Are You Supporting Your Best Body?
6When I lost 80 lbs the first time, I was a young 18 year old with a desire to show 
off my new body and to make those boys, who had always ignored my overweight self take notice! For years, at the start of each summer, I fantasized about shedding the excess weight that I had carried since childhood and triumphantly returning to school after summer vacation…that never happened.
At some point during years of yearning to lose weight, I promised myself that if I ever got access to a gym, I would go. During my first semester at college, I discovered a gym on campus and my 80 lb weight loss journey began. I went to the gym almost every day for at least 2 to 3 hours, I ate 5 to 6 small meals a day, a suggestion I had read in a magazine or book, and passed out from exhaustion each night.
How to Guarantee Weight Gain
Recently, I got more clear about why I was doomed to experience rebound weight gain after my epic weight loss odyssey. Why was regaining the weight inevitable? Because my reasons for losing the weight were totally focused on what other people thought about me and proving something, not to myself, but to the external world. I forced my body to lose weight without developing the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual maturity to sustain it.
Within 7 years of losing that weight, I gained 120 pounds (150% of the weight that I had lost)! Twenty of those pounds was weight creep after dieting and the other 100 lbs I gained purely out of spite against the world, which included defying messages about what my body should look like. Although that crisis of faith caused an extreme amount of weight gain, my focus shifted from measuring myself based on external rules to beginning to create a life more on my own terms.
Find the Keys to Your Best Body
Once again, I find myself in the position where my body is 80 lbs lighter. Ironically, I gained 120 lbs in a 7 year period and have now released 80 lbs in another 7 year period. This second 80 lb shift was nothing like the first one. I didn’t use the standard two-part weight loss method of “go to the gym” and “watch what you eat.” Yes, I knew that I could “lose weight” through dieting and exercise. However, given my weight history, I was supremely confident that the pounds would return with some additional companions. So, why bother?
What did I do with my time instead? First, I started learning how to deal with my emotions without using food. Secondly, I stumbled upon a book called Intuitive Eating and learned to listen and respond to my hunger and fullness signals. Next, I developed a great love for walking outdoors and moving my body. All of these things represent the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual growing pains that were necessary for me to get out of the way of supporting my best body.
When I look at pictures of my sleek 18 year old physique, I know that body was not my best body. I only recently started consistently supporting my best body in the past 4 years. Even though I’m heavier now, every day in my body now is more of my best body than my vanity body ever was. So, how can you find and stay on the path of supporting your best body?
Identify Your Stumbling Blocks
There are many things that can get in the way of you experiencing your best body. Your list will be unique to you and your life. Here are some ideas:
1) Taking care of your body based on other people’s advice, rules and formulas, instead of learning from your own body and experience
2) Fixating on getting to a fixed number on a scale
3) Rebelling against OR trying to fit mass media ideas of beauty
4) Relying on external substances, like food, to cope with your emotions
5) Moving your body only when you’re required or exercising because you “should”
6) Eating food that results in you feeling like crap afterwards
7) Getting less sleep than you need
At some point or another, your best body has been stifled by one or more of items on the list above. Supporting your best body is not about perfection. Your best body has the opportunity to shine through and get stronger in each moment that you care for yourself in the ways that you need.
Take the Time to Fill in Your Blanks
Take the time to write down as many answers to the following statement for yourself:
“I know I’m supporting my best body when I (fill in the blank) _____________.”
You might come up with things like “…when I”: move my body in ways that I love, eat food that I love and help me feel good, take the time to relieve myself of stress and tension. After you have that list, you need to make the actions on that list a priority in your life and do those things!
If you are a chronic weight gainer or emotional eater, go ahead and include the 10 principles of intuitive eating on your fill-in the blank list. I guarantee that those principles will help you support your best body.
If you have difficulty creating your own list, ask your
fr
iends and family how they would answer that question, explore, and have fun.
Hold This Truth to Be Self-Evident
Too many of us don’t realize this truth: You have the opportunity to support and experience your best body every day, at whatever your current size and weight happens to be. And, supporting your best body is way bigger than targeting some number on a scale. In fact, many people waste so much energy fixating on numbers, like pounds and calories, that they miss the chance to appreciate and experience the body that they have right now. Your body can handle your weight, if you take consistent actions to support your best body. Make supporting your best body the goal.
Rhonda
July 29, 2011This is exactly what I need to do. I go to the gym I work out but really don’t eat right. I get upset I eat, I say I will start eating right tomorrow. Then I look in the mirror and see what I don’t want to see and it starts all over again.
Latoya J. Williams
July 29, 2011Hi Rhonda,
Thank you for sharing about your experience of cycling with the gym and wanting to eat differently. The great news is that finding ways that break that cycle is possible!
Be gentle with yourself. Something in you is needing to eat in the way that you eat now and that’s ok. It sounds like intuitive eating might be a great fit for you. With intuitive eating, you can focus on how and why you eat first and not so much on what you’re eating, until your ready for that step.
