My fourth book, Nice Girls Finish Fat: Put Yourself First and Change Your Eating Forever, was published in 2009 by Simon & Schuster, on June 2nd, to be exact. What a funny coincidence (yes, life is full of meaningless happenstance) that on June 2, 2024, I was thinking about my use of the word “fat” in the title and how I wouldn’t have used it today—which shows how much the world (and I) have changed in 13 years. I like that the world has changed and how we can stretch and grow for the better.  Some years after Nice Girls was published, I began to get flack about using the word “fat” in the title. The first instance occurred when I was giving a book talk for a women’s group and some audience members were offended by the title because they thought it sounded like I was making “fat” a bad...

There are many ways to view bodies. Some parents could care less what’s looking back at them from the mirror and dress only for comfort. Other parents insist their children look their best when they, themselves, never do. And other families in which one child—you or a sibling—is deemed the pretty or handsome one and the other kids can never measure up in the looks department. Then there are families so rebelliously anti-appearance they let themselves go just to prove their point and judgment be damned. I think I’ve mentioned that both my parents were appearance conscious Manhattanites, instilling in me a serious case of body consciousness, especially with weight. How did your family feel about weight and size? Were your relatives constantly struggling to lose weight or not regain it? Were weight-loss diets a topic of frequent discussion, so you came to believe you had to diet and be thin?...

There is absolutely no doubt that fat phobia is alive and well and thriving in our culture. The question is whether it has to take root in your mind and make you miserable. Do you even know of anyone who’s of higher weight and pays no attention to fat phobia? My guess is that you don’t and that’s one of the reasons you fall prey to it. So, let me introduce you to Shannon Walton who finally got tired of being bullied about her weight. “Battling obesity—and telling bullies to ‘Kiss it!’” tells her story and shows how she took charge of her life and fought back. Says Walton who lives in Sheffield, England, “I’ve always been overweight, from a very, very young age.” At 14 she was 196 pounds and at 15 she was 210. Later, she discovered that she had both premature adrenarche which made her develop early and...

Checking out after a medical appointment, I was trying to write a check on a (to me) high counter and remarked to the nurse that I wished I were taller. She said, “But you’re so tiny, so petite.” I replied to all 5 feet 1 inch of her—an attractive, slightly higher weight woman—"Well, you’re not exactly tall. There’s not much difference in our height.” Then came the kicker when she said, “Oh, no, but you’re thin. I wish I were thin like you.” Though I’ve had these conversations before, they still stun me and I never know what to say. There wasn’t much I could say with people around us and me being in a bit of a rush, so I said something like, “You look fine. Focus on your health, not your weight.” She looked at me like I was clueless about her situation, so I added, “I know about...

I get having concerns about what people think of you. Mine have lessened with age, but I swear I’ll be heading into the cremation oven—still wondering, “Do I look alright?” Self-consciousness for me is second nature coming from very looks conscious parents.  Now that we’re no longer children, though, it’s time to move toward becoming more comfortable with how we look. One way to do that is to understand that our discomfort is not based in the past. There are actually folks out there who weren’t made to feel bad about their particular hair/thighs/stomach/nose/chin/etc. and are walking around today not thinking much, if at all, about these body parts. Or maybe their whole family was higher weight and no one made a big deal about it. Though we can’t restart our lives in another family that doesn’t have “bad-body” issues, we can make changes in the present by paying attention to...

The actress Kate Upton once declared, “To me, what’s sexy is when you look like you’re having a good time.”  Many girls and women try to look like they feel sexy. They dress provocatively and carry themselves seductively. One girl wore pants to her therapy session with the word “juicy” scrolled in rhinestones on her backside, and another girl came to her session in four-inch stilettos.  But if you are happy in your body, you don’t need to turn it into a billboard advertising your wares. Authentic good body image comes from inner self-satisfaction.  Because the pain of body image dissatisfaction is emotional, we can improve our body image through psychological change. Making peace with body image distress and enhancing our self-acceptance involves a three-prong approach:  Awareness + Action = Acceptance  Awareness. Become aware of your unique triggers that make you feel bad about your appearance. Are there certain people, places, or situations that especially cause you unhappiness about...

