The Feline Diet

My cats have no problem with their bodies. They display them shamelessly, give themselves endless tongue baths, and when they want affection, nudge themselves right under my laptop, book, etc., and assume (rightfully) that it is now "their turn."

My cats also have no problem with food. Despite the lack of opposable thumbs, they eat whenever they want, whatever they want. They don't worry about empty calories or getting enough vegetables. They are not ashamed to play with their food - especially if it's still moving.

After many years of careful observation, I have noticed that my cats do follow some rules about eating and exercise. Since my cats have the best self esteem of anyone I know, I think maybe we could benefit from their diet. So here it is:

1. Never eat anything unless you're in the mood for it. Unless you happen to be really, really hungry. Then eat the smallest amount that will get you through till something better is served.
2. Eat the exact same thing for 3 - 5 days. Then don't eat it again for 3 - 5 weeks (if ever).
3. Play with your food.
4. As soon as you smell chicken, stop what you're doing and sing an opera aria until you get a bite.
5. As soon as you smell fish, be really nice to the person making it until they give you some. Then, ignore them as before.
6. Eat chicken skin. It's the best part. If there's any more, have more. Feel free to lick the plate unashamedly.
7. Take a long sponge bath after every meal or snack.
8. Take a long nap after every sponge bath.

Exercise:

1. Sprint for 30 seconds after you poop.
2. Stretch whenever you shift from one activity to another.
3. Stretch or take an immediate sponge bath whenever you do something embarrassing.
4. Stretch whenever you've been napping for more than 30 minutes (then nap some more).
5. Jump off impossibly high things. If it's the middle of the night, jump onto something terribly loud and crashy.
6. Jump onto incredibly high things. If you miss, see step 3.
7. Knead things.
8. Chase invisible beings.
9. Crouch low to the ground and stalk prey.
10. Pounce when you find something good. If in mid pounce you discover you were mistaken, become completely dorky for about ten seconds and do a Jerry Lewis imitation. Then go back to step 3.
11. When you find a sunny spot, position yourself square in the middle of it and roll around on your back. Then nap till the sun moves.
12. Feel free to nap between (or in the middle of) any exercise.

The Disease of Dieting

When I lose the weight, then I'll...

If I exercise 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week, I'll burn an extra...

I can eat 3 ounces of chicken, 1/2 an apple, and 1 cup of skim...

In 16 weeks I should be a size...

Are these the kinds of thoughts rolling around your head? If they are then you've got diet-itis. Diet-itis is a severely under-diagnosed disease marked by compulsive counting and planning for when you get thinner.

This disease goes undiagnosed because in our culture, thinness is seen as a desireable goal - one to attain at almost any cost.

What are the costs of diet-itis?

• The primary cost is terrible anxiety. All of the counting and planning is really a way to distract themselves from the fear of gaining weight and all that that fear symbolizes (rejection, abandonment, judgment...).
  
• Another cost is loss of time. People spend so much time counting, weighing, measuring, planning, fantasizing, and comparing, that they don't ever get to live in the moment.
  
• Along with the loss of time, is the loss of living fully. Since permission to live fully is contingent on being a certain weight or size, pleasure, fun, relationships, careers and all kinds of experiences are off limits for people with this disease.
  
• In the most severe cases, people develop eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder - in which the feelings of shame, chaos and anxiety turn into eating behaviors of severe control or loss of control.
  

If you (or someone you love) has diet-itis, be kind, gentle and patient. Remember that under the compulsion to restrict food or burn calories lies the fear of being judged and rejected.

While it seems like the way out is to comply with social values and lose weight, this only compounds the problem. Instead, the way out is to develop an unconditionally accepting "inner ally." A part of the self that NEVER judges or rejects, but provides compassion and kindness for the pain, fear and shame.

For help developing this inner ally, therapy and hypnosis are invaluable. Another amazing resource are the Rememberings and Celebrations cards offered by Robyn Posin at www.forthelittleonesinside.com.

Have you seen "How to Look Good Naked"?

When I first heard about this show, I felt a mixture of hope and trepidation. Would this really be a show about self acceptance? Or would it be an excuse to further shame women? Much to my relief, the first episode was kind and supportive.

As a therapist, I loved how the host, Carson, helped Layla see herself through the eyes of others - as a real, normal woman. So much of what we need to feel good about ourselves is a "reality check." And in a world where we park ourselves in front of a box of actresses and models who are abnormally thin, tucked, lifted and airbrushed, it's hard to know what normal (and beautiful) really is.

