of time. Yet here I am again, a champion couch potato at my highest weight ever. Blah.
According to the current research, close to 90-95% of people who lose weight through any diet and exercise program will be at or above their current weight in five years’ time. Let that sink in for a moment—any diet and exercise program. This is discouraging stuff. Maintaining weight loss is statistically rare to an extent I hadn’t realized before, meaning that nearly all the folks trying to lose weight are doomed to be on the same weight loss merry-go-round-from-Purgatory that I’m stuck riding.
So who are the statistically rare 5-10% of people who keep off the weight they lose? I was dismayed to learn that these are mostly people who pick up the habit of exercising their asses off. Weight loss programs often downplay this fact in order to avoid demoralizing people like myself who find jogging on a treadmill the equivalent in fun to a yearly pap smear, but it’s the truth. Weight maintainers tend to exercise for about an hour a day. Although my behavior change is slower in coming, I’ve accepted that I will never keep off the weight I lose unless I acquire a serious exercise habit. These are the facts.
So it’s time to change my approach. My weight and diet obsession hasn’t worked. Instead of setting weight loss goals, I’m focusing my coursework on the things that will get me there—the causes of thinness, not the end results. This seems like a very “duh” conclusion, but it is a mental change for me. When I meet my course goals of exercising nearly every day and cooking lots of fresh, vegetable-heavy fare at home, I probably won’t have much of a weight problem. I might even be back in the “normal” range by the end of this semester.
I’ve decided to resist the urge to buy another scale and have resolved keep my broken scale in my bathroom for the time being. I want it to be a reminder that my weight loss quest is in itself broken, that I’ve been chasing after the wrong thing. It represents me punishing my body instead of taking care of it. Despite what my brain tells itself when it catches a glimpse of my back-fat in the mirror, the number on the scale doesn’t matter nearly as much as whether I am treating my body like the priceless entity that it is.