I wonder if higher weight people are feeling more under siege than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. I don’t mean because of heightened stress, feeling home bound, or battling with increased emotional eating, although they are all factors to be considered. I mean feeling under siege due to the comments of others about higher weight people being at greater risk for becoming seriously ill with the virus. If you’ve been on the receiving end of such comments, don’t for a minute let people shame you. I’m not going to go into numbers about the relationship between COVID and weight because that is besides the point. The point is that blaming higher weight people for “letting themselves get the virus” (one way I heard it put) is simply more weight stigma coming at ya. It’s infuriating for me to hear such remarks when week after week I sit with clients who are...

We’re all used to seeing successful people, mostly women, paired with low or average weights. This is what the media shows us, what society promotes as reality, and what we come to believe. But watching a documentary, Surge, on aspiring Democratic legislators, it dawned on me that some of these women were role models not only as females but as women who would be called “higher weight” in this culture and weren’t stuck sitting around telling themselves they couldn’t do this or that because of it. Actually, I’d had this thought when I first learned of Stacey Abrams, former member of the Georgia House of Representatives and candidate for Governor of Georgia. The fact that we notice other people’s weights at all in this country—never mind judge them for it—both drives me crazy and saddens me. But then I considered what it took for her as a Black woman in the...

Embrace: One Woman’s Journey to Inspire EveryBODY is an engaging, enlightening 2016 documentary, the story of Australian photographer, wife and mother Taryn Brumfitt who decides to stop hating her body. Here are quotes about the film that I hope make you want to see it. You can watch it on Amazon Prime, find the video on Apple iTunes, and check out the trailer at

Once upon a time, the world didn’t hate fat or fat people and dieting wasn’t a $72 billion US industry. Take yourself to an art museum or thumb through an art book (not modern) and see for yourself. Or read Ken Mondschein’s article, “Fatness and Thinness in the Middle Ages.”  To be sure, fat has been associated with greed, gluttony, excess, and other negative traits. However, he says, there were times when fat was viewed more positively: “So, too with foreign lands—the fictionalized John of Mandeville tells of how foreigners ate inordinate amounts, and the romancier Rusticello has Marco Polo report on the prodigious appetites of the mighty men of Zanzibar.”“There was no shortage of defenses of largeness, or even positive depictions, in the less well-born. Peasants rarely got enough to eat, so positive associations between fat and plenty—‘fat’ soil, the ‘fat’ of the land, and the pre-Lenten ‘fat Tuesday’ feast—are not surprising...

Off the top of your head, how connected are you to your body? I don’t mean to your appetite, but how synced you are with the pain and pleasure you feel in your entire corporeal self. Your disconnection is both a cause and result of dysregulated eating. The hopeful news is that, with practice, you can tap into sensing exactly how your body is feeling any time which will help you enormously in making wiser decisions about food. You do this by performing a body scan (“Oh, Hello There, Body” by Greater Good (11/26/19, Lion’s Roar, https://www.lionsroar.com/oh-hello-there-body/, accessed 2/1/20) in which “we systematically focus our attention on different parts of our body, from our feet to the muscles in our face.” The goal is to experience our body as is without doing anything to or for it and to find and relieve tension caused by stress.  You can do a scan...

Working on a new book, I’ve been struggling to find the best word to describe how I wish people with body shame would feel about their bodies. Helping clients feel better about their bodies is one of the most difficult parts of my job. As I’ve blogged previously, making peace with a body that you’ve hated for a long time takes some doing, but is crucial to becoming a “normal” eater and engaging in self-caring practices.  Many words are used to describe the positive feeling we want to have about our bodies and none seem quite right. One is “loving” your body. But, I understood when clients counter that saying they love something they don’t want feels inauthentic and like a lie. Another word is “accepting” your body. Clients’ objection has been not wanting to say “it’s okay” to something they want to change. Although I’ve tried to explain that we...

One of areas in which I get the most push back from clients is when I talk about body positivity. The idea of loving a large body which everyone in the world seems to hate is just too much to take in for many higher weight clients. It’s also difficult for people who would like to stop dieting and eat more “normally,” because of their terror of gaining weight and becoming like the people, fat, that is, that they’ve learned to hate.  If you’re in either group, Sonalee Rashatward, social worker and activist, has a message for you about substituting the quest for body love and acceptance with body neutrality. (“What We Can All Learn From the Fat Sex Therapist” by Alexandra Jones, https://www.phillymag.com/be-well-philly/2019/09/18/fat-sex-therapist/, Philadelphia, 9/18/19, accessed 9/20/19). While fighting fat phobia and weight stigma and many other prejudices, she makes the point that: “. . . those struggling to exist in...