While the transformation from shame to self-acceptance happened way faster than I see in my clients, the process is the same. We need to transform our inner critic into an ally. One great way to do this is by confronting the distortions our inner critic holds about our bodies. We tend to see ourselves as less attractive than others see us. And for some reason, we convince ourselves that our distortions are correct - that others are just "being nice."

We live in a distorted culture - one that tells us we must have thin, smooth, muscled, long limbed bodies in order to be lovable and/or successful. This is completely false. We need love - unconditional, supportive, kind, respectful love. We need to know we are entitled to be our best selves no matter our size, shape, age, etc.

Thanks to Carson and to Lifetime for creating and airing this show. Now, let's see if they can ditch the diet commercials!!!

Inner Child Work

I recently attended a workshop with Carol Munter – one of the authors of Overcoming Overeating. She co-led with Robyn Posin, a psychotherapist from Ojai who has a website based on her inner-child work, called “For the Little Ones Inside.”

Robyn has spent much of her life devoted to honoring, allowing, cultivating and celebrating the feminine, nurturing and loving aspects of the self. In the workshop, I realized that those of us struggling with food, weight and body image OFTEN have deep mothering wounds – feelings or beliefs that we were too much for our mothers – that we wore them out or needed too much. Some of us experienced competition with our mothers. Others felt controlled by our mothers. And still others of us learned to distance ourselves from our mothers, valuing our fathers’ ways of being – for whatever reason.

These mothering wounds stay with us into adulthood, leaving us always HUNGRY for:

• Unconditional love and acceptance
• Recognition of our feminine strength and power
• Respect for our intuitive knowing
• Permission to move at our own pace, in our own ways, as we give birth to ideas, experiences and aspects of ourselves

Our relationship with food is but a doorway to FEEDING our hearts, souls and minds.

For more information about Robyn’s work, visit www.forthelittleonesinside.com. Be sure to click her link, Eating My Way Home.

Edna Turnblad

Have you seen Hairspray (the remake) yet? I LOVE this movie. And I especially love watching the transformation of Edna Turnblad (played by John Travolta) from frumpy, shameful, shut-in, to glorious, glamorous activist.

With the encouragement of daughter Tracy (Nikki Blonsky) and Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah), Edna realizes that it's okay to "live large." It doesn't hurt to have a husband (Christopher Walken playing Wilbur Turnblad) who really loves and appreciates Edna for exactly who she is.

But is this "happy ending" just a movie fantasy? NO!

It's really important when you're working on size and self-acceptance to remember that the movies (and tv and magazines) usually portray a very skewed view of human (especially women's) bodies. The average woman in the United States wears a size 14. That's AVERAGE (aka normal). If you believe what you see in the media, it's too easy to compare yourself and fall short.

Real women come in all shapes and sizes. We have fat deposits on our hips, bellies and thighs. Our boobs are uneven. We get acne and wrinkles. AND, we find partners who love us and desire us, exactly as we are (just like Edna).

If this is hard to believe, go outside. Walk around a mall, a supermarket, anywhere that people congregate. Notice who's alone and who's together. You won't see all the perfect people coupled up and the imperfect single. You'll see a mix.

Love isn't about perfection. It's about connection.

Pressure to be Thin

A couple of years ago, a radio commercial for some diet product announced, "No one wants to be fat!" We take this statement for granted in our culture. In fact, it may be an understatement. We are conditioned to fear fat, to feel disgusted by fat in our food and on our bodies. We come up with all kinds of judgments about fat people, assuming that if someone is fat, she must be lazy or weak. He must lack willpower or just not care about himself.

When I ask my students and clients why they want to be thin, the answer always boils down to this: They don't want to be judged or treated badly based on their size, weight or shape. If you read my last post on anxiety, you can see how the fear of judgment can actually lead to compulsive eating! We want to feel "good enough." If we feel fat (not good enough) we get anxious. Needing to soothe that anxiety, we eat.

It makes sense that we are meant to come in all different shapes in sizes. In nature, that's the way it works! What doesn't make sense is assigning a value to one size or shape over another. We all deserve to feel attractive, worthwhile, secure, and loveable regardless of our size or weight. It helps to look at the prejudice against fat through the same lens as any other prejudice. We know that it's not okay to judge or discriminate against women, people of color, or people in wheelchairs. We need help to realize that it's also not okay to judge or discriminate against people of different sizes.

