Body Respect by Linda Bacon, PhD

I read this book so long ago that I remember almost nothing about it, but I did highlight it to pieces. Here are a few:

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In an interesting take on this issue, researchers asked a group of more than 170,000 U.S. adults their actual weight and what they perceived as their ideal weight. They found that the gap between those weights was a better indicator of mental and physical health than BMI. In other words, body dissatisfaction, or feeling fat, has a stronger negative health effect than being fat.

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Dieting triggers a reduction in leptin, which both increases appetite and decreases metabolism. And chronic dieting results in chronically less leptin release, which could easily explain why the majority of people with a history of dieting actually gain weight over time. They have become hungrier and their bodies are more sluggish.

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If our basic survival needs have been met, it’s our physical responses to life circumstances that prove the key determinant to health. Those well treated by society, who see themselves as valuable and worthy, enjoy a protective cushion that trumps the stress response. By contrast, lives under threat—whether due to poverty; adverse childhood events; noise pollution; damp houses; fear of crime, racism, or sizeism; insecure or dangerous work; or a general lack of control over one’s circumstances—trigger stress responses that work overtime and reduce bodily resilience. It is a toxic combination even for those who follow all the best lifestyle recommendations. 

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Trumpeting obesity concerns and admonishing people to lose weight is not just ineffective at producing thinner, healthier bodies—it’s downright damaging. Current ideas about weight are the source of our pain, not the solution. They lead to repeated cycles of weight loss and regain, to food and body preoccupation, self-hatred, eating disorders, weight stigmatization and discrimination, and poor health. Few of us are at peace with our bodies, whether because we’re fat or because we fear becoming fat. 

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To get a grip on weight and well-being, we need to reframe the role that the calorie has taken on. To start with, we can relate to food and calories as nourishment—as opposed to villains who pack on pounds. The pleasures of eating go beyond physical nourishment to include socializing, nostalgia, and familiar comforts, and the excitement of new experiences (as we try unfamiliar foods).

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While the energy balance equation is theoretically accurate, it is often misinterpreted and misapplied in real life. One major difficulty is that it sets us up to think of bodies, and therefore people, as machines. This isn’t the case, though. For example, someone may eat the exact same food as a friend and get all of the energy from that food. The friend, on the other hand, may have some friendly bacteria in his or her gut that digest some of the energy so that it never gets into the body. Or, perhaps another person doesn’t absorb all of the nutrients, and some travel out as excrement. (Stated in other terms: Suppose you and your friend both eat a 100-calorie banana. One of you may absorb 95 of those calories, while the other absorbs 85; the two of you take in a different number of calories, despite consuming the same food.) Or, once the nutrients are absorbed into the body, in one person it may trigger chemical reactions that turn part of the food energy into heat, which dissipates from the body; in another person, that energy may settle into fat stores.

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Paradoxically, issues with weight regulation often start when we try to take over the process of weight control by aiming to be a certain weight and following food rules to try and reach that weight. This leads to a troubled relationship with food, body (self) hatred, and metabolic responses to inadequate nourishment and stress. The result is escalating weights and poorer health, not slimming down, and not greater well-being. Among people who “eat normally,” which at its simplest means eating to appetite and with no undue concern about weight, the body will regulate around its setpoint and achieve weight stability with remarkable efficiency. That is why many non-dieters can maintain stable weights effortlessly.

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There is even research suggesting that guilt messes with your metabolism and weight-regulation system, but enjoyment doesn’t; women who felt guilty eating chocolate cake gained weight, while women who viewed it as celebration were more likely to stay weight stable over time. So bust out the balloons and noisemakers and dig into that slice of cake—if you want to. Contrary to popular belief, enjoying your food is actually better for you than guilt-tripping. That’s cause for celebration in and of itself!

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The drive to eat when you are not physically hungry means that you need something—and food is either the stand-in while you figure out what the underlying need is, or the substitute means of meeting that need if it remains unidentified. This is not a time to come down on yourself! When you reach for food at these times it’s because it’s the best way you know in that moment to take care of yourself. It’s a resourceful attempt to manage emotions, and plenty of folks with a healthy relationship with food will comfort-eat from time to time. The problem arises when it’s the only way you have to manage emotions and it leads to turning to food a lot—every time you feel off-kilter—because then the coping behavior itself causes distress. Acknowledge that if you are an “emotional eater,” your strategy has played a vital role in self-care when you didn’t have other options available to you.