Although I usually enjoy comedian Bill Maher’s humor on his show Real Time, I was appalled and disgusted at his misinformed fat shaming monologue in September. Just like “obesity,” fat shaming is a complicated subject and there’s no simple answer for it. But there are five reasons that it occurs.  Lack of civility People fat shame because we live in a highly uncivil culture where everyone thinks they have the right to say whatever they want to everyone else. Due to the advent of social media, very little is kept private anymore. There was a time (younger folks will need to trust me on this) that people, for the most part, kept their religious and political opinions to themselves. Of course, humans always have gossiped, but that was the point—it was done privately, one-to-one or in a small group, not blabbing our judgments to hundreds or millions of people. We say...

I have eyes, ears, a nose and a mouth that all are in decent working order. I proclaimed this aloud one night after waffling about whether I looked okay to attend an evening dance class of people I’ve known for years. My proclamation was my way of saying I’m done worrying about how I look. I really want to be free of this ridiculous pre-occupation. As I tell clients, sometimes we just need to get fed up with our own silliness. Especially as women, we need to stop our obsession with self-grooming. Because I don’t think in all-or-nothing ways, I’m not suggesting that we give up caring about our appearance. It’s fine to care but, as with eating, we need to be able to say when enough is enough.  We acquire this mistaken idea that we need to look a certain way from our personal family experience growing up and from...

Weight stigma may be more dangerous for higher weight people than carrying around a great deal of weight. Culturally generated, fat blaming and shaming have reached the heights of hysteria in this country. Whether you carry a higher weight or rigidly restrict food or purge in terror of weight gain, it’s crucial that you understand the health and mental health damage that internalized weight stigma poses.  Here’s a recent article I wrote for therapists on treating internalized weight stigma. (“Three Steps to Challenge Internalized Weight Stigma” by Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, M.Ed., https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/exc_0719.shtml, accessed 7/12/19) As an eating disorders therapist, I treat many high weight clients. Some are 40 pounds heavier than they would like to be, while others weigh over 300 pounds. In either case—in fact, in most cases—clients who weigh more than the norm have internalized culturally-induced weight stigma which is damaging to both their physical and mental health....

Watch out for studies that predict “obesity.” There’s science on both sides of the question, but other issues to consider. One is a person’s reaction to what weight they’re predicted to be. Telling people that they’re genetically inclined to be of high weight, can backfire and cause them to throw up their hands and think “Why bother eating healthfully or exercising? I’m already doomed.” Moreover, shouldn’t we be focusing on health rather than weight, since people can be healthy at different weights?  Researchers such as Amit Khera of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and his colleagues studying obesity prediction do so in the “hope that the score will help erase the stigma associated with obesity and shed some light on the biology behind the condition. Although people with high genetic risks may have a harder time avoiding weight gain or losing weight, they also might...

Many higher weight clients feel ashamed of their large bodies and what they perceive as their failed attempts to trim them down. However, some high weight clients don’t feel that way at all. They understand that a complex, partly random, combination of factors, including, paradoxically, their considerable and repeated efforts to lose weight through dieting, have contributed to their size. The difference between the two groups of clients is that one internalizes weight stigma and the other doesn’t. Weight stigma is the culturally-induced perception that being high weight is bad and that someone is bad because they are higher weight. According to the Binge Eating Disorder Association, weight stigma—aka weight bias or fat bias or weight-based discrimination—is discrimination, negative judgment, shaming or stereotyping based on a person's weight, size or shape. Such prejudice may happen in dating, health care, education, friendships, employment and in any aspect of life.  Such judgment is...

  I try not to wade into political waters on Facebook or in blogging, but Donald Trump has stepped onto my territory and my job of addressing weight stigma and fat-shaming. His comments at an August rally are perfect examples of fat bullying, groupthink, and the psychological defense mechanism called projection. Here’s what happened. Reports CNN, “At a 2020 campaign rally in New Hampshire on Thursday night, a protest broke out. A Trump supporter sought to remove the protesters. And as that was happening, the President of the United States yelled this into the microphone: ‘That guy's got a serious weight problem. Go home. Start exercising. Get him out of here, please. Got a bigger problem than I do. Got a bigger problem than all of us. Now he goes home and his mom says, 'What the hell have you just done?'” (“Donald Trump bullied a man as overweight, then didn't...

