Dear Anna: I need your help. I’m recently out of a relationship and I’ve gained a lot of weight. I hate the way I look and it’s come to the point where I avoid mirrors and dress in the dark. I get depressed more and more every day with how much I weigh. What can I do to get myself back? —Weighty Concerns
Dear WC,
Do me a small favor and write this down on a piece of paper: “My self-worth is not predicated by how much I weigh.” Because it’s really, really, really not. In fact, research has shown that being underweight is significantly more dangerous for our health and life span than being obese. It doesn’t matter how much you weigh. I could chop my arm off and that would lose me 15 pounds (or however much an arm weighs. I don’t actually know). What matters is how you FEEL.
None of us are born hating our bodies. Self-loathing and poor body image are things we learn. The bad news is those messages we get—about how we suck and are broken and how everything would be better for us if we lost 15 pounds—aren’t going away. The good news is that we can unlearn those crap messages and start treating ourselves with compassion, which will make you FAR HEALTHIER than eating diet yogurt all the time and dressing in the dark.
What’s the one “trick” you need to learn to stop hating your body? Your mind. Hear me out. I know that having self-awareness doesn’t readily negate the years and years of shame and impossible cultural standards that we (especially women) are taught to believe in, but it is a step in the right direction. How then do you “get yourself back”?
By not beating yourself up. It’s tempting to think constant self-criticism is a motivating force, as in, “if we don’t tell ourselves that we’re fat and lazy, we won’t be motivated to change the things we don’t like about ourselves.” But the opposite is true. Self-criticism makes us not only feel worse, it also makes us perform worse, according to research by Kristin Neff, associate professor and author of the aptly titled and excellent book “Self-Compassion.”
Research shows that the more self-compassionate a person is, the less anxious and depressed they are, and the more they are actually motivated to succeed in life. Neff has several helpful exercises to increase one’s self-compassion on her website, if you are so inclined. One of the most effective techniques I’ve found to stop hating on myself (aside from affirmations, which I talked about last week) is to make a list of everything you like about your body. Don’t focus AT ALL on the negatives—only the positives. Do you have great eyebrows? Shapely collar bones? Supple skin? Are your eyes dreamy? Is your hair lustrous? Are your forearms an ornamental bouquet of delight? Write it all down and look at the list every day. It won’t be easy, and in fact you’ll probably go through a kind of mini-breakup with yourself by doing this, with all the grief emotions that come with it, but eventually, if you keep it up, you’ll start to let those self-critical thoughts go and see yourself as you are: fucking beautiful and magnificent and lovely. Your body is a damn wonder and it deserves to be celebrated. Start throwing it a parade and you’ll see how much better you are for it.
Also, in a similar vein, cut out all the media shit that makes you feel worse about yourself (for me it’s the Victoria’s Secret catalog. My bras may now be all ratty things from Target, but my self-esteem has vastly improved). Don’t watch or read or listen to media that makes you feel self-critical. Remember, it’s not motivating. It’s the opposite.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t also look at your habits, foods or exercise routines and figure out if/how those might be contributing to your negative self-image. But the most impactful change you can make with regard to your body is not cutting out carbs or joining a spinning class; it’s learning to respect, love and care for it relentlessly, even when we’re sad or upset or more jiggly than we’d like to be.
Anna Pulley is a RedEye special contributor.
