I’m re-reading a book right now that is helping me deal with some weight/diet obsessions that I have and I thought this information may be valuable to some of you. The book is “When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies: Freeing Yourself from Food and Weight Obsession,” and was written by C. Munter and J. Hirschmann in 1995. Here are some interesting ideas that I’ve re-gained from the first few chapters:
- Women talk about their weight, food, and fat “issues” as a substitution for what they are really anxious, worried, or depressed about. For example, it’s much more socially acceptable for a woman to say, “I feel fat,” than it is to say, “My marriage is on the rocks,” or “I’m anxious that my boss doesn’t think I’m doing a good enough job.”
- Weight obsession comes from repeated attempts to knock ourselves down to where we are socially acceptable, specifically when we have become “larger than any woman is supposed to be in a man’s world.” Here’s a great excerpt from Chapter 2:
- “How much space is a woman supposed to occupy? How fertile and substantial is a woman supposed to be? Is it possible that women feel fat when they think their ideas, wishes, and feelings are out of line or unladylike? We believe that when women suspect they have overstepped some boundary, they attack themselves for the transgression by calling themselves fat. In this way, women keep their ideas, feelings, and forbidden ambitions in check.”
- What do we do about it? The authors call it “Bad Body Fever,” and they claim that you can end it by granting yourself the acceptance that you have always sought from others. (More details in the book…)
- The book claims that by accepting yourself and abandoning weight loss as an occupation in life (which most of us have done), your body will be able to find its natural weight.
Of course, the book negatively refers to weight loss surgery, but I choose to overlook that stuff. Changing my thinking is really what I'm after, and if this can help, then I'm all for it.
I'm going to post a couple of other things that pertain to this... I hope to hear your feedback!
When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies
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