Whether you have pain that’s short-term, say a severe headache or a broken bone, or chronic and long-term, as can happen with fibromyalgia or neuropathy, you may be using food as a crutch to get you through the day. Being in pain can steer you toward the refrigerator in several ways, but you can learn not to let it do so—and improve your health at the same time. You may turn to unhealthy food: · For comfort from pain because you hurt badly and wish to feel better. Who could blame you for that? However, food is not meant for comfort, except occasionally. Especially if you’re suffering is ongoing, you may be telling yourself it’s okay to eat lots of sweets and treats because you feel so miserable. Or because life’s not fair. But, it’s not okay to mistreat your body when it’s already feeling awful. It’s far better to find...

“Self-objectification occurs when women view their bodies as objects, existing for the pleasure of others” and “… is associated with an increased risk of poor body image.” (Dryden, C., & Anderson, J., 2019. “The dark triad, trait-based self-objectification, and body image concerns in young women.” Personality and Individual Differences, 145, 1-8. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2019.03.015, accessed 3/23/19) Another definition is that “Self-objectification occurs when individuals treat themselves as objects to be viewed and evaluated based upon appearance. (Chiara Rollero and Norma De Piccoli, “Self-Objectification and Personal Values: An Exploratory Study” (Frontiers in Psychology, 2017; 8: 1055, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01055, accessed 3/23/19) Though self-objectification is primarily a problem for women based on society dictating that female beauty means having a certain shape and size, it’s also a problem for some men. It occurs not only due to approval-seeking and people-pleasing but to fear that others will shame or reject our bodies. When this fear grows overwhelming,...

Self-objectification is common among people who turn up in my office. It involves internalizing “an observer’s perspective” about ourselves. More specifically, body self-objectification is an unhealthy way of viewing our bodies through the values of others or of society. “Self-objectification is associated with increased risk of poor body image, depression, and eating disorders” and, when studied, “was most consistently and positively associated with neuroticism, perfectionism, and narcissism across multiple studies.” (Carrotte, E., & Anderson, J. R. (2018). “A systematic review of the relationship between trait self-objectification and personality traits.” Personality and Individual Differences, 132, 20-31. DOI:10.1016/j.paid.2018.05.015). Of the three traits listed above, neuroticism and perfectionism are the ones I see in most dysregulated eaters. Neuroticism is seen in a personality tendency toward guilt, shame, anxiety, self-doubt, and self-deprecation. Neurotic clients do a great deal of putting themselves down, feeling insecure about decisions, ruminating about the past, obsessing about the future, worrying...

What if you didn’t care so much about your appearance? What if you could flip to the other side of the continuum about your looks and feel a decreased sense of their importance to you? What if you could expend less time thinking about your face, body, and hair because you hate how it eats up so much effort and energy and simply don’t want to live with such a spirit-killing pre-occupation. Before you insist that this metamorphosis could never happen to you, take a deep breath and just consider “What if?” Ask yourself: What if I could care less about my appearance? What if I could change? You know how to do it: You used to adore certain friends and now don’t, were wild about particular songs and no longer listen to them, or were fiercely wedded to political or philosophical ideas and now wouldn’t be caught dead believing in...

Some of my most heart-breaking work is with higher weight adults and their parents, usually mothers. The pain of both child and parent is evident, as is their frustration, confusion and helplessness about how to discuss matters of weight. I write this blog to give guidance to both parties partaking in this family therapy experience. Generally parents (usually Mom) and adult children (usually Daughter) haven’t been in therapy together, but sometimes times they have a long, unhappy history of family therapy. In either case, here’s what each typically feels as therapy begins. My higher weight client feels highly vulnerable speaking directly with her mother about such a tender subject, for the first or umpteenth time, expecting to be blamed and shamed. Equally, Mom (or Dad, or Dad and Mom) come in feeling frustrated, helpless and guilty. Most often Mom is also worried about her child’s health which adds to the difficulty...

