Christine

How The Diet Industry Gambles With Your Insecurity

May 9, 2011 By Christine 4 Comments

The fat monster.

How is that beautiful, competent, clever, successful people – often women – can work with great authority in their professional lives, but be out of control when it comes to what they put in their mouths? Or how they feel about their bodies?

According to a recent UK survey:

75% of women are unhappy with their shape.
6 out of 10 say that their body image makes them feel depressed, and
84% of normal weight women want to be slimmer by an average 9lbs.

And it’s not just a female problem. Some figures suggest that 45% of men are now unhappy with their bodies compared to just 10% twenty five years ago.

It appears that the vast majority of us are locked in some psychological battle – wishing to be other than we are, and making ourselves miserable in the process.

And it’s a battle that the diet industry understands very well. So well that latest figures suggest it’s going to make $586.3 billion from it by 2014.

Feeding on insecurity

You can probably list as well as I can the products that are out there that say they’re going to transform you. There’s no end to slimming club innovations, weightloss pill advancements, bootcamp programmes, diet food, meal delivery or meal replacement systems.

But beware if you think that their primary motive is to heal you. What profit-making organisation would really, really have a vested interest in getting rid of its income stream?

No, at heart they want to foster your dependence on them. Here are 5 aspects of the diet industry that ensure they do.

Focus on scarcity

The whole system is geared around getting you to think about what you can’t have. It’s about having you set limits and constraints. Siding with a part of you that feels shit about yourself and offering self-punishment in the form of oppressive meal plans and exercise schedules.

So long as you’re feeling bad enough about yourself, this will work for a while. But sooner or later you’re going to rebel. In which case, the most obvious thing to do is overeat as a way of asserting your psychological freedom.

Symptom not problem

The industry does not help you get to the root of the upsets or unhappiness that are causing you to have such a downer on your body.

Instead it tackles the symptom. Your real or perceived extra pounds. The thing on which you’ve pinned your misery.

In some instances dieting will work. You might even change your shape for a while.

But it’s a bit like taking a painkiller to cure a chronic stress headache. It may get rid of it for a while, but without addressing the underlying reason for the problem, it’s just going to come back.

In which case you get locked into a kind of Groundhog Day scenario, losing and gaining, and losing and gaining. Trying solution after expensive solution believing this time will be different.

Loss not gain

And the mindset of the diet business is about loss. Losing the weight. Dumping the fat. Giving things up. Thinking about what you no longer want to be.

In contrast, the positive psychologists will tell you that focusing on the negative won’t give you the psychic strength to overcome a problem for the long term.

No, our profiteering businesses rarely help you focus on what you can gain – lasting, ongoing health; vitality; peace of mind; freedom from the struggle, an different kind of body confidence than you’ve known before.

Head not body

The emphasis of most of the system is on getting you to control your body by using your head. Counting calories, carbs or points; watching fat units; figuring that dress size 12 is good, and 14 bad.

But where are you taught that your body has its own deep wisdom about food, nourishment and weight and that, left to its own devices can find balance by itself?

Crap food is crap food

Much of the food we eat these days is synthetic. Fast food, takeaways, ready meals. Some of these things may contain natural produce, but most of the time it has all sorts of crap added. Fats, sugars and salts are just the tip of the iceberg.

Diet foods are no different just because they have the what appear to be healthy words in front of them.

Crap food is toxic to our bodies, harms our natural digestive processes and confuse our natural hungers. A great example is of diet soda that far from assisting weight loss, contributes to weight gain because it doesn’t allow the natural blood sugar responses to do their job.

But what do you do if the diet industry has left you so out of touch with your body that you don’t know where to start to make things different?

A large part of it is in deciding to stop the perpetual internal struggle.

The Fat Monster

When I work in therapy or coaching with folks who bring to me the issue of body image or excess weight, it’s amazing how often, if they dare talk about it, they uncover an ugly side of themselves. It’s what I’ve come to call The Fat Monster. It’s a part of them that they’d really rather disown. It’s vulnerable, anxious, needy. And hungry. Often hungry.

