So I had my first session with a Healthy at Any Size dietitian and for my homework have to read a book introducing me to the non-diet approach of eating which will usually result in weight loss.Itâs all about focusing on having a healthy relationship with food and not seeing food as ultimately âgoodâ or âbadâ. Iâve only read the first three chapters so far but my eyes have been opened.
While I love my parents and honestly think there is very little my mother could do wrong, Iâm starting to see that she has not always been the best role model for body-positivity. I canât remember a time when she wasnât dieting, and my own diet was pretty restricted and regimented since my sister was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 1 year old. This meant no sugar in the house, except for white jelly-beans.I know this was the most correct decision for my parents to make as it would hardly be fair for my brother and I to have sweets that my sister couldnât have, but it was likely the start of a long road of restricting myself from âbadâ foods and then bingeing on them later.
From about year 5 I remember being served less food than my brother because he was a growing boy. I was still fed well, but while he got seconds I was asked if I really needed to eat more. This led to me sneaking extra food late at night because I felt like I had missed out.Â
Rationally I know that my parents were doing what they thought was best. My mother had been taught that when you were overweight or felt bad about your body, you went on a diet. It is going to be very hard to be forgiving of the fact that if my parents had told me at 14 that girls have different shapes instead of telling me to go on a diet so I would feel better about myself, I might be a very different person than I am today.Â
I have also started to actually notice the amount of âthinspoâ (for lack of a better term) and promotion of unhealthy relationships with food that I see daily. Just this evening I have noticed multiple posts on facebook about âhow to get a body like Jennifer Annistonâ âthis cake has an entire jar of nutella, so bye bye Summer bodâ and memes about dieting. I didnât have facebook as a teenager (we had myspace, but I feel like there was less corporate content on there), so I canât imagine how teenagers are feeling when they see this crap every day. Itâs likely that entirely subconsciously they are being pushed into a world of fad diets that are going to do more harm than good.
I have a long process ahead of me, my dietitian mentioned that most people take about a year to change the way they think about food, but I am more committed to this than to any diet I have ever been on.
