I've always been really drawn to the transformation story; rags to riches, shy, retiring mouse to self-assured dynamo, plain Jane to goddess. The first ones to catch my attention were those ugly duckling, 'fat to thin' photospreads you get in magazines. The ones where, on one side of the page, a huge, marshmallow person stares apologetically at the camera. ‘I’m sorry I exist’ their sad, puffy faces seem to say - ruining your paper with my looks which don’t fit into society’s rigidly defined ideas of what is aesthetically acceptable!
Then, on the opposite page, there’s the transformation pic, the former fatty has shed 6 stone (or however many kilos that translates as) and is holding out their fat person’s, clown trousers out in front of them.
‘Look at what a fat joke I was.’ Their happy grins say, now I can walk down the street happily, without children pelting me with rotten fruit.
The most predictable New Year’s resolution
The thing is, my shameful little secret, is that there is a part of me that is still strongly drawn towards this fat to thin story, so that every now and again I’ll take a sneak peak at My 600 pound life or similar programme, on T.V. I just can't seem to stop being seduced by the lure of the idea that however bad it gets, change is still possible.
By the side of my bed, there is always a pile of books. Usually comprised of self-help books, the novel I’m currently reading and fiction books I started then put aside in favour of something a bit more interesting.
At this moment in time, at the top of the self-help pile is Freedom from Emotional Eating by Paul McKenna. And why do I have this book there, if I’ve claimed to support the body positivity movement and intuitive eating and the rest of it?
The answer to this is that I can never fully climb aboard the whole body positivity/fat acceptance thing because:
a) I don’t want to be fat and don’t feel comfortable at the weight I’m currently at
b) I do still see excess weight as having an emotional aspect to it.
c) I want to be as healthy as possible.
Now, please don’t come down on me like a tonne of bricks about this, I’m saying that I can’t embrace the whole whole ‘fat acceptance’ thing for me, I’m not talking about anyone else. I really do believe that I’ve always been an emotional eater, using food for comfort and not always just eating when I’m hungry and I want to address that. Although Mckenna’s book tends to oversimplify things, it does seem to contain basic truths. The only problem is that, I must have bought it a while ago, and it contains a hypnosis C.D and we have nowhere in our house that plays CDs and the whole point of it is to listen to it privately, on an MP3 player or suchlike but I don’t have the means to burn it onto my device but when I do we’re really going to see some changes! Clown trouser pictures to follow.
The impact of the past
The other transformations I like to hear about are the ones where people were addicted to drugs or alcohol, then had an epiphany, turned their lives around and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro or something. I don’t think that I’m an alcoholic, I just like the narrative of having a problem to solve - one so huge and which overshadows everything, that needs to be overcome before you can realise your full potential.
Talking of problems to overcome, someone recommended to me a book about trauma, [The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma. Kolk, Bessel van der, Penguin 2015 ] The author propounds that trauma and its effects are a lot more widespread than most people think and the repercussions are manifold. Going back to the whole weight thing, one of the things he puts forward is that feelings of panic might be experienced as hunger, causing people to overeat. Also, that people who are disconnected with their bodies, not in tune with signals, may continue to eat past the point of fullness. I’ve encountered versions of this theory since reading Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach (Although she talks of women subconsciously wanting to be fat, as a protection from the outside world).
The book about trauma is a difficult read, detailing case studies of traumatic experiences which can be harrowing, I’d only recommend reading it if you are looking to go into that field of work yourself or if you are feeling emotionally robust and read it in small bursts.
It’s all getting a bit heavy now, let’s move on
Triumph over adversity: I’m also a great fan of those tales of women who were married to
feckless men (not that this applies to me!) and they had four children and their husbands left them but they picked themselves up by their bootstraps to become bestselling authors/successful business women/human rights lawyers. I bloody love those stories!
Like I said, I don’t have the feckless husband but am often held back by my own lack of confidence and have a tendency to self-sabotage, so to that end, when my brother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I requested the book The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance---What Women Should Know by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. He kindly got it for me, last December, I just need to read it now, to be brimming with confidence….(In my defence, December was really manic).
Tip 1: to get the most from a self-help book, make sure you actually read it!
Finish what you started
So, perhaps my main New Year’s resolution should be to actually read my self-help books, right through to the end and, in the case of the ‘Emotional Eating’ one, actually watch the DVD, find some way of downloading the CD and follow the techniques. I’ll check in, this time next month to let you know if it’s started to work.
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