Do you ever look around and it seems like other people can be way more free with their food choices, or their portion sizes, and it doesn’t seem to affect them at all?
I hear this from so many of the physicians I work with.
And if you have a body that holds weight more easily, or a brain that’s really focused on food and really attracted to food, it can start to feel like there’s something wrong with you.
Some days it just feels unfair. Like, why me?
I want to talk about that. It’s legitimate — it happens, and it makes sense that it comes up. But it’s also worth dealing with instead of just carrying it around with you.
Why I recorded this episode
I sprained my ankle a few weeks ago on a trail run. Quite badly. I haven’t been able to do much for physical activity since.
When I’m not running, I do need to be more aware of what I’m eating. If I’m not, I’ll gain weight fairly quickly. That’s not a bad thing — over the years I’ve figured out how to deal with it and how to take it off when I’m able to.
But I was feeling sorry for myself. I was sore and frustrated that I couldn’t do things, so I wanted extra food. Food to entertain myself with. Food that felt like it gave me some comfort, because there wasn’t really much else I could do.
And I had a conversation with myself. I knew if I kept up the way I was, I’d end up regaining some weight and need to deal with it down the road.
I noticed this old sense of “it’s not fair” come over me. Why do I always need to be thinking about what I’m eating?
Have you ever felt that way?
Our bodies are our bodies
Some of us have bodies that hold weight more easily than other people.
It doesn’t make our body worse or their body better. It just is.
Same as some of us have dark hair, some have blonde, some have curly, some don’t have hair at all. It doesn’t make one person better than the other.
The only reason we think what our body does with food energy is wrong is a whole lifetime of diet culture and messaging about “ideal” human bodies.
Maybe you’ve lived in a body that has always done this, since you were young. Maybe you had a body that didn’t, and then something changed — a pregnancy, perimenopause, a stressful life event. Maybe you look at the people in your family who are older than you and can see that this is part of your genetics.
Getting mad at your body is so unfair to you
Here’s what I really want you to hear.
When we get mad at our bodies (especially about stuff like this, where we can’t change it), it’s so unfair.
We get hyper-focused on one tiny little aspect of our body, while our bodies are doing amazing things every second of every day.
And we get so focused on that one piece that we assume our bodies are all wrong and all bad. We don’t appreciate anything about them. All we do is spend our time wanting them to change.
You (and your body) deserve better.
And here’s the important part. It doesn’t change anything.
When we try to make behavioural change from that place, it usually doesn’t work or last. We’re doing it kind of meanly. Like a bully on a schoolyard saying something’s wrong with you, and trying to change. If you’ve ever experienced that, it felt horrible. And it probably didn’t prompt change. It doesn’t when you do it in your own head either.
Acceptance is not failing
For some of you, accepting this might feel like failing in some way.
It’s not. Not at all. It’s one of the most kind things you can do for yourself.
And once you accept that piece of you, then you can actually problem solve.
I remember one example of this in my own life. I was on my way to the hospital at this specific intersection.
The realization came to me – “I think I just have to accept that a lot of carbohydrates, particularly processed ones, just don’t work for my body.”
And that the healthy diet we’ve all been taught about maybe actually isn’t right for me.
Because every time I tried to follow it, it just didn’t feel right and it didn’t work.
Once I accepted that, it got a lot easier to ask better questions. What food am I going to eat that I’m actually going to like? What are the things I’d really miss, and how could I find versions of them that work better for my body?
Once you accept, it opens a door to do more real life, helpful problem solving.
“I wish I could just eat normally”
One more thing, because I hear this one constantly.
Our food environment is not a normal food environment. It’s distorted by processed food and food engineering. It’s designed to be hyper palatable, and designed to make you want to eat more and have a hard time stopping.
For our bodies, normal food is whole food. Food that has one ingredient. A cucumber, or an apple, or part of a chicken.
So when you say you wish you could just eat normally, what you’re being shown as normal eating isn’t actually normal for our bodies at a biological level. It really does make sense that a lot of our bodies can’t handle eating in this food environment.
And it is normal to be attracted to these foods. People have spent a lot of money, similar to what cigarette companies did, studying how to make sure you’re attracted to them.
So give yourself grace. We don’t have to be mad at ourselves when this happens. It’s part of living in this world.
Where to go from here
In the episode I go through five things to do when this feeling shows up. Here’s one of them.
Get clear on your reasons why you want to create change, and like them. If you’re making changes because you’re mad at your body, it’s not going to work very well and it’s going to feel horrible.
For me it was my running. At the beginning it was just being able to run without injury. Then it became working on running faster and competing against myself. That worked way better than any time I tried to create change to lose weight.
So think about your why. Why do you want to create change, and can you find reasons you actually like?
The other four are in this week’s episode of Thriving As A Physician Podcast. Come have a listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
And please share this episode with somebody who might need it. I think we all know people who spend a lot of time frustrated with their bodies.
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