Control. Willpower. Power. Control.
It’s what losing weight is all about, right? Diets teach us that we need to control what we eat in order to be thin and healthy. And society has conditioned us into thinking that, if we’re overweight, it’s because we lack self control, aka, we’re lazy.
Trainers and dieticians feed off of this myth, because it stokes the flames of that old narrative, that because it’s hard, because we’re not successful, because not everyone is thin, that if WE’RE not thin, it’s because it’s out fault: we haven’t tried hard enough, we can’t control ourselves. We’re weak-willed. But, for $200/month, you can pay someone to whom you can be accountable, or to shout at you when you inevitably slip.
If you extrapolate into its variables, you’d essentially be saying that everyone who was thin had good willpower, and everyone who wasn’t had bad willpower. But, when you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous, right?
But the idea that it is all willpower based is the foundation of some of the most toxic, fatphobic stigma that there is in the world. A study found that when people believed the cause of obesity was lack of willpower, they expressed stronger weight bias, on average, than those who believed biological or environmental factors played the bigger role.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be in control, or want to believe that we can will our way into or out of any scenario. But as I mentioned in Episode 2, your body is run by hormones, and no amount of self control or willpower can change how they function.
And research has also shown that after you diet, so many biological changes happen in your body that it becomes practically impossible to keep the weight off. It’s not about someone’s self-control or strength of will.
Yet again (surprise surprise), trainers and weight loss companies need you to fail, so you’ll pay them again. One-time customers are not the sort of thing that keep these diet companies in business.
Think about a practical willpower exercise – your husband buys ice cream, your favorite kind. And every time you open the freezer, and you want it, that’s a willpower check you’re having to roll. Just say you succeed for a week, opening the freezer, wanting the ice cream, not taking it. What’s that, 3x/day, 7 days/week, so 21 successful checks of willpower.
But some Saturday you’re feeling good and it’s hot and you reach in for some ice cream. Society has taught you that you have FAILED. You’re bad, you’re naughty. You have no willpower. You’re terrible and lazy and fat.
Does that really seem right to you? How much time during the week did that ice cream spend inhabiting your mental spaces, because you were focusing/obsessing on not having any?
Should having a bowl of ice cream once in a seven day period really be thought of as failure?
And, in an unfortunate side effect of your “willpower,” oftentimes, because you have actively deprived yourself of ice cream for the whole week, often you will eat more than you actually want.
Flooded with guilt, you spend another week, depriving yourself, trying to be a champion of willpower.
It’s a vicious cycle, and you deserve better.
This week: go into your fridge or pantry and get a helping of something that you have deprived yourself of. Savor it. Don’t eat it mindlessly in front of the TV. Allow yourself to taste it and enjoy it.
Practice not feeling guilty about it. Remember how delicious it was and how much you enjoyed it and how glad you are that you ate it.