Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

​The Battle of the Bulge: Women, Power and Feeding

It would be perpetuating a myth to say or even imply that women are, historically, foreigners to power. Women's power has historically been proscribed from the high places in government and the economy (unless you look at pre-history--but that is another article). However, women have almost always, cross-culturally, wielded power over food. Even in hunting and gathering societies, it was the women gatherers that provided daily sustenance for their clans, where the hunter's provisions were more ceremonial and glorified than substantive in nature. Women are deeply linked with agriculture. There is persuasive historical evidence that women developed (or "invented") agriculture; most agricultural deities are female (e.g. mother Earth, corn mother).


And in today's societies, it is still primarily the women who do the gathering (shopping), preparing, cooling, and serving of food. Furthermore, since the industrial revolution, having power over food has taken on more and more significance. It has become (more than before) the power to give or withhold sustenance and nurture--something all human beings, particularly children, need for their physical and emotional survival. Since most other avenues to power had been blocked, the power over food and nurturance has tended to be overused, abused, and clung to by women for many generations.
The stereotypical fill-in-blank (Jewish, Italian) mother is famous for such uses and abuses. Forced overfeeding, use of food as reward or enticement, and withholding of food as punishment are all familiar methods to most of us.

In this most recent women's movement (women's rights movements go back to women's enslavement thousands of years ago) the struggle to embrace wider circles of power and let go of food and self-abuse has been a violent and confusing one. We women are starving ourselves, starving our children and loved ones, gorging ourselves, gorging our children and loved ones, alternating between starving and gorging, purging, obsessing, and all the while hating, pounding and wanting to remove that which makes us female: our bodies, our curves, our pear-shaped selves.

This battle was chronicled daily in the American comic strip "Cathy" from 1976-2010, but unfortunately most of the humour is still relevant today. We can all see that Cathy's move up the corporate ladder is not without repercussions. She hates her body, swears to diet every other day, binges on alternate days, all against the backdrop of a love/get-away-from relationship with her overly nurturing and self-sacrificial mother. For Cathy to succeed without ambivalence in a world that was proscribed from her mother, she would have to leave the "woman who gave up everything for her" behind. And so she takes her with her. She has a successful career, but she and her mother cozy up over the diet coke and pizza and moan over their bodies together. It is, if you think about it, an ingenious solution to an emotionally wrenching problem.

Even today, women are made to feel they have no right to feed themselves when they are hungry--the most basic human need there is! While asserting one need, many women will often (unconsciously) deny another, as an expression of their fundamental feelings of non-entitlement. Why is it that to "succeed" in so many fields--i.e., to "climb the ladder"--so many women are expected to take up less space (get thinner)? I see this image of women climbing higher and higher while getting thinner and thinner, until the most "powerful" women eventually disappear into thin air.

There is another solution, but it is more painful. And that is to let go of the power over food in exchange for new forms of power. Letting go of the power struggle with food means returning it to its original purpose of mere sustenance. It means letting go of the battle--no more diets - that includes "Keto" and other fads that pretend to be "healthy eating plans," binges, puke-ins, weigh-ins, or bathing-suit competitions. Just hunger--> self-feed--> satiation and on with life. This is no easy task, and it brings innumerable complications, especially since other forms of power are not so accessible to women in these days of the feminization of poverty when our rights to control over our bodies are being revoked at every turn. Nor are the traditionally male forms of power necessarily comfortable or even acceptable to many women. Some of us might prefer to challenge the very structures of hierarchical power itself. All this sounds exhausting. The battle of the bulge is safer--at least it's familiar.
 
To feel "entitled" to take up space, to take our place in the world and share power equally with men, we must first learn to give up this drive to "trade off" one need for another. We must somehow, gradually, haltingly, but persistently lay claim to each and every human right, one after the other. To do this, we must make use of the greatest source of strength and power we have: each other.

Note: I do not mean to imply that this is the only reason for the continuing epidemic of eating disorders; individual situations are very unique and complex. But it may shed some light on the society-wide epidemic of fat-phobia and diet mania, an atmosphere that encourages individual eating and body obsessions to thrive.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Dieting is Bad for You

Dieting is Bad for You. But I Don't Diet Anymore - I know Better!

