MeaningFULL: 23 Life-Changing Stories of Conquering Dieting, Weight, & Body Image Issues

INTRODUCTION

Don’t eat this food; eat that food. Don’t give up; work harder. Avoid this; add that. Good food; bad food. Good fat; bad fat. Good weight; bad weight. Healthy; not healthy. Do. Don’t. Do. Don’t.

Been there, done that? Are you ready for honest, uncomplicated, and doable solutions to your food, weight, and body image struggles? If you want to experience more contentment in life and to triumph over your eating and body battles, then read on.

As a Marriage and Family Therapist and specialist in eating and body image issues, I’ve been teaming with people to resolve their dieting, weight, and body image problems for over a decade. Previously, and like many of us, I also spent years struggling with dieting, healthy eating, and pushing my body to make it look different. I know that this helpful, motivational guide has been long overdue.

Both my personal and professional experience shape the content of MeaningFULL: 23 Life-Changing Stories of Conquering Dieting, Weight, & Body Image Issues. In these pages, you’ll find relatable, honest, and inspiring stories of people who found keys to conquering:

failed dieting;

binge eating;

emotional eating;

unhealthy/healthy food choices;

body dissatisfaction and body hate;

yo-yo dieting (weight cycling);

eating disorders; and

related challenges (e.g., stressing about exercising, clean eating, or muscling up).

Each contributor shares the realizations and paths they followed that changed their food, dieting, weight, and body image problems into life-enhancing perspectives, practices, and skills. I’m pleased to offer you their discoveries, insights, and hope.

Following each narrative and major section in the book, I’ve inserted a Note from Alli. The therapist in me wants you to have an additional view, a clarification, a useful exercise, or the science behind something discussed. For topics you may want to explore beyond these stories, I’ve provided supplemental, easily accessible online articles. My commentaries are intended to support you and broaden your options as you consider your path to finally conquering your issues.

Aware that eating and body image problems exist on a wide spectrum (from slight food and body-related frustrations to severe clinical eating disorders), I’ve made sure to include several stories about what’s usually considered the most extreme—eating disorder recovery. Here’s why: if someone’s methods helped them to overcome a serious disorder, imagine how those methods might help you to overcome your issues, wherever they fall in the range from mild to intense.

Think of this book as visiting a store where everything in it relates to triumphing over dieting, weight, and body image issues. Each chapter is like an aisle that’s both dedicated to your shopping experience and filled with relevant items. You get to pick and try out whatever interests you and leave anything on the shelf that doesn’t.

As you read, you’ll probably recognize parts of yourself in someone else’s circumstances. You’ll know that you’re not alone in trying to manage (or master) these issues.

Each person’s journey, solutions, and salvation are unique. Yours will be too. Through these diverse short stories, you’ll discover useful ways to live a more fulfilled life—one freer from food, weight, and body image stresses and with improved wellness, too.

How the Heck Did We Get Here?

When we’re babies and young children, we typically eat when we’re hungry, stop eating when we’re full, and let our bellies happily hang out with ever breath we take. For many of us, as we age, this natural connection with food and body gets distorted for various reasons. Consequently, terms that describe disordered relationships with eating and body are numerous: yo-yo dieting, binge eating, emotional eating, food obsession, body dissatisfaction, and more. Healthy lifestyle plans, weight-loss programs, and specific diets aimed at improving our relationship with food, weight, and body number even more so. (Which titles and brands quickly come to mind? The Paleo Diet, Keto Diet, Weight Watchers, intermittent fasting, Atkins Diet, HCG Diet, low-carb diet, low-fat diet…) Yet there are often unexpected, undesired byproducts of engaging in these remedies.

When we eat by following someone else’s plan for how we should eat, we can diminish or lose our innate, internal connection with cravings, hunger, and fullness. That disconnection often leads people into tormenting food patterns and can bleed into questioning other areas of life too. If I can’t trust myself about when I’m hungry, what I crave, or if I’m full, how can I trust the rest of my internal guidance system? My gut-instinct? My decisions? My emotions? And so on. Doubting one’s internal guidance system tends to result in confusion, insecurity, missed opportunities, a lack of trust in self, unreliable decisions, and unwanted consequences; these then affect our relationships to our safety.

