The Moral Value of Things

I really like clothes. Putting together a new outfit is a way I express creativity, my personality, and even my mood for a particular day. I love going through stores like Plato's Closet and MAMS to find pieces to give more life to beyond their first home. In the past six or so months, however, my clothing situation has been all over the place leaving me feeling pretty shitty about myself currently. I went from all my clothes fitting me, to most of my clothes being too big and having to buy smaller ones, and back to fitting in the bigger clothes I had worn prior to losing weight. It was hard for me to even convince myself to try on the older clothes even though I could see my body healing itself to a point where they would probably fit. I also noted that the smaller clothes I had bought during the transition into treatment were becoming tighter and less comfortable. I had to remind myself of something we discussed in groups about body acceptance: that if our clothes are too small, all that means is we need new clothes and nothing else. A mistake made too often is attaching morality to clothing sizes. That a size large is "worse" than a size small and thus makes you a less valuable person.

This improper attachment of morality onto objects and measurements can be extended beyond clothing sizes. In fact, moralizing food choices is so common among our culture to where most wouldn't even regard it as "disordered". A prevalent example of this is using the terms "good" and "bad" to categorize food. A cookie is "bad" and a carrot is "good". But really a cookie would definitely sustain you longer than a carrot because the carbohydrates in it are what your body uses for energy. Yet if you are in need of feeling full but not for that long, then carrots might benefit you best in that situation due to their higher fiber content. Still, even if carrots might be available and make the "most sense" to eat, sometimes your body and mind wants a cookie and having it doesn't make you a bad person for "giving in". But you might think it does if you have labeled cookies as a "bad" food. This kind of thinking can stem from simply calling foods healthy or unhealthy. While these terms are deemed as helpful by the food industry in finding a balance in your diet, they become a criteria people use to determine the moral value of their food intake. People who view eating pizza as unhealthy take that to mean they should try to avoid it to better themselves, demonizing the pizza. This leads me to my next bone to pick with the diet culture and it's impacts on disordered eating: avoidance.  

How many times have you heard a commercial advertising a product that will eliminate your cravings? I would bet it's hard to get through most days without coming across some sort of media to that affect. Here's the deal: this is condemning your body's natural ability to tell you when and what you need. Your body doesn't fail to keep your heart beating or your lungs breathing, and it also doesn't fail to give you hunger and fullness cues to tell you when it needs food. Trying to suppress these cues is like trying to suppress your need for oxygen; it simply doesn't work. Soon enough, food itself becomes the enemy as you try to battle with your body by refusing to give it what it needs. Let me tell you though, you may win the battle with your body, but you will not win the war. Our bodies are incredibly smart and are made to protect us against everything, including ourselves. This is why dieting and restriction to any magnitude does not work. By denying yourself something and labeling it as "bad, unhealthy, or a forbidden food, it only makes you crave it more. Soon you will find yourself unable to concentrate on anything other than those foods you won't allow yourself to have. The desire will become so overpowering to have these foods that when you do allow yourself to have just one, the body's reward system goes into overdrive and it becomes nearly impossible to prevent yourself from binging on said items. And good luck trying to convince me that you are the exception to the rule. After you give in and ultimately indulge on what your body has been trying to tell you it needed, guilt kicks in and you impose yet another strict, unsustainable diet on yourself that begins this cycle all over again. This all starts with simply giving foods value based on what the diet industry wants you to think.

It is a brilliant way to make a profit: exploiting the ever decreasing net self-esteem of society by providing them with solutions to "fix" themselves. But really when someone is hyper-focused on trying to control their food intake by any means, even to "better themselves", it indicates that they have underlying struggles that they are using food to cope with. There is an epidemic of this sort in developed countries and a rising prevalence for them in even developing nations, and it is fueled by the diet industry. The industry that proposes a plethora of outlets for people to burn through and never find true peace with food. When your world is ruled by rotating diets, checking nutrition labels, and ultimately restriction, you likely fit within the margins of being known as a chronic dieter. Such behaviors are difficult to change because they provide the same sense of security that an eating disorder provides, without the validity of having an eating disorder. There seems to be no real reason to stop since it is not an immediate threat to your health and it is taking your focus away from the things you don't want to deal with. Dieting serves a purpose, but, my friends, it is not weight loss. 95% of people who diet and are able to lose weight gain it back in 1-5 years. It is not sustainable for the long run and thus ends in failure which guilts you into yet another diet.

Now bear with me as I try to bring this tangent back full circle.

Trying to eat the good foods and not the bad foods doesn't last and leads to failure. Failing at a diet can all too easily be translated into simply failing and, therefore, being a failure. So how to you get out of this suffocating state? Well that is the first intuitive eating principe essentially: breaking the diet mentality.  And as I mentioned before the other nine principles can guide anyone struggling with chronic dieting, disordered eating, or a negative relationship with food in any way to this peace I speak of. The peace that allows me to go to the kitchen at 11pm and have cookies. The peace that allows me to have a bowl of cereal for breakfast or dinner without the guilt. The peace with food that allows you to feel your feelings and not numb them out with obsessive tendencies regarding what you eat. And being able to do that is a process on it's own, but it cannot be done without the freedom from food and space to do so.

Glo