 

Don't be fooled - If you're "only trying to eat healthier," ask yourself these questions:

  1. Does this "new way of eating lifestyle" require that I change my eating habits to omit or considerably limit one of the three major food groups that all humans need to survive: carbohydrates, proteins, or fats?
  2. Does this "fitness fat-burner menu" cause me to wait to eat for long periods while hungry or to stop eating before my physical appetite is satisfied?
  3. Does this "high nutrition program" require that I eat according to externally dictated menus and schedules, which distract me from my inner rhythms of hunger and satiation?

Food Group or Caloric Restriction = Thin = Better Health?


Thin, very temporarily yes. Better Health -No - Plus, studies show that the best way to gain weight AND to develop an eating problem is to restrict your diet (see below). 

Major Cause of Obesity Epidemic: Weight-Loss Attempts

  • Research on 17,000 children showed that twins who embarked on one intentional weight loss episode were two to three times more likely to become overweight compared to their non-dieting twin counterpart. Furthermore, the risk of becoming overweight increased in a dose-dependent manner, with each dieting episode. #1
  • A 1999 report on 4,193 women and 3,536 men participating in the Finnish Twin Cohort Study revealed that dieters were several times more likely than non-dieters to experience major weight gain (more than 22 pounds) during a follow-up lasting 15 years. (pp.31) #2
#1. Alison E. Field, S. Bryn Austin, C. Barr Taylor, Susan Malspeis, Bernard Rosner (2003)

#2. Korkelia, M., A Rissanen, J Kaprio, TIA Sorensen, & M Koskenvuo (1999)

According to a 2007 Meta-Study (a study of 31 other studies, internationally)

  • Diets do lead to short-term weight loss, on average of 5%–10% of the person's body weight
  • These losses are not maintained
  • The more time that elapses between the end of a diet and the follow-up, the more weight is regained.
  • Among patients who were followed for two or more years, 83% gained back more weight than they lost
  • In studies with the longest follow-up times (of four or five years post-diet), the weight regain trajectories continued to increase suggesting that if participants were followed for even longer, their weight would continue to increase. #3
#3 Mann, T., Tomiyama, AJ, Westling,E, Lew, AM, Samuels, B. (2007) Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments in American Psychologist Vol. 62, No. 3, 220–233

Fat Phobia Kills

A study of 36,000 students in Minnesota found that negative body image is associated with a higher suicide risk for girls #4

#4. American Association of University Women (1990). Shortchanging girls, shortchanging America: Full data report. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women.

Overweight girls are far more likely to engage in dangerous practices (fasting, smoking, vomiting, taking laxatives) to lose weight than normal weight girls #5

#5. Wertheim, E., Paxton, S., & Blaney, S. (2009)

The Mayo Clinic researchers note that many adolescents with eating disorders have had a history of being overweight or obese #6

#6. Sim, L.A., Lebow, J, & Billings, M, (2013)

A longitudinal study published in 1999 showed that girls who dieted severely were 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder #7

#7.  Patton et al (1999)

Even here in Aotearoa New Zealand:

Studies indicate that although 75% of 15 year old girls were ‘healthy weights’ 68% of them wanted to weigh less #8

#8. Worsley, Worsley, McConnon & Silva (1990)

Of the girls that reported dieting, most had started prior to the age of 13 years. #9

#9. Fear, Bulik & Sullivan (1996) 

We have known since the 70's that dietary restriction sets a dangerous trend, And we now know that this trend is far more "dangerous" than the "obesity epidemic" that gets so much more press but that fails to mention that the health risks of obesity are much more related to a lack of physical exercise than to BMI. It is perfectly possible to be "fit and fat"" where it is less possible to be "fit and dieting."

Why Do We Keep Trying to Lose Weight by Restricting Food Types or Intake?


In spite of all this, our drive to diet and get thinner and thinner is getting worse not better. And our children and teenagers continue to get the wrong messages

  • Parental messages about body image and teasing by others (e.g. peers and/or family) have been highly correlated with body image dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptoms #10

#10. Thelen and Cormier, 1995

Because Dieting is Addicting

Compulsions and addictions are defined by one's inability to stop behaviour in spite of known harmful consequences. Given all of the evidence above, why would anyone want to deliberately deprive themselves of food anymore? We know it causes eating disorders, suicidality, and ultimately either death or greater weight gain - this evidence isn't even new. Yet we keep doing it - why?