In times of feeling good about themselves they can reign it in, even feel good about what they look like. At other times the monster wins, leading to all kind of self-destructive behaviours that they often won’t even want to talk to their friends about.

They feel stupid, guilty, ashamed.

This is the problem that is exploited rather than solved by the diet industries.

Instead, The Fat Monster needs to be understood and befriended. Its hungers need to be listened to because often they’re not for food at all. They’re for forms of nourishment – psychological, spiritual and physical – that have rarely if ever been present in a person’s life. Or for which food became a convenient substitute.

The diet industry won’t get this up close and personal with you. It won’t teach you how not to need it. But you can do it for yourself, or with the help of someone who really understands.

Whatever, it’s in calling a ceasefire to the warring parts of our own psyches that we can begin to reassert ourselves in this complex challenge, slay the fat monster, and stop letting a rich corporate system get even richer.

From your own experience, how else does the diet industry make money at your expense? How can you, or have you stopped it? With what results?

photo credit: Smabs Sputzer

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: addiction, diet industry, diets, insecurity

Here’s How Not Listening To Your Gut Can Screw You

April 18, 2011 By Christine 3 Comments

You’re told to look at the facts.

To weigh up the pros and cons.

To look critically at the detail of problems in order to solve them.

Which kind of works. Until it doesn’t.

Consider these scenarios:

Something tells you that your partner is hiding something from you, even though you have no concrete evidence.
You have a sneaking suspicion that a health problem needs further investigating, despite reassurances that everything is fine.
Your gut says there an online market for your stunning, black and white safari photography, although you’ve been a banker all your life.

Our experience and upbringing leads us to discount these things as stupidity or paranoia.

You can hear the divorcing parent tell you that everything is fine with them, even though you know that it’s not.

You watch everyone denying the problem of your alcoholic aunt, even though you know she’s really dying.

You recall the teacher telling you that other people won’t like your charcoal line drawings, even though you’re in love with them.

Forget it

The inference is that, unless something has been spoken, has some basis in experience, or follows traditional fact, it’s not true and that you should ignore it.

But what gets overlooked is that intuition has its own wisdom. For a start it feeds off different information stimuli. Detail needs here-and-now practical reality. Intuition works off a different kind of awareness. It’s a kind of knowing, built from a sixth sense. And its source cannot always be nailed down or pinpointed.

Not listening to your gut can screw you

Three examples of how not heeding your intuition can trip you up are:

You can get hurt in a relationship because you don’t confront the below-the-surface signs that something’s not right, and so live with the relationship you imagine you have rather than the one you do have.
You can give yourself a serious health problem to deal with because you don’t listened to the wee voice telling you that your symptoms are more than minor.
You can lose business and wealth opportunities by not grabbing a hunch and running with it when it emerges. And then be gutted by watching others, who went straight ahead with a similar idea, succeed.

Luckily it doesn’t have to be like that, and you can teach yourself to value your intuition as much as others value facts.

Listen and learn

Think back to situations in which you haven’t trusted your gut, only later to find it prove itself accurate to you. What was it that you didn’t pay attention to or discounted? Maybe you were wary of the person who did that great job interview with you some months back. But it was only after you’d taken the job that you realized you were working with a vampire boss and that your wariness was a signal that all wasn’t well.

Instead of beating yourself up for not listening, decide that next time you feel wary of someone, you’ll trust that a knowing part of you is picking up something that needs your attention.

Experiment

Practice trusting your intuition with small, or less important things and see what happens. For example, if one day a good friend seems to be holding something back, say so. They could be just tired, but it’s also just possible that they’re preoccupied about something and were trying not to burden you with it.

Don’t feel pressurised to justify

When you take action based on your intuition, others will often want you to justify what you’re doing. If you can explain it, brilliant. But sometimes you may not be able to. In which case, don’t feel that you need to justify. The more you trust your intuition, the more it will work for you, and the more confident you’ll become of using it.