Many higher weight people think that weight stigma may only affect their self-perception and self-esteem. Not so. It may also negatively impact their health. According to research (Himmelstein, M. S., Puhl, R. M., & Quinn, D. M. (2017, November 9). Weight Stigma and Health: The Mediating Role of Coping Responses. Health Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0000575, accessed 11/17/17), “A large and methodically diverse literature links exposure to weight stigma to a range of poor health outcomes including obesity, weight gain, metabolic syndrome, physical activity avoidance, heart disease, stress, and depression.” For this reason, “…it may be useful to address weight stigma and coping in the context of weight management and obesity treatment programs, to help protect individuals from negative health effects of experiencing weight stigma.” If you have depression, anxiety, low self-esteem or difficulty accepting your body at a higher weight, weight stigma may be having a negative impact on you....

This culture can cause heavy people to feel as if fat can’t be sexy, but that’s only cultural bias. If you’re fat, you have two choices: to dislike and hide your body or to feel good about it and decide how to show it off in its best light. If you’re going the latter route, here are some great suggestions from Advice Goddess Amy Alkon (Think you’re fat? Try this at home, TICKET, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE, 12/20/12). She begins by offering research that tells us that “‘walking the walk’—acting the way you’d like to feel—is one of the most effective ways to change how you feel.” When I make this suggestion to clients (about anything, not just body attitudes), I almost always hear, “But I can’t do something I don’t believe. It just doesn’t feel right.” Well, duh, that’s how change occurs: by doing something that feels uncomfortable. So, either do what...

What weight should you be and what kind of body should you have? Time- and culture-bound as we are, women especially can’t help but unconsciously model ourselves after the images we see, the bodies we’re told either to have or avoid. From medicine to the media, we’re focused on two extremes: those who are fat or overweight and those who are ultra-thin or gym-sculpted. We notice these folks, rather than average-looking Jills and Joes, because, for the most part, that’s where the “in the know” fingers are pointing. Three recent images I recently encountered are perfect examples. Two are from a comedy club. Before the first act, the audience was “entertained” by an oversized TV screen flashing images of some current young diva and her female dance entourage, none of whom looked remotely like anyone I know and few that I see in my daily comings and goings. It was hard...

I heard someone in her 40s say that, being middle-age, she was worried about her aging body. For some people, aging automatically brings about a shedding of body image concerns, while for others, it amplifies them. Did you know that there’s an increase in eating disorders among aging women? Forget culture and the media, we have it in our power to decide how we want to view the inevitable changes in our bodies, so, for goodness sake, let’s choose a viewpoint that is positive and healthy. According to Joann M. Montepare, director of the RoseMary B. Fuss Center for Research on Aging and Intergenerational Studies at Lasell College in Massachusetts,the view of “researchers may be part of the problem—that focusing on how to mediate and mitigate the ravages of growing old can fuel negative self-perceptions among those of us engaged in graying…Ultimately, we need to figure out how to make peace...

Often times I run into women—in my practice, in my life—who have everything going for them, look great, seem full of pep and energy, yet are stuck on losing weight—they insist—in order to be happy. Maybe it’s three pounds or fifteen or 100. Sometimes it’s enough that people would notice and sometimes no one ever would. Anyway, the point is that I wonder what would happen if these women let their weight loss dreams go. The “excess” weight doesn’t necessarily inhibit their being attractive, healthy, or successful, so what is it really all about? My guess is that there are a couple things going on. First is that we have few if any role models of women feeling okay about their bodies. When was the last time you heard someone, a female someone, say she liked her body just as it is? I don’t honestly recall ever hearing that comment. Even...

Women are taught to change themselves to fit into the world—get a new hairstyle, learn some tricks to dazzle your guy in bed, do what you can to make people comfortable, try an exotic recipe, forge a perfect body—but how often are we encouraged to create a better world, one in which we can be just ourselves? Rarely. We could do more with the Sixties mentality which prodded us to question authority, fight back, and be part of a revolution. In fact, one of the best antidotes to an eating disorder or problem is to practice saying yes to what’s right with the world and changing what’s wrong. Although disordered eating seems like a personal problem, it affects us all. It’s generated by unhealthy cultural attitudes towards women’s beauty and bodies (sorry, guys) and is a major cause of health problems—undernourishment and overweight. Not to mention how miserable women feel about...

