Is this a familiar scenario to you? You’ve been sticking to your diet and exercise regime for weeks, resisting the temptation to eat ‘bad’ foods. Then at the office morning tea, someone offers you a slice of gooey chocolate cake, and you succumb. You think to yourself,
“Damn it! Now I’ve completely blown it! Oh well, since I messed up by eating that slice of cake, I might as well have another one.”
One slice of cake turns into two, then you get to work on the biscuits, the lamingtons, the chips, the cheese platter, and everything else you’ve been assiduously avoiding all the time you’ve been ‘good’.
That afternoon you skip going to the gym on the way home from work, because “What’s the point? I’ve blown it anyway!” After a couple of days – or maybe weeks – of bingeing on junk and being a couch potato, you recommit to being ‘good’… and start the whole cycle over again.
This pattern shows up in many, if not most of my weight loss clients and participants in The LEAN Program. I understand it only too well, because it used to be a pattern for me too.
It’s a manifestation of perfectionism – the inability, or refusal, to accept yourself if you, your work, or your body don’t reach the arbitrary standard of perfection that you hold in your head.
If you’re suffering from perfectionism around food and body image, you will probably have a list of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods in your head (and sometimes on paper!).
When you eat ‘good’ foods you feel virtuous and worthy of love, approval and other good things; when you eat even a tiny skerrick of a ‘bad’ food you feel completely unworthy and deserving of punishment, which you then self-inflict by bingeing (sometimes purging afterward, either using laxatives or self-induced vomiting) or by starving yourself (which usually leads eventually to bingeing when your hunger becomes overwhelming; but may also result in anorexia nervosa) or overexercising in an effort to burn off the calories in the ‘bad’ food (which usually leads to bingeing again since you deplete your glycogen stores which triggers intense hunger).
You may also have an ideal weight that you aspire to, and until you reach that weight, you won’t accept yourself. Even if you lose a few kilograms, and family and friends are commenting on how great you look, your Inner Perfectionist will be whispering in your ear
“Yes, but you’re not there yet – you’re still 5 kg overweight.”
If you have a particularly vicious Inner Perfectionist, it might also throw in a critical jibe just for good measure:
“Oh, and by the way, you still have cellulite.”
I’m all for having high standards in things that matter to you, but perfectionism is nothing but a trap. It keeps you fixated on achieving some far-off goal that your Inner Perfectionist has tricked you into believing will make your life immeasurably better, instead of enjoying the process of taking care of yourself now, and celebrating each milestone along the way: moving down the notches on your belt, noticing that your jeans are looser this week, feeling stronger at the gym or being able to walk further and faster each day.
But ask yourself, will your life really magically transform when you hit your goal weight? Or will you still be you, just 5 or 10 or 50 kg lighter than you are now – and possibly with a new thing to worry about:
“Will I be able to maintain my new weight?”
And are you really such a failure, a loser, lacking in self-discipline and all those other things you accuse yourself of, just because you ate one Tim Tam? Having worked on my issues around food pretty extensively, and also having followed a high-nutrient diet for many years, I’m now happy to say a Tim Tam holds absolutely no appeal for me (in fact the thought of one makes me feel a little ill – too sweet and sickly!).
But back in the days when I craved highly sweet foods, I learned over time that having a piece of cake wasn’t what derailed my healthy eating plan. It was self-flagellating over my lapse from being ‘good’ that did it!
Now I always pull my clients up when they tell me when they’ve been ‘good’ with their eating, or when they confess they’ve been ‘bad’ a few times. The act of eating broccoli or lentils doesn’t make you a good person, and the act of eating cheesecake or chips doesn’t make you a bad person.
The focus needs to be on what those foods do for you. Eating broccoli and lentils regularly will help you become healthier. Eating highly processed foods will probably make you feel pretty ‘blah’ afterwards, and if you do it regularly your health will decline. And you deserve better than that!
I know I’ve said this many times before, but I figure there’s always one person for whom these words will come at exactly the right moment to give them their ‘Eureka!’ moment. So if you’re that person, here it is:
Stop trying to hate yourself thin, and start learning how to love yourself slim!
And if you’re thinking, “Yes, I’d love to do that, but how? Where do I start?” I can’t think of a better place to begin than by joining The LEAN Program, which takes you through the Mirror Exercise, Body Image Timeline, Body Image Journal and other exercises I’ve designed specifically for overcoming perfectionism and other blocks to loving the body you’re in, and having the body you’d love. Because to get the body you’d love, you first have to learn to love the body you’re in!
The LEAN Program is a self-paced online program expressly designed to help you beat emotional eating and solve your weight problem… forever! No more dieting, no more battling with food cravings, and no more hating what you see in the mirror. Click here to learn more.
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