One of my favorite books is “When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies.” Although, I didn’t hate my body, this book helped me learn how to better care for myself and develop more appreciation for my body and where it is right now. You might want to check it out.
My best,
Latoya
Diandra
July 29, 2011This is a good article, but still I think that educating oneself about who body chemistry works should be included in there. I know many people who will live according to rules like, “As long as the added sugar is fructose, it can’t be bad for my diabetes” or “I have to cut out ALL fats from my diet to lose weight” – or the favorite, “If all I eat today is a bell pepper, I am bound to feel great (and where is that stomachache coming from?)”. Understanding how the body works and what different kinds of food do to your body in scientific terms has helped me shed more than 30lbs in one year (out of 45lbs I intend to lose) without depriving myself of anything or killing myself with exercise.
Plus, the understanding of how the body works helps avoid poor judgement – I know someone who is convinced that everytime he experiences hunger, it is because he did not have enough calories. Which results in him sometimes eating 1,200kcal during his working hours at the desk, plus breakfast plus dinner plus snacks. He still wonders why he is gaining weight, because he does not realize that hunger is generated by blood sugar levels and the mechanical empti-ness of the stomach.
Latoya J. Williams
July 30, 2011Hi Diandra,
Thanks for stopping by. Yes, many people, like the folks you describe, are confused about eating, food, and hunger in general. Unfortunately, like you, I have seen cases where a focus on the pseudo-science of food and eating (only eating fructose and cutting out all fat as you indicated) may cause more eating chaos than true benefit. And, even if some people know about the mechanics of hunger and the science of food, it will not make a difference in their lives until they take the time to work through how and why they eat. The intention of this article is to encourage my readers to feel empowered to look at their how and why.
The practice of Intuitive eating puts weight loss and a focus on the specifics of what to eat on the back burner. In my professional approach to intuitive eating, I do think that it’s important to consider and experiment with how you “feel” when and after you eat specific foods. That information is a form of your own personal research into what foods help you experience your best body and what foods don’t work so well for you.
I believe that a focus on science (external information) can get in the way of reconnecting with one’s body signals. Instead of talking about blood sugar levels and the mechanics of hunger, I work with people in real world terms that address how they experience and maintain their energy levels during the day. I ask my clients questions that address how they feel between meals and determine if their energy levels are maintaining or crashing. Yes, those experiences are related to “blood sugar” and I find that people connect with their actual bodily felt experience more so than the scientific terms we use to describe our bodily processes.
My best to you,
Latoya
Michelle Robertson
August 06, 2011Hi Latoya,
Just wanted to say that I really liked and agreed with your response to the last post that you received regarding ‘scientific’ understanding and knowledge of the body, as opposed to ‘bodily felt’ understanding and knowledge of ones’s body. I believe that the former may follow the latter, but not the other way around. Right on.
Cheers
Michelle
Latoya J. Williams
August 07, 2011Hey Michelle!
I was just reflecting on the impact of “scientific knowledge” on the body right before I read your message.
I keep up-to-date both professionally and personally by reading different health and wellness books and sometimes an occasional dieting book to see what information is being offered to people. Well, my mom mentioned this dieting book to me last week. So, I did some research on it and got it along with another book in the same genre from my local library.
Honestly, I have a difficult time getting through dieting books now. A lot of times, I feel angry about the “science” or pseudo-science presented to support the claims of dieting books. Interestingly, I started feeling this emotion in my body after reading the first chapters of that book. On reflection, I realized that I felt heavy and “oppressed” by what I was reading about how my body “should” be and what it “should” look like.
It’s a fact that “scientific” knowledge/understanding about a lot of things, including the body changes all of the time! We can also use science to justify just about anything we want to believe. One day, not so long ago, all fats were bad for us…then all carbs were bad for us. Eventually, some scientists observed the wisdom and outcomes of different bodies and noticed that some people actually do very well on higher carb diets and some do very well on higher fat diets. Some experts say only eat 3 meals a day because more than that spikes your blood sugar too much. Some experts say to eat 5 to 6 meals a day to keep your metabolism burning consistently.
Over the years, I’m grateful to have been able to see the humor in our antics to find the one and only truth about the body. As an intuitive eater, sometimes three meals a day is what I eat, especially if they are larger meals. Sometimes, I might eat 4 to 5 smaller meals, depending on the season, how much I’m moving my body, etc. How else would I know what my body needs when my meals and activities change each day, if I didn’t listen to and focus on how my body feels first?
The conclusion? We have this knowledge, which includes calories, fats, carbohydrates, blood sugar, etc., about how the body works to INFORM our choices. And ultimately, to support your individual best body, you need to experiment with your own body and observe and feel you body’s responses to discover what works for you! And, discovering what works and doesn’t for each of us is a beautiful thing.
Warmly,
Latoya