Dieting, like many addictions, creates false promises. Like gamblers who know full well that the odds are against them, most dieters think they can buck the odds because the false promise - thinness and an end to weight discrimination - is too seductive to ignore or dismiss. The pain of continuing to suffer teasing, discrimination, and judgments overshadows the likelihood of dieting failure. No one wants to really believe they can't diet their way to thinness - it feels too hopeless, too awful. And although exercise offers an escape from most of the physical health risks of a high body weight, it can't promise a quick perfect body. And we humans are famous for looking at the short term results and ignoring the long term, if it doesn't suit us. A gambler makes one big win, then continues to gamble until it's all gone and then some - this is the same thinking as "diet think."

More Myths

BMI, or the Body Mass Index, was originally developed as a statistical tool to study large populations over time. It is completely irrelevant to individual weight and does not even distinguish between weight caused by fat or muscle. Similar to that old fashioned standby, the Metropolitan Life Height and Weight Charts, the original uses for which these devices were developed has gotten completely distorted. Met Life was originally an actuarial study - a statistical population study based on people who buy life insurance. What happened to scientific measures - controlled, double-blind studies that limit the variables they measure? When it comes to weight, our scientific standards seem to take a back seat. This is because no one, including doctors, is immune to cultural pressures, assumptions and stereotypes. Although medical practitioners the world over are trained to used the BMI now as they were the Met Life Charts in the past, they are rarely taught that they are highly inaccurate in evaluating individual weight and fitness.

One of the medical criteria of anorexia nervosa: body weight 15 % below a weight that is considered "normal", is met by the majority of models and beauty contestants.

So, What Size Should I Be?

Since there are no clear markers for healthy body weight that are free from highly questionable social standards, I would maintain that healthy body weight is highly individual and relative, given the various causes of weight gain

Perhaps it is best to consider the size a person naturally returns to after a long period of both non-compulsive eating and consistent exercise commensurate with the person' s physical health and condition. We must learn to advocate for ourselves and our children to aspire to a naturally determined size, even though that will often mean confronting misinformed family, friends, and media advertising again and again.

If you want to know if you are fit, ask yourself how you feel. Do you have energy or do you drag through the day? Are you physically active at least a half hour a day (this means pushing yourself to do something that causes you to pant and sweat)? If not, consider increasing your level of physical activity in such a way that it is woven into your day (e.g. walking or cycling instead of driving).

The benefits of regular physical activity have been demonstrated scientifically again and again - as have the disadvantages of restrictive dieting. It makes sense that we need to be active - we were hunter- gatherers for 100,000 years and had to travel huge distances to follow the edible flora and fauna. We're supposed to move around - and then we're supposed to eat! 

Are you Overeating?


Do you feel overstuffed a good deal of the time, or do you rarely let yourself feel hungry? Do you eat to cope with issues that have nothing to do with hunger? 

What is Non-Compulsive Eating?

Simply stated, non-compulsive eating means eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied. This involves being able to distinguish emotional hunger from physical hunger, and satiation from over-fullness. This approach, combined with regular physical activity, over the long term,will bring about a healthy ratio of fat to muscle, even if you don't end up looking like a fashion model.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Self Empowerment: Actualizing the Power Within



To experience empowerment we must act on a sense of self worth, value and give voice to our own needs, and give equal validity to our own needs as to others'. As we develop a sense of empowerment, we begin to discover that a conflict of needs actually can present us with a creative challenge to imagine solutions that can empower all parties involved (rather than fearing that a conflict of needs must necessarily result in a "win-lose" battle).  I offer the following vignette as an example:
Mary does child care every night so John can go out with the "boys".  Mary becomes more and more resentful of John and their young children.  Finally, Mary initiates an assertive "conflict".  She says:

"I understand that you work hard all day and need time in the evenings to relax and unwind, but I've never pointed out to you that for you to relax and unwind by going out every night, you are counting on me to stay home with the kids, which is what I do all day.  So I don't get to relax and unwind and I become more resentful toward you and the kids and unpleasant to be around.  I need escape time too.  I'd like us to work out a way that we can both get what we need."
John agreed that Mary had become very unpleasant to be around (and didn't hesitate to tell her so.)  But after a number of arguments, they came around to agreeing on an experiment.  The experiment was that once a week John would go out while Mary watched the children, once a week Mary would go out while John watched the children, and once a week they both went out while Mary's mother watched their children.  The other two evenings they all stayed home as a family.  After two weeks of this experiment, not only did Mary feel better, but John felt better as well because he was feeling closer to his children and getting less resentment from his wife--and he still had time to see his friends.

