"Whats the big deal? Either you have self control and you do it, or you're lazy and you don't."
The other thing that people get agitated about is that throughout Dr Beck's book that I use heavily in my group program- she requires you to 'give yourself credit' every day for every good decisions you make about food and exercise.
People always say to me "thank you very much for your therapisty hippy feel good love everybody garbage- but I am not going to be a dork that says 'yay me' each time I don't eat a stupid cookie"
With all due humble respect, both of those outlooks are wrong, very wrong. And this is exactly why:
For those of you who haven't heard about this- this is the video above of Rachel, the past seasons winner of 'The Biggest Loser'. On the biggest loser contestants compete against one another to lose weight, and then at the end, they all go home for a few months, and the three finalists weight in at a finale, where the winner gets a quarter of a million dollars.
Although it's been 15 seasons, this is one of the first times that the overall winner came out looking, well, anorexic. Rachel is an athletic person, and in episodes before this you saw her as muscular and fit looking. Here, at the finale, she is gaunt, she trips up the stairs, and seems to have lost all the awesome muscle she had in her arms/legs.
Anorexia is a very serious illness where in a person's mind they literally cannot see their thinness the way other people around them can, they see a fat body in the mirror. They treat themselves like a slave driver, have a lot of strict and rigid rules around eating unhealthily minuscule amounts of food, and can only see the "mistakes" they make without feeling any pride or strength in their bodies.
But I know a lot of people who don't even have full blown anorexia, they treat themselves, their bodies, and their lives as if there's no sense in feeling accomplishment, it's all about pushing themselves harder, stronger, faster, and with no mercy. Often we see that backfire, way before anorexia sets in.
People who push themselves like that, without stopping to be kind and take care of themselves mentally and physically, often times rebel against themselves. Often you will see people binge crazy amounts of food, or stop exercising completely for weeks at a time, or cringe when anyone compliments their appearance genuinely.
The ability to be thin, healthy, and fit, MUST be accompanied by the ability to build yourself up on the inside. To take pride in your gains and when you overcome something. Otherwise, when you treat yourself harshly, it's as if you are taking a baseball bat to the very mind and soul that you're counting on to get you to where you need to be. You're breaking down and minimizing the very body that you're supposed to be taking care of in this life.
One of the greatest signs of mental health in this arena is the ability to be cognitively flexible, to be strong, and still to feel lazy every once in a while. To make lots of good food decisions, and to make a mistake every once in a while. To plan in a treat, and be flexible if you decide to take that treat on a different day, but still strong enough to not eat more than planned. This also includes the ability to not make rigid rules, to not berate yourself and feel shame every time you "mess up", and to truly believe inside of you that you can do it because you're awesome.
Rachel from the biggest loser, I think, went to far. At some point along the way she forgot the point of this health journey. You can see it on the faces of the trainers when they see her, they look away, horrified. This is not what they taught her, this is not what people who make people healthy want for their clients.
The moral of this story is this- mark every health accomplishment and self control decision you make with a conscious statement giving yourself credit for that feat. And don't ever discount the role of the mind and mental health in our quest to get healthy. The goal of this is, and should always be, the healthiest whole you- not ever about empty numbers on a scale. And the second you or anyone loses sight of what this is supposed to be about- it's time to reassess big time.
For Rachel, I hope you get back to that fit healthy girl you wanted to be when you started the show. I think all of America wants that for you.
(and for people here in Chicago, I am starting a new group soon, contact me if you're interested)
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