Whether you grew from an adorable toddler into a knockout or morphed from an “ugly duckling” into a “swan,” you may have become addicted to looking good. Because this culture worships and rewards beauty, if you’re attractive (especially if you’re female), you may be so hooked on receiving admiring glances and gushing compliments on your appearance, that you may not realize how attached you are to them. You even may be greedy for praise and convinced you can’t live without it. If you were cute as a button as a child and blossomed into a striking adult—with classic or eye-catching looks—you may have been complimented and rewarded all your life for nature’s gifts. Receiving too much praise for appearance, especially if you get none or few compliments for other innate qualities and learned skills, may make you believe that you are nothing more than a pretty face or an ideal body....

A recent blurb in the newspaper has me agog. According to an online survey by Transformulas, a British beauty company, women look at themselves in the mirror every 30 minutes on average daily when they’re awake (Did they really need to add “the awake” part?) and men check themselves out every 27 minutes. My guess is that statistics in the US are about the same, but I fear they may be even more outrageous. The Transformulas survey says that when women are mirror-gazing, they’re reapplying makeup—11 times a day. Obviously this is not the case for men, so what is it that draws us repeatedly to our own image. I’m wondering, when we look in the looking glass or pass a reflective store window, are we looking at or for? Are we checking to see if there is something out of place that needs to be fixed—we’ve left a roller in...

Last night I saw Eve Ensler’s The Good Body here in Sarasota. If Ensler’s name rings a bell, it’s because she’s the creator of The Vagina Monologues. From its title, you might guess that The Good Body is about women’s quest for one and you’d be right. In fact, perhaps the show should have been called The Perfect Body. However, the word “good” works because many of these women are struggling desperately to be good girls as well. Sound familiar: trying to be good woman and have a good body? The show’s main character, Eve, is overweight and obsessed with her fat stomach. We meet her critical father, in the ice cream business of all things, and come to see how her disturbed relationship with food and body came about. Eve diets and overdoes it on the treadmill, but can’t get rid of her round mound of a belly. She even...

A client recently told me about a great YouTube video called A Fat Rant by Joy Nash. You can find it at

Body shame is an interesting phenomenon. Some people have way too much of it, so much that if they’re three pounds up and can’t fit into their jeans, they’re miserable and abhor their own flesh. Other people who are overweight, don’t view themselves that way. When they look in the mirror, they don’t see extra-large, but instead see the thin or average-size body they used to have. In both cases, shame has gone awry and is not being used effectively to foster physical and mental health. Let’s take the first scenario when you really aren’t fat, but have put on a few pounds due to vacation, holidays, or simple bloating. You (hopefully) know that your life won’t go down the tubes because of a couple of extra pounds, yet you feel intense hatred for your body and enormous shame about its appearance. Remember, shame is meant to signal that you’ve done...

It’s a real drag that most women’s assumptions about their bodies run on only two channels: either positive or negative. Positive thoughts go something like this: Boy, I look great today, I’m really thin, That new wrinkle cream makes me appear years younger, You can hardly see my cellulite when my weight is down, I love how slim this dress makes me look. Negative thoughts go like: who am I kidding—we all know too well the evil thoughts about our bodies. It seems we’re either at one extreme or the other. Wouldn’t it be nice to simply take our bodies for granted in a healthy way (like most men do) and stop living our lives around how they look to us and others? Although it’s a lot healthier for us not to obsess about how bad we look and dump on ourselves for having fat, flab, love handles, or cellulite, it’s...

A fascinating discussion about sexuality and body size is occurring on my message board (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings). Even though we live in a culture that’s considered out there with sex, the sad truth is that sexuality and intimacy get talked about very little among women. The subject gets raised even less frequently by women who are ashamed of their bodies because of their size. Hats off to those of you who are willing to take the plunge and think and talk about sex and weight. No matter what their weight, most women have lots of conflicting feelings about sex, sexuality, and intimacy. After all, we’re supposed to be demur yet seductive and other mutually exclusive traits all at once. Then there’s the bombardment of cultural messages telling us that fat is repulsive and thin is alluring. Women who feel comfortable in their bodies at any weight are few and far between. I don’t...