The word "compromise" does not adequately describe the process of creating a "win-win" solution.  Compromise implies that neither side really gets what they want, whereas in "win-win" solutions, both sides get as much if not more than they wanted originally.  Assertiveness means acting from a place of respect – for self and other – and assuming equal value to the needs of self and other.  This presents many dilemmas that can also be seen as possibilities.  Power--the power of creative problem solving and acting--is mobilized rather than suppressed.

Power
Traditionally power has meant different things for men and women, taking on more positive connotations for men.  Think of the following words, first for men and then for women.  Pay attention to the feelings they evoke:

Men
Women
Powerful
Powerful
Aggressive
Aggressive
Forceful
Forceful
Ambitious
Ambitious
Assertive
Assertive
Competitive
Competitive
Authoritative
Authoritative
      
1. Women have traditionally been expected to defer to men, and have internalized the dominant cultural expectations of females as submissive and powerless
and
 2. There is something wrong with the present system of power distribution for all people, which we, as women, may be particularly sensitive to, having so deeply learned to respect the importance of other people's needs.

 As we endeavor to compete with men as their equals, some of us feel there is something sour about climbing up a ladder on top of other worthy people's heads, something deceitful about the notion of inferiority and superiority in our fellow human beings. We see that to gain others must lose, and having been relegated to losing for thousands of years, we may not feel comfortable inducing that experience in others.

When some people have less power than others do because external forces (e.g. money, status, physical strength, military force) block them, many problems arise for both the "winners" and the "losers".  The "losers" become afraid to express their needs because they fear (often rightfully) that what little they have will be taken from them.  They then become afraid to even feel their needs, to admit to themselves that they want something.  They become immobilized.  And, in certain critical ways, they stop growing; cease to thrive; development (the Power from Within) is blocked. The "winners" then miss out on the experience of sharing with equals and become self-preoccupied.  Their development is also blocked.
Let's consider these questions:

1. How do we reclaim our rights to power and effectiveness in the world without doing so at the expense of others?

2. How can we, as women, integrate the profound knowledge we gain from mothering and being nurtured by our mothers -- i.e., that we are each special, unique, and worthy in our own right, into a culture where value is so often seen in material terms?

We may want to begin by developing our own vocabulary to describe our experiences and perceptions.  Without words to communicate our experiences, we are trapped and limited.  If power only means the power to force others to do our will, we will feel that power is foreign to us, awkward and unfamiliar.  But power means many things, and many aspects of power can feel right for us.
I offer the following words and phrases to begin reclaiming our own vocabulary taken from Simos 1987 - (see below*)

 Power Over: the ability to force others to do your will through physical or financial coercion.  The power inherent in social or economic positions, or physical size or strength, regardless of skill or ability.

 Shared Power: power whose goal is to uplift or teach others to bring them to parity, as with a parent/child, teacher/student, or psychotherapist/client relationship

 Referred Power: the power others give us because they value, respect, and/or are attached us

 Expertise Power: the power others give us because they count on our knowledge and judgment

 Power With: the power to be effective interpersonally, to persuade, to inspire (not “command” or force) respect

Power From Within: the power of growth and development inherent in all living things.  It is the power to change, to overcome obstacles, to face our own fears, to learn new skills, to fail, and to try again.

Power can be used to destroy or create, to belittle others and over-inflate the self, or to belittle the self and over-inflate others.  We may call the use of power to harm or belittle the self passive power, and to harm or belittle others aggressive power. In contrast, assertiveness can be seen as the use of power to enhance and respect both self and other.  Assertiveness training, then, can be a way for women to reclaim their rights to power and effectiveness in the world without doing so at the expense of others.

Recommend this on Google Plus  
 * new vocabulary words taken from Miriam Simos (Starhawk) Truth or Dare, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1987

 Suggested Reading

Jean Baker Miller, M.D. (1976). Toward a New Psychology of Women. Boston: Beacon Press
Pamela Butler (1981) Self-Assertion for Women. New York: Harper & Row Publishers
Margaret McIntosh () Feeling Like a Fraud a Work In Progress Paper of the Stone Center for Developmental Studies at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass., 02181

Miriam Simos (Starhawk) (1987) Truth or Dare. New York: Harper & Row Publishers 

Friday, February 17, 2012

Improving Body Image

"If we place pornography and the tyranny of slenderness alongside one another we have the two most significant obsessions of our culture, and both of them focused upon a woman's body." -Kim Chernin
Body image involves our perception, imagination, emotions, and physical sensations of and about our bodies. It s not static- but ever changing; sensitive to changes in mood, environment, and physical experience. It is not based on fact. It is psychological in nature, and much more influenced by self-esteem than by actual physical attractiveness as judged by others. It is not inborn, but learned. This learning occurs in the family and among peers, but these only reinforce what is learned and expected culturally.