So what about you? Where have you run roughshod over your intuition with bad results? And where has listening to your intuition really supported you?

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: intuition

How Safe Is Your Relationship From Delusion?

April 4, 2011 By Christine Leave a Comment

What’s your measure of a good relationship?

Being taken to celebrity chef restaurants when you’re dating? Buying and creating a Homes & Garden standard house together? Taking happy couple-only holidays in chic destinations? Having designer-clad children attending the most prestigious schools?

Not that there’s anything wrong with these things. I love luxe as much as the next girl.

But be careful that there’s some content beneath the glamorous exterior, or you could be deluding yourself.

Here are 7 warning signs that there may be heartache ahead if you’re not careful:

1. It’s not okay to be yourself

In deluded relationships, there’s a pressure to be other than you are. To look different; to behave different; to want different things to the things you really want.

In good relationships, the real “you” is loved to bits. Quirks and all.

2. You have no shared vision of the future

You’re kidding yourself about how real your relationship is if there’s no long-term plan that you’ve both talked through at length.

Joined up couples talk often about their shared sense of purpose and direction. This enhances the depth of their bond.

3. Communication between you sucks

Couples who rarely talk, or do so just to disagree and argue, ain’t going to hack it in the long term.

On the other hand, those that talk to one another about pretty much anything do better. That’s not to say they won’t struggle to hear one another in more emotional conversations. But they will tend to stick with it and enable a deeper sense of intimacy with one another as a result.

4. Basic care and respect are missing

Sucky couples totally neglect the basics. They do things like plan business meetings on birthdays, and forget anniversaries. They take for granted things that are done for them by the other.

Those that pay attention to the everyday things of life tend to do better. Honoring an arrangement to be somewhere on time; saying thank you for treat of being brought Sunday morning breakfast in bed.

5. There’s no sex

In delusional relationships the sex was something that disappeared some time ago and now doesn’t ever get talked about, or if it does, it’s only with resentment.

Good relationships, even those of long-standing, understand the pivotal role that sex plays in expressing love. There’s always some kind of sexual banter going on. If sex hits a bit of a drought, it gets talked about because it’s an indicator of something that needs attention.

6. There’s only sex

Conversely, in some relationships going nowhere, sex is all there is. Take it away and there’s no big picture, no big common interests, no shared values or beliefs.

In which case, it’s possible you don’t have a relationship at all. What you do have is an addiction.

7. You’ve got a flaky concept of what love is

Many misinformed folks think that love is some gooey feeling that we just happen across and that, if we love someone else, the mushiness will survive regardless.

It doesn’t work that way. Yes, there’s attraction that draws us to another in the first place, but after that love is a choice. It’s a decision to extend part of ourselves, to another regardless. Love sometimes means being tough and saying things that are hard to hear. But it’s always supportive and nurturing.

No relationship is ever perfect. But the time to improve things is while there’s enough commitment on either side to make things work. Sadly, when things start to go wrong, it’s easy to put your head in sand and hang on to that picture you’ve got in your head of how perfect you guys actually are.

Don’t. If any of the things here give you cause for concern, sort them out now.

photo credit: mynameisharsha

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: delusion, relationship, warning signs

On Fear, Doubt, And Shooting For The Stars Anyway

September 30, 2010 By Christine Leave a Comment

There’s a theme at the heart of some of the very different stories I’ve heard from my people this week. It’s about wanting to be and do so much more, but holding yourself back.

You know the kind of thing I’m talking about. Not pitching for a job that’s got you written all over it because you “know” you won’t get it. Not quitting corporate life, even though your entrepreneurial sideline business is showing more than green shoots of success. Not leaving a relationship that’s well past its sell-by date, because you tell yourself there will never be another.

You’ve read all the logical advice out there.

You know that you can tick all the boxes on the spec for the big job. That your moonlighting income is trending beyond break even. That there are lots of eligible singletons on the market.