Last month I went to the beach with a friend and, there, on the blanket next to us was a woman—in her early 20s, I’d guess—who most folks in this culture would assess as having a “10” body. Evenly toned and tanned, she also had a pretty face and straight, brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her bathing suit, a shocking neon blue, could probably be seen for miles. She certainly looked as if she had it altogether body-wise. Why, then, did I feel so sad for her? For all of you who think you’d beg, borrow or steal to have a perfect body, think again. For example, compare this woman to the young women who had set up their chairs and beach umbrellas on the other side of us. They had far from perfect, plump, soft bodies. I don’t recall their bathing suits or their hairstyles or anything else...

Whether you’re learning to legalize foods and enjoying them for the first time (or the first time in a long time) or are putting on weight because you’re not paying attention to your food intake, your clothes may be getting tighter. A waistband digging into your belly, a zipper that won’t quite close, or pant legs that bind your thighs all can lead to physical discomfort. And if you’re someone engaged in ongoing battle with food and weight, snug clothes can bring on feelings such as shame, disappointment, and panic as well. People put on weight for a variety of reasons, including inability to exercise, aging, food allergies, medication, vacation, “the holidays,” and hormonal changes. “Normal” eaters might be a bit frustrated, surprised or perplexed by putting on a few pounds, but most take it in stride without an intense reaction. They might try cutting back on treats, increasing exercise, talking...

I hear the same story over and over from clients: I want or wanted to lose weight to meet a man. Although I haven’t heard this exact sentiment from male clients, they have said that they felt if they were to divorce, at their current high weight, they feared no woman would want them. Ironically, in the case of the women, their problem with romance was never really their weight; it was that they were consistently choosing the wrong men, which is a statement about their self-esteem, not their size. These clients were so preoccupied with looking attractive, looking thin, and looking for love and approval, that they never stopped to ask themselves how they managed to unerringly find dates and mates who treated them poorly, showed little ability or desire for emotional intimacy, and who, to a person, ended up causing them to feel inadequate and rejected. They were paying...

In her new book, Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—and the Myths and Realities of Dieting, Gina Kolata puts forth a version of set point theory, maintaining that for mostly biological reasons, the body has a natural weight that it will return to again and again. She presents case studies and scientific evidence based on research that the body “fails” at dieting because it simply cannot drop below a minimum weight. If she is right, how can you learn to accept your so-called set point—when you’re eating both “normally” and nutritiously—even if you wish it were lower? The fact is, even if you can’t change your body, you can always change your mind. Many heavy people get on with life and don’t become obsessed with losing weight or being fat. They know they’re large, might or might not aim for fitness, and weight is not the focal point of...

Not everyone feels the same way about their appearance. Some people could care less what they wear and how they look. They’re too busy with other things to fuss about clothes, have low self-esteem, or are depressed and lack the interest or energy to make a big deal about appearance. Other people are obsessed with how they look—striving for a perfect body, spending oodles of time and money on the right clothes, unable to leave the house without taking their appearance into account. Some of these people, as well, may suffer from low self-esteem and only feel good about themselves when they think they look their best. In the middle of the continuum are people who have a reasonable pride in appearance, but don’t go overboard . Much of attitude about appearance comes from what we learned in childhood. Think about how your parents viewed their looks. If you had a...

Attending an event when you’re feeling crummy about your body can be highly stressful. You may refuse to go, waver back and forth on a decision, engage in a shopping frenzy to find the exact right thing to wear, or say yes and be filled with dread. The occasion might be a wedding, anniversary, birthday party, or some other family gathering that’s bound to include all the relatives. Or a high school or college reunion or get together with a group of colleagues or old friends. The big worry is how you’ll be judged if you’re above average size or if you’ve lost a major amount of weight regained it. You feel badly about yourself because you believe that people with think badly of you because of your largeness. This belief is partially accurate in that there may be people at the event who are judgmental or obsessed with thinness who...

Once again, I’m grateful for the messages boards of Diet Survivors (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dietsurvivors) and Food and Feelings (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings) for giving me ideas for my blogs, this time on the difference between feeling fat and being fat. As a person with dysregulated eating and/or distorted body image, when you feel fat, you’re describing eating or believing you’ve eaten too much, being bloated or stuffed, and/or experiencing your clothes as tight, making it seem as if you are too large for them. Feeling fat does not necessarily correspond with weight or being fat. At 102 pounds, you can feel fat from “normal” eating, overeating or wearing clothes that are too small. Yes, feeling fat, a subjective, internal experience, can be associated with being fat, an external one. However, as a nonfat person, you don’t have the actual sensations of carrying around excess weight, being judged, stared at, stigmatized, or discriminated against because of your...