In this culture, we women are starving ourselves, starving our children and loved ones, gorging ourselves, gorging our children and loved ones, alternating between starving and gorging, purging, obsessing, and all the while hating, pounding and wanting to remove that which makes us female: our bodies, our curves, our pear-shaped selves.

"Cosmetic surgery is the fastest growing 'medical' specialty.... Throughout the 80s, as women gained power, unprecedented numbers of them sought out and submitted to the knife...." - Naomi Wolf

The work of feminist object relations theorists such as Susie Orbach (author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, and Hunger Strike: Anorexia as a Metaphor for Our Age) and those at The Women's Therapy Centre Institute (authors of Eating Problems: a Feminist Psychoanalytic Treatment Model) has demonstrated a relationship between the development of personal boundaries and body image. Personal boundaries are the physical and emotional borders around us.. A concrete example of a physical boundary is our skin. It distinguishes between that which is inside you and that which is outside you. On a psychological level, a person with strong boundaries might be able to help out well in disasters- feeling concerned for others, but able to keep a clear sense of who they are. Someone with weak boundaries might have sex with inappropriate people, forgetting where they end and where others begin. Such a person way not feel "whole" when alone.

Our psychological boundaries develop early in life, based on how we are held and touched (or not held and touched). A person who is deprived of touch as an infant or young child, for example, may not have the sensory information s/he needs to distinguish between what is inside and what is outside her/himself. As a result, boundaries may be unclear or unformed. This could cause the person to have difficulty getting an accurate sense of his/her body shape and size. This person might also have difficulty eating, because they might have trouble sensing the physical boundaries of hunger and fullness or satiation. On the other extreme, a child who is sexually or physically abused may feel terrible pain and shame or loathing associated to his/her body. Such a person might use food or starvation to continue the physical punishments they grew familiar with in childhood.

Developing a Healthy Body Image

Here are some guidelines (Adapted from BodyLove: Learning to Like Our Looks and Ourselves, Rita Freeman, Ph.D.) that can help you work toward a positive body image:

1. Listen to your body. Eat when you are hungry.
2 .Be realistic about the size you are likely to be based on your genetic and environmental
history..
3. Exercise regularly in an enjoyable way, regardless of size.
4. Expect normal weekly and monthly changes in weight and shape
5. Work towards self acceptance and self forgiveness- be gentle with yourself.
6. Ask for support and encouragement from friends and family when life is stressful.
7. Decide how you wish to spend your energy -- pursuing the "perfect body image" or enjoying
family, friends, school and, most importantly, life.

Think of it as the three A's....

Attention -- Refers to listening for and responding to internal cues (i.e., hunger, satiety,
fatigue).

Appreciation -- Refers to appreciating the pleasures your body can provide.

Acceptance -- Refers to accepting what is -- instead of longing for what is not.

Healthy body weight is the size a person naturally returns to after a long period of both non-compulsive eating* and consistent exercise commensurate with the person' s physical health and condition. We must learn to advocate for ourselves and our children to aspire to a naturally determined size, even though that will often mean confronting misinformed family, friends, and media advertising again and again.

*Simply stated, non-compulsive eating means eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied. This involves being able to distinguish emotional hunger from physical hunger, and satiation from over fullness. Link to: Compulsive Overeating for more information. Link to: Bibliography to view sources.


Click here to find out about distance learning programs for therapists
 and here to find out about general training and supervision options.

Bibliography

The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness, by Kim Chernin, Harper & Row, 1982.

BodyLove: Learning to Like Our Looks and Ourselves, Rita Freeman, Ph.D., Harper & Row, 1988

200 Ways to Love the Body You Have by Marcia Germaine Hutchinson, EdD , The Crossing Press, 1999

Fat is a Feminist Issue: A Self Help Guide for Compulsive Eaters, by Susie Orbach,

Hunger Strike: Anorexia as a Metaphor for Our Age, by Susie Orbach, Norton Books, 1986

The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf, Doubleday, 1991 to buy click: The Beauty Myth

Eating Problems: a Feminist Psychoanalytic Treatment Model, by The Women's Therapy Centre Institute, Basic Books, 1994