This month I have been reflecting on my relationship with eating, diets and body image. In a recent conversation with a very good friend of mine, she mentioned she had embarked upon ‘intuitive eating’.
What now?
As she told me more and after some googling, I became really intrigued about it and wondered how I hadn’t discovered it earlier. I asked my friend if she would share her thoughts and experiences around her relationship to food and how she is getting on now with this new found way of being. Here it is…
How would you describe your relationship with food growing up?
Food was always a guilty pleasure for me. I loved food and that was partly celebrated as part of my South American culture, but as I grew older, I was encouraged to eat less, to enjoy it less. Like enjoying it would be my downfall.
I probably started my first diet at age 12, guided by my mum. Between 12 and 18, I must have tried 7 different diets or treatments from nutritionists, Acupuncture, Scarsdale diet, Chinese herbs, Soup diet, Vanilla ice cream diet and more. The emphasis was never on extreme dieting, but I always had the sense that it would be detrimental to be left to my own devices.
And how has that relationship changed as an adult?
I left home at 18, as for most people my first year of university wasn´t very healthy- too much alcohol, too many take-aways, too much (apparent) freedom. I had always been overweight and as I’m tall, was always bigger than everyone else altogether. My first year of university and subsequent years meant further weight gain into obesity.
As time went on, I started cooking and enjoying it. While growing up, I always ate home cooked meals, so I knew how to eat “well”. I liked vegetables, and fruit, but also cheese, pasta and bread.
I developed a tendency to binge eat, not so much because I was eating restrictively most of the time. The restrictions were mostly in my mind, I would always start a new diet tomorrow, every supper was my last supper.
When I did manage to stick to a diet, I was good at it, I would lose weight, including a 10 month meal replacement program by which I lost half my body weight. But I never managed to get to the BMI recommended for my height, which meant I had to keep dieting and that´s when I would fall off the wagon. And inevitably, the weight would always come back.
I have so many times been told the old cliché of you have such a pretty face, only if you lost the weight, which is possibly one of the most thinly veiled insults around
Do you feel there have been significant beliefs or messages from others that have shaped the way you have felt about your body image?
I wouldn´t say I was someone who appeared to lack confidence because of her weight, but in my mind, it was always my main flaw, the thing that made me unready to live my life to its fullest. I “knew” I would have to make a big sacrifice to lose the weight and everything would be alright. Funnily enough, even after my most effective “life changing” diet I never reached the point when I felt complete. I know this feeling comes from messages from society at large but also from home. I don´t blame my family, my mum specifically, as she has only acted on what she knows, and has always wanted what´s best for me. But in her eyes the best “me” was tall, thin and pretty. I have so many times been told the old cliché of “you have such a pretty face, only if you lost the weight”, which is possibly one of the most thinly veiled insults around.
My mum, contrary to me, is a very small woman, moderate in her eating and weight. She would always diet too, but her diets would last about a week to reach her weight goal.
I don´t know, if she ever actually said these words but my understanding was that while I was fat I would never reach my full potential in love and life. Unfortunately, this is what I have believed and maybe still believe now. I’m incredibly grateful that I’m very much a happy person, who doesn´t suffer from deep bouts of sadness and have managed to enjoy life, but I know that I haven’t enjoyed it to the fullest: Not because of my weight as I used to think, but because of the sense of being less entitled because of it.
How does cultural and societal pressures impact on your own core beliefs?
Diet culture, weight stigma and veneration of the thin ideal are everywhere, in every culture, in every image, in medicine and health. The impact is inevitable. My core beliefs were not so much impacted by society as were born from it. Society is what creates our beliefs and what keeps feeding them throughout life. I always remember something I read in Nelson Mandela´s autobiography. He tells of the time, during the Apartheid regime, when he saw a white homeless woman begging in the streets. This shocked him, South Africa, was full of homeless people, but all of colour. Seeing a white woman in this condition shocked and saddened him more than all his fellow black men and women in the same situation. This made him realize, that even HE was conditioned by society, to believe, deep down, that it was worse for a white women to suffer like this. If society had this effect on Nelson Mandela´s beliefs, the rest of us don´t stand a chance.