We need this help because we are conditioned by the culture we live in. We internalize the messages we hear repeated over and over again. And the message we keep hearing is, "No one wants to be fat." I invite you to repeat a new message to yourself: "People are meant to come in all shapes and sizes."

Catch yourself when you have a judgmental thought about your body or someone else's. Question the judgment.

• Where is it really coming from?
• Is it just conditioning?
• Is it fear?
• What would you rather think?

Resources:

http://www.bodypositive.com/

Anxiety: The Heart of Addictions and Compulsions

We tend to think of Addictions and Compulsive behaviors as problems that stand alone. Once the addiction or compulsion is stopped, everything is okay. And while recovery from an addiction or compulsion is a huge relief, it is also essential to heal the underlying emotions. As George Carlin once said, “Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town."

So what’s under the addiction or compulsion?
It all starts with anxiety - specifically anxiety about being deficient, or “not good enough.” Typical indicators of this anxiety are:

• Perfectionism – striving to meet an unattainable ideal
• Avoidance – hiding imperfections from others
• Compensation – Having outward signs of success, but feeling like a fraud inside
• Judgment – Finding fault with everything and everyone; feeling frustrated that no one can measure up
• Self-Judgment – Finding fault with oneself
• Irritability – a toned-down (and socially more acceptable) expression of anger about having to prove one’s worth
• Depression – a “why bother” response to repeated failure at “measuring up”

How does Anxiety Become an Addiction or Compulsion?
Compulsions are actions we are compelled to take even though they don’t make sense and may have negative consequences. At first, the compulsion provides pleasure and relief from anxiety. Then, guilt or shame over the negative consequences becomes the focus of the thoughts and the unpleasantness. Compulsions are a great distraction.

Addictions operate like compulsions, but in addition to the psychological component, there is also a physical component. The body requires a substance to achieve equilibrium. Recovery entails healing both the body and the psyche.

The Anxiety-Compulsion Cycle
The belief “I’m not good enough” is self-perpetuating. The truth is, we are all flawed. That’s just normal. It’s the fantasy that we shouldn’t be flawed that causes distress and an unending pursuit of relief from that distress.

Addictions and compulsions provide that relief for a while. Eventually, the addiction or compulsion creates more anxiety than relief. When this happens, people become obsessed with controlling their behavior. “I can stop anytime,” is the mantra, and indeed there are many “successful” days, months, even years when the new problem remains under control.

Often the success lies in transferring the obsessive thoughts to controlling the problem behavior (getting the monkey off your back). When we channel energy into dieting or abstinence, each day of success “proves” that we are “good enough.”

There’s just one problem. The original wounds that resulted in the belief about NOT being good enough are still there, unattended (this is the circus that George Carlin refers to). The positive feelings that result from successful abstinence are shaky at best, because they are conditional. One misstep or slip, and the negative self-judgment is re-confirmed.

Why Traditional Approaches Fail
Approaches like AA, Weight Watchers, or Clutterers Anonymous fail for three reasons.

1. By focusing on the addiction or compulsion, they give anxiety a new area of focus: doing the program “good enough.” The result is an addiction to AA or the gym or some other source of “help.”
2. Because they don’t heal the underlying anxiety, the risk for relapse is always high. Interestingly, both AA and dieting have a 95% failure rate after 3 years.
3. Traditional approaches inadvertently perpetuate the fear of judgment. In AA and other 12-step groups, people count their days of abstinence. If they “slip,” they have to start over at day one. It’s like being a bad kid who’s sent to the back of the line. With dieting, it’s much the same. As long as you’re on the diet you’re “good.” As soon as you go off, you’re “bad.”

So What’s the Answer?
Identifying and healing the original wounds that set the whole thing into motion.

These wounds are frequently the result of criticism and judgment by family members, teachers, peers or other important people as we’re growing up. We internalize this judgment and develop our own “inner critic” – the voice in our own minds which is often more harsh than the original criticism.

When we identify the source of these wounds as adults, we realize that those original messages were inaccurate and distorted. We also come to see that the expectation that we become “perfect” is unrealistic and unnecessary. These realizations allow us to form more appropriate and realistic beliefs and expectations about ourselves and others. We can relax into our imperfections and come to like ourselves as we are, unconditionally.

While this work is neither simple or easy, it is incredibly rewarding and effective. Not only do you get to enjoy life without addictions or compulsions, you get to live with a person (YOU) who is kind, respectful, forgiving, nurturing encouraging…in short, you get to love yourself.