Even ordinary events frequently get complicated when we approach eating in manipulated ways. Think about the last time you attended a party while on a diet. Instead of focusing on the festivities and social interactions, you probably thought about the food (what you could/couldn’t eat, the calories, the tastes, the food that others were consuming), right? In place of eating from automatic hunger and fullness cues that don't take much thought, our food rules require effort to maintain. In turn, this distracts us and tends to drain our energy.

Nevertheless, weight-loss plans, extreme healthy food practices, intense exercise regimens, and fad diets seem a normal way of life nowadays. In the media and social interactions, dieting, food, health, and body are common and constant topics of conversation. I invite you to do an experiment to test this: while in a public setting, take a few minutes to look at the visual messages surrounding you and to listen to others’ conversations and on-air advertisements.

According to Marketdata LLC, there were 97 million active dieters¹ in America in 2016 (just under 1/3 of the country’s entire population), and the U.S. weight-loss market worth had exceeded $72 billion² by 2019. Your body, weight, and attitudes about food and fat are (embrace the pun) big business. The pressure to fall in a specific range for body mass index (BMI, meaning weight to height ratio), coupled with the existing War on Obesity can cause even the wisest person to buy into a one-size-fits-all mentality.

There’s an interesting video on YouTube by the Association of Size Diversity and Health called The Problem with Poodle Science.³ The short film brings to light that under the umbrella term dogs, different breeds with naturally distinct physiques and requirements for health exist. It makes logical sense that a bullmastiff that loses enough pounds to weigh the same as a poodle is not a fit bullmastiff; it’s a starved bullmastiff. Not everyone is supposed to be in a poodle’s weight range, especially if you’re a Chihuahua or a Great Dane. However, that’s far from the message that permeates Western society.

We’re constantly told (sometimes starting shortly after birth) that we need to change our bodies, sizes, shapes, weight, food intake, BMIs, etc. It’s no wonder that so many of us feel desperate to accomplish these tasks.

What You’re Going to Read

In these pages, you’ll read concepts that may challenge what you believe to be the ultimate truth about weight, eating, or body image. An important reality is this: scientific, medical, mental health, and cultural paradigms about what’s best and healthiest for us continue to evolve. So our own truths continue to evolve as well.

At this point, there are many philosophies and treatments geared towards stopping binge eating and emotional eating, increasing body acceptance, winning the battle with weight or dieting, and the list goes on. None have been proven to be unequivocally the way. Additionally, conventional approaches may not yet offer your solutions for overcoming your food and body issues. Case in point: for some people, traditional dieting, even in the pursuit of health, can result in becoming unhealthy. (Confusing, right?) This will be clarified later in multiple chapters.

The following narratives came from contributors, also referred to as Storytellers, who voluntarily provided written drafts or recorded interviews. No one was paid to share their experience. As the curator, I worked with each inspiring Storyteller through the process, and each person’s heart and journey moved me. In the pages that follow, you too will experience firsthand the incredible amount of support, passion, community, and creative problem-solving that’s out there.

This book has three main sections that follow my mini-memoir: Discoveries, Insights, and Connections.

In Discoveries, the stories answer, How _________ is different now that I don’t struggle with my food, weight, and body imageissues.

In the second section, Insights, our Storytellers share, What I wish I had known about _________ during my food, weight, and body image issues.

Section three, Connections, contains narratives from family, friends, and teachers of people experiencing food and body stresses who answer, How _________ is different now that someone I care about seems freer from their food, weight, and body imageissues.

In each section, the narratives are brief and focused on hope. You will not be dragged through all the pain. Instead, I’ve aimed to offer just enough to appreciate the value in the shifts, the whys, and how-tos that can serve you.

Unless it’s important to the journey, specific weight or size references have been omitted. This is because what helps often applies to a person of any size from fat through skinny. (If you just had an internal response to either italicized term, please give yourself a compassionate break. Try to see these words as straightforward dictionary definitions instead of loaded with self-criticism, merits, or judgments.)

Many experiences you’ll read about don’t contain a single aha or rock bottom moment that kicked someone into sudden change. Why? Because change often occurs through an ongoing and active process, piece-by-piece, and day-by-day. Gradually gaining insight or getting sick of repetition can propel a person towards movement. Many things can.

You’re Not Alone

I recognize that if you’re engaged in any level of struggle with your food or body, it may feel difficult to believe that a different life exists—one completely without (or at least with fewer) food-body-weight obstacles. Rest assured; there are many people out there who once felt similarly and no longer do.

Eating, weight, and body image problems can affect anyone of any size, gender, race, cultural identity, sexual orientation, financial status, religion, you name it. Though we are each diverse, we’re connected like individual droplets of water that make up the ocean. You’re not alone in your worries, failings, revelations, and triumphs.

For all of us, I think that finding our personal, potentially unorthodox keys to conquering these issues brings about change that makes life more meaningful.

Note from Alli:

For anyone who might feel skeptical about this book, I understand—years ago, I would have, too. You’ll probably appreciate knowing that some Storytellers opted to remain anonymous or be given a pseudonym for the following reasons: uncertainty about the future of the Mental Health Parity Act (protection for pre-existing conditions), membership in a vulnerable population in the current political climate, or identity protection of those involved. For these Storytellers, identifying information within their narratives may have been altered. Their pertinent life stories remain intact. Also, you might notice that quite a few narratives mention a therapist who happens to be an eating disorders specialist; none refer to me.

As you read, please keep the following in mind. Each helps to clarify story content or to offer you personal safety measures.

When eating issues are happening, even a mention of something related to food, size, or exercise can be upsetting. Also, some narratives contain raw and intense material. Should you feel triggered(activated) by details anywhere in these pages, please find someone to talk with, preferably a professional with experience in disordered eating or eating disorders.

Various stories include adult content (e.g., strong language).

Where appropriate, the gender-neutral pronouns they/them/their have been used to respect all genders.

A unified understanding of clinical concepts and terms can help make a story more understandable and meaningful. If this could benefit you, please visit Concepts and Clarified Terms.

And now, get ready for a jarring, rebellious, inspiring book about conquering dieting, weight, and body image issues. It can change your life.

PROLOGUE

Alli’s Clumsy Conquering—

My Story Leading to this Book

WHILE SEATED AT a dinner table for ten, people passed the last few bites of birthday cake around the table. With intense focus, I watched the plate move like a Ping-Pong ball at play. Some smiled and chatted as they tasted; others made irritating mmmm sounds. The pressure built amid the overly polite, drawn-out volley of discussion: You have the last bite, No, you have the last bite, No, I simply couldn’t!

I snapped. My hand flew out across the table to stop the passing of the plate mid-Pong. I wish it had only been my thoughts, but I heard my voice rising over the volume of the noisy restaurant. Slowly and with precise enunciation, I boomed, Fucking eat it, or don’t eat it. But shut-up about it.

Heads turned. Abrupt silence fell across the table. All movement froze. Unusually wide eyes stared back at me. Blank faces. Jaws slightly dropped.

Shit.

I’d just ruined my best friend’s 30th birthday.

While they’d been sharing stories about themselves, exchanging witty comments, and cracking each other up, I’d been growing increasingly agitated. By the time we reached dessert, I’d already endured two hours of my head unrelentingly screeching at me about all the food rules I’d broken.

I’d been feeling frustrated and ashamed of how challenging that dinner had been from its start to this finale. I also felt sad and selfish that I couldn’t seem to pay attention to my friend like she deserved. I knew my window was closing for when I could get rid of what I’d eaten. My public happy mask slid off without my permission. I had lost control.

Since I usually smiled my way through discomfort