Imagine a world where our bodies were all considered equally beautiful. No more dieting (and the binging which naturally follows a diet) in order to conform to this culture's current standard. What a liberating fantasy! 

Our culture, unfortunately, is still entrapped in its rigid norms. An unrealistic standard of beauty unattainable by most women is put forth and upheld by the beauty industry in particular, and by sex-oriented advertising campaigns in general. Our self-esteem as women suffers as we are told we are not okay as we are—our nose is too big, our stomachs too round, our breasts too small— tempting us into believing that if we fix these "flaws," our lives will be perfect and we will be "acceptable." Since all of us long for love and acceptance, we may buy advertising's well-spent 
message that we are not okay as we are. 

It is important for us to understand that the current standard of beauty is unhealthy for most women. Unless you were born with an endomorphic body, you cannot have a model's size and shape and still be healthy. Most models must starve themselves in order to meet the industry's standards. Even then, an "imperfect" body part may be substituted by another's in a spliced photograph. And these are the standards to which we as women compare ourselves! When we believe that only the culture's current standard for bodies is acceptable and we are not okay as we are, we may try to explain our unhappiness by focusing on these so-called flaws of our bodies, thus beginning the diet syndrome.

Diets, however, do not work long-term. Most dieters will tell you that they have lost weight on diets (often a lot; often many times). So this is not a problem of willpower. Yet 95% regain the weight. Why? Diets don't work—for both psychological and physiological reasons. 

A diet assumes that there is a beginning and an end. Diets that eliminate the food you love and want, set up an urge to binge as a rebellion against feeling deprived. Diets which dictate what to eat and when to eat keep us reliant on external cues rather than responding to our body's needs for food. Diets which severely restrict the quantity of food turn a weight loss diet into a maintenance diet as the body's metabolism changes to prevent what it believes is starvation. We can recognize underfeeding by its symptoms: lower energy, apathy, intolerance to cold, irritability and depression, preoccupation with food, and slower metabolism (so less food will cause weight gain once you stop dieting). This helps us understand how dieting perpetuates the compulsive eating cycle. 

A prevailing myth tells us that all fat people are overweight and should lose weight. It is important to differentiate being fat from being overweight. You can't tell by looking at a person if they are under or overweight. Being over-weight simply means being above your set point range, i.e. your body's natural weight (determined by your genetic heritage, your age and the state of your metabolism after years of dieting and bingeing). So it is possible to be large and yet not overweight. It is also possible to be an average size and yet be severely underweight, if it is being maintained by starving the body. 

So how do we find our set point range? How do we get out of the cycle of dieting and regaining weight? Through lifestyle changes—aerobic exercise and changing the quality, not the quantity, of the food we eat, particularly lowering fats and sugars. Am I advocating that we put fats and sugars on a forbidden list? Definitely not. When something is forbidden, we crave it even more, triggering the compulsive 
dieting/binging cycle. The solution is to eat what we really want, not what we think we should eat (or shouldn't eat). Learn to eat slowly, consciously. Let yourself enjoy every bite. Learn to eat from physical hunger, not emotional hunger. While this may sound simple, it is not easy if we have spent years in a love/ hate relationship with food. 

For many of us, food has been a source of comfort when none was available. Food is a way to cope with the stresses of life. When we stop using food to stuff our uncomfortable feelings, we become more aware of our sadness, anger, loneliness. Who wants to feel those uncomfortable feelings, you may ask. 

There's a price we pay for cutting ourselves off from our feelings and intuitions—it's a kind of numbness, a deadness inside. If we are to live life fully, we need to experience all of it. When we let ourselves experience all our feelings, we begin to know ourselves better and what is important to us. As we reconnect to ourselves, we can connect with others, helping us feel less isolated. Our energy is freed to direct and recreate our lives. 

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Barbara L. Holtzman, MSW, LICSW is a psychotherapist, hypnotherapist and lifestyle coach in Providence and Wakefield RI and is the author of Conscious Eating, Conscious Living; A Practical Guide to Making Peace with Food & Your Body. Barbara has found her own natural body weight through her “Making Peace with Food & Your Body” approach, which she presents at colleges, hospitals, women’s expos, and wellness centers and through magazines and newspaper articles. 

To reach Barbara directly about her workshop schedule, therapy or coaching practice, e-mail barbaraholtzman@cox.net or call her at 401-789-0777. Her website is www.makingpeacewithfoodandyourbody.com.

You can order her book & CD online at www.healthjourneys.com or  www.makingpeacewithfoodandyourbody.com