As we get older, most of us put on weight or have body shifts. If you’ve been slender most of your life, it can come as quite a shock to try on a garment you haven’t worn in a while only to find that it no longer fits. Or you may realize that you’re now more comfortable in a larger size than you previously wore, but find no major change on the scale. Either situation may generate an uncharacteristic, new focus on food and weight, even when you’ve not been previously concerned about them. Some people who’ve never had eating or weight problems make the transition to a larger clothing size and higher scale number fairly easily. They figure they’ve been fortunate for a long time and attribute body changes to age, decreased activity, and hormones. They may watch what they eat a bit more carefully and cut back somewhat on...

If you have been heavy your whole life (or most of it), you may believe that your main problem is getting your body to a healthy, more comfortable weight. You may be convinced that your life will be dramatically different when you’re at your ideal size and that you can then kick back and enjoy life. If you are so obese that your size restricts mobility and activity, you may find that life does vastly improve when you reduce your size. Being more comfortable in your body and able to do more may be enough to change how you feel about yourself and put your life back on track. However, even if you lose the weight, you will still have many issues to deal with. My concern is that people who loose a tremendous amount of weight are not changing enough of themselves to become emotionally healthy. It is certainly easier...

I’ve been thinking lately about a comment an overweight client made in an offhand way that seems to capture the intense emotions women have about their and other women’s bodies. She mentioned that while shopping she’d seen a middle-aged woman with a “good figure” who was wearing short shorts. Her first reaction was envy that a woman in her 50s still looked so trim and “like a teenager.” However, when my client looked more closely, she admitted to experiencing “enormous satisfaction” that the woman had some cellulite on her highly visible thighs. My client went on to say that she felt terrible wishing cellulite on someone, but that that emotion was better than the self-hate that overwhelmed her looking at the woman’s seemingly perfect legs. In that moment of “satisfaction,” my client could finally quash the hate she felt toward her body by finding fault with that of another. I would...

As if we don’t have enough gender disparities in this society, I’ve been noticing lately how thin men and women are viewed and treated differently. Skinny men, whether they perceive their physique as unmanly or not, are basically left alone. Perhaps they’re not adored as hunks or hotties, maybe they’re covertly envied or even laughed at, but no one has all that much to say about or to them regarding their bodies.Thin women, on the other hand, are too much talked about and talked at, on constant display. They are perceived as having it all together and often are the recipient of envy and resentment. One day I overheard a store cashier say to a slender woman, “Oh, lucky you. You can eat anything. I wish I looked like you.” Another day I heard a trim woman mention to her friend that she’d gone to a spa. Her friend laughed and...

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to start from scratch, without preconceived prejudices about what to think about fat and thin and make up our own minds? Unfortunately, we can’t completely erase our mental chalkboards or delete all our attitudes, but we can do a good deal to think clearly and for ourselves. First off, how ‘bout being conscious that we’re programmed to believe a certain way—that thin is better than fat? If you saw a dog or cat that was no meat and all bones what would your initial reaction be? If you’re honest, it would not be, “Gee, Fido or Whiskers is sure lookin’ good” or “What a fine looking animal!” Rather, you’d be alarmed that the poor scrawny thing might be undernourished and starve to death. And if you saw a slightly plump animal, I doubt you’d recoil in horror; you might even find it endearing and cuddly. So why...

Control is a major issue for us all. We want to control our environment and people’s behaviors to help us survive and thrive. Although we have little control over either when we are children, we become more empowered as we mature. But, fact is, we will never have complete power over our lives, even as adults, and this is a crucial fact to remember so that we don’t keep questing after something that is unattainable. We cannot control the forces of nature or the actions of others. Accidents, life upheavals, and catastrophes occur no matter how hard we try to keep them at bay. The best we can do in these situations is whatever is possible to empower ourselves and accept our fate. Knowing that we are neither totally powerless nor all powerful is a platform for effective life management. For disregulated eaters, it may mean the difference between obsessing about...