It convinces you for so long. But…

You’ve listened to the motivational gurus.

You’ve heard the ra ra that says “Just Do It! Push past yourself. Be confident, find courage, and take a leap of faith”.

It inspires you for so long. But…

And there’s always a “but”.

A primeval doubt that forces you back on yourself, that immobilizes you, that stops you from acting as powerfully as you know you can.

And which in turn mixes with fear that dissolves you, taking with it all your courage and resolve.

It’s frustrating. So frustrating. Of course this thing you’re wrestling with right now is very specific. Yet the feelings are ones you’ve known before in different guises. Always you try to tuck them away. Always they bounce back.

The theme echoed for me because it’s in my story too right now. (I gotta love how my work as coach and self-development ninja is so often the cauldron of my own growth.)

My dilemma? Daring to unveil and unmask online even more than I already have. Believing that doing so will help take my blogging business to the next level again.

Oh, I do pretty well. I know I’m well respected by a solid community of friends, followers and clients. I’ve put the leg work in. I’m proud of where I am. My blog’s currently sitting at a not-too-shabby circa 200,000 Global Alexa. And I make enough money to pay my way in life.

You might say, “Wow. Why would you want to do more?”

And sure, I could cruise here.

But, here’s the thing. I know there’s an even bigger me inside, bursting to push through, if only I will let it.

I ask myself: “Who am I to dare to believe I could touch more people; influence more broadly?” I compare myself to others I perceive as having cracked it and find myself falling short. Jon Morrow’s magic; Johnny B Truant’s humor; Naomi Dunford’s razor sharpness.

In my own mind I play small to their bigness. I am perpetual apprentice to their mastery.

What if I took back my projections and broke through my own glass ceiling?

And I think of the other times in my life that I’ve pushed through growth points despite fear and doubt. The time I knew I had to jump from my prestigious career to self-employment, despite no savings to fall back on. The time I so wanted to accept a loving man’s invitation despite being one very scalded cat. The time I intuited I had to take my business in a very different direction, despite years of successful self-employment.

How did I get past my fears at these points. How did I quell my doubts?

You might be expecting me to say something crass like I kicked them into touch. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I befriended them. Shit, I became their goddamn mother.

A slight digression, but I was thinking there of how it is for my little nephew when he gets frightened about something.

Some years ago, when he was only three or four, he was staying with me at Halloween. He loved the pumpkin lantern making, and the orange flashing decoration lamps I’d found to hang on Eric the rubber plant. But when we opened the door to some older kids, who’d come round Trick-or -Treating in full ghoulish costume, he totally freaked and ran away.

What drew him back, enough to dare to look the kids in the eye and share a laugh, was me holding him tightly, calming him down, and convincing him we were going to look at these scary monsters together.

One of the things I most dislike about some pop coaching stuff is that it encourages you to disown bits of you that you don’ t like and would rather not look at. With enough logic and motivation, it suggests, anything can be overcome.

I disagree.

The thing that has always stopped me moving forward is the screaming kid inside that’s so totally spooked by the unknown that it just will not budge.

To shoot for the stars you need to take your kid by the hand and figure out what it needs in order to feel safe enough to even try.

Sure, there will be practical things. Is your resume the best it can be? Are you confident your price points are market sensitive? Have you got a great divorce lawyer onboard and do you know your rights?

Inspirational stuff has its place too. Of course you need determination, tenacity and sheer balls to push through.

But don’t discount what you need emotionally. Take support from knowing that loving people are right behind you. Take all the positive strokes you can. But understand, own, and take strength from your fears and doubts. They are telling you that the faces at the door of your current challenge are scary. Gather them up, calm them down, and look the monster in the eye.

That’s when the transformation happens. That’s when you’ll feel your fear and doubts become excitement, enabling you to move beyond yourself and fly.

What’s spooking you at the moment? What do you need to find in yourself to go ahead with your ambitions?

photo credit: shesarii

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: achievement, doubt, fear, success