Now, I have no intention of making parallels between people that suffer from racism or those that suffer from weight stigma, but I will say that it all comes down to being different to a unrealistic world view arbitrarily imposed by a dominant few.
I see more proof of this, amongst people I know. I work in theatre, a world mostly populated by free thinking feminist progressives yet I have never met one who hasn´t once mentioned weight loss as a goal and weight gain as a negative.
letting go of an ideal weight goal and promising your body you will never restrict again are huge first steps.
You’ve recently discovered intuitive eating. How has this been for you? Tell us about your experience so far.
It has been life changing. It was like a switch in my brain. Once I realized that in 30 years of dieting I had not achieved neither my ideal weight nor any extra level of completeness after significant weight loss, it just didn´t make any sense to continue in that vicious cycle. It also made me realize two very important things:
1) We were not all born to be thin, weight will vary in each person as much as height, eye colour, shoe or boob size. That notion came like a flash of understanding, it was suddenly so obvious.
2) What was making me gain weight was my bingeing, which came as a reaction to a sense of imminent restriction.
Once I made the choice never, never, to restrict again, I have not once binged. I have indulged in certain foods or at certain times, but the feeling is completely different, as I have felt no guilt or loss of control.
This change has, in fact, led to some natural weight loss, I am actually excited to find out what my natural weight will be, and I think I´m mentally prepared to accept that my natural weight set point is well above my previous expectations.
There is a danger that intuitive eating, which can lead to weight loss (or weight gain if you are someone who has lived under food restrictions) can be seen as another form of dieting, after all, it’s not easy to change thoughts which have been installed in your mind for decades, in a few months.
It´s also true that I came to this during the pandemic, a time when my social interactions are at a minimum. However, the relief, sense of freedom and empowerment are amazing, and I always like to feel like it´s me against the world, so thinking differently to most other people suits me fine.
I do have to mention, that although I have embraced Intuitive Eating, I don´t yet eat fully intuitively, this may take ages to happen as I have surpressed my hunger cues for so long.
However, for those of us who have been trapped by concepts rather than actual food, letting go of an ideal weight goal and promising your body you will never restrict again are huge first steps.
What strategies have you found most helpful when thinking about your relationship with food and body image?
I think I´m a very rational person. So I keep reminding myself of the only thing that makes sense to me now. Dieting and weight loss have never made me happier. In fact pursuing them made me actually gain weight through bingeing.
Intuitive eating is a pragmatic approach which takes into consideration science, human psychology and society. In all these aspects, it makes sense to me.
I also like to listen to some podcasts on the matter, although I have limited myself to only a few, maybe once or twice a week as I don´t want to replace one obsession with another.
I did thoroughly explore the subject at the beginning and something I discovered while researching is that the relationship between weight and health is highly inconclusive. What has far more scientific basis is the relationship between weight loss, weight stigma and poor mental health, including anxiety and depression.
I can vouch for the fact that my body has always kept me healthy, not because of my weight, I realise that, but not in spite of it either. If we let our bodies and minds be, we will reach the level of health inherent to our genetic composition and social context.
This kind of information is useful, as it feeds into my logical brain and strengthens my resolve.
Finally, I think we have to retrain our brains about beauty, so I populate my social media with real looking people. I have noticed since I always shop in the Curve section of online shops, that when I mistakenly end up in the regular section I think the models don´t look very well. I realize it’s not about judging how anyone looks, but there is so much visual information around, for now I´d rather widen my horizons of beauty.
If you could tell child Pamela anything from what you’ve learnt now, what would it be?
I think I would tell her the truth, straight. You will never be thin, so don´t waste your time trying, not because there is something wrong with you, you are perfect as you are, and anyone who doesn´t think so, needs to be schooled. You are just a few steps ahead of them so just do what you´re doing, you´ll be fine.
Pamela is a British-Peruvian 38 year old theatre producer and cultural manager. She has been living in Lima for nearly 8 years after spending twelve years in the UK between the ages of 18 and 30. She has spent most of the Covid pandemic inside the flat she shares with her two cats. IG and FB: @peam82
She recommends the following instagram accounts and podcast:
The Person Centred Ninja 