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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Linda Bacon
Read between
October 28 - November 25, 2023
Having unsettling feelings doesn’t mean that you need to do something. You may just need to sit with them until you can figure out how to resolve them. An important part of the healing is being able to tolerate the discomfort, rather than distracting yourself from it with food.
Food is a wonderful source of pleasure—but it will get you into trouble if it’s the only source of pleasure you have in your life. Finding enjoyment elsewhere allows food to fulfill its primary role as a source of nourishment, while still providing you with joy and fun.
When you indulge yourself, making sure that eating is a pleasurable experience, you’ll find the satisfaction you are looking for. Trust in pleasure, trust in yourself, and you’ll find your own ability to make choices that nurture you.
Hopefully by now you’ve changed your mindset and decided you want a new focus in your life. Instead of thinking thin, you’re thinking happy and healthy.
Vacuuming the living room can be as, or more, beneficial than strenuous aerobic exercise for some people. 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401 This is part of a new model for exercise called “active living.” Active living refers to moving more as part of your everyday life.
The key is to stop associating exercise with “working out” or with weight loss. Notice, instead, how good it makes you feel. You may find that exercise is not only enjoyable, but a reward for the hard work you do in the rest of your life.
Live Well Pledge Today, I will try to feed myself when I am hungry. Today, I will try to be attentive to how foods taste and make me feel. Today, I will try to choose foods that I like and that make me feel good. Today, I will try to honor my body’s signals of fullness. Today, I will try to find an enjoyable way to move my body. Today, I will try to look kindly at my body and to treat it with love and respect.
There is no way you’re going to get rid of the stress in your life, nor should you want to. That would make for a very boring life! Instead, you can learn to manage the stress in your life so it has the least negative impact on your physical and mental health. One of the best ways I know is meditation, also known as mindfulness.
Deprivation won’t do anything except make “forbidden” foods more enticing.
Research indicates that parents who restrict access to certain foods are actually more likely to have heavier kids!407 This fact makes sense: The kids lose their ability to self-regulate as a result of parents’ interference.
As an added bonus, pleasure brings an additional reward: You absorb more nutrients when the food is more appealing to you.
The key to dietary fat, then, is moderation—not avoidance. Don’t buy in to the hype behind the low-fat mantra. There is little research to support strong links between dietary fat (including saturated fat and cholesterol) and heart disease, cancer—and even body f at. 422 As researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, who used to be among the chief recommenders of a low-fat diet, proclaim, “It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence. . . .”
research shows that a 50/50 ratio of fat to sugar stimulates the greatest rush of feel-good chemicals called endorphins.423 Turns out, that’s exactly the proportion found in high-quality chocolate. No wonder chocolate remains the single most craved food in the world!424, 425
the more salty foods you eat, the more salt you need to enjoy the food.429 This is due in large part to your taste buds adapting to a higher salt content and then needing it for stimulation. But taste buds only have about a three-week lifespan.
Your goal? To re-educate your palate to appreciate a wider range of flavor sensations and tone down the cravings that may be causing you harm.
The best attitude toward eating is not one of denial and restriction. The best approach is one that cultivates pleasures and honors food and the act of nourishing yourself. By becoming more attentive to and respectful of your food and the eating process, you will be drawn to more wholesome choices, learn to better appreciate the flavorful nuances of nutritious foods, and be able to better hear your body’s signals of hunger and fullness.
Let’s face the facts. We’ve lost the war on obesity. Fighting fat hasn’t made the fat go away. And being thinner, even if we knew how to successfully accomplish it, will not necessarily make us healthier or happier. The war on obesity has taken its toll. Extensive “collateral damage” has resulted: Food and body preoccupation, self-hatred, eating disorders, discrimination, poor health. . . . Few of us are at peace with our bodies, whether because we’re fat or because we fear becoming fat. Health at Every Size is the new peace movement. Very simply, it acknowledges that good health can best be
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we need to stop making weight an official concern. Health officials, researchers, physicians, dietitians: Lay off the fat people. It is time for the health-industrial complex to acknowledge that science and reason do not support the value of a weight focus. We need to practice evidence-based medicine and use it as a basis for determining public health policy. We can support this by adding weight as a protected category under anti-discrimination laws. Fat people deserve full personhood and the right to legal protection when that personhood is denied; the high prevalence of weight-based
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Attitudes toward weight are further complicated by social class. It is said that “You can never be too rich or too thin,” and in fact heaviness is much more common among people of lower socioeconomic status. It is common for the privileged class to view weight as a measure of one’s character: People are fat because they are too lazy or irresponsible to take care of themselves. Weight carries a moral judgment, allowing the thin (wealthy) to justify their social position. If the poor and minorities are getting fatter, it is even more proof that they are less responsible and less worthy.
The toughest challenge in adopting HAES is to recognize that change has got to come from inside you. You are trying to define your own beauty and value in an environment that doesn’t want you to get away with it. No industry profits from your self-love or from the very simple notion that you’ve already got the tools for fulfillment right there inside you.
Self-love may be the most revolutionary act you can engage in. A person who is content in his or her body—fat or thin—disempowers the industries that prey on us and helps rewrite cultural mores.
We are taught to view hunger as a manifestation of betrayal of our body, a force to be resisted. We’re taught to view our weight as a sign of our failure—or to believe that failure is imminent if our resistance to hunger falters. But these ideas stand in the way of change. When you free yourself from the damaging weight myths and the “expert” voices that have infiltrated your mind, when you give yourself permission to feel your hunger, you recognize that hunger is not the enemy, but rather, a friendly, helpful force, alerting you to your needs and inviting you to take care of yourself.
Feeling your hunger—and feeding it, in whatever form, is your power and opportunity for growth. You take back ownership of your body and how that precious body manifests and touches the world.
What Can You Do? Refuse to fight in an unjust war. Join the new peace movement: “Health at Every Size” (HAES). HAES acknowledges that well-being and healthy habits are more important than any number on the scale. Participating is simple: 1. Accept your size. Love and appreciate the body you have. Self-acceptance empowers you to move on and make positive changes. 2. Trust yourself. We all have internal systems designed to keep us healthy—and at a healthy weight. Support your body in naturally finding its appropriate weight by honoring its signals of hunger, fullness, and appetite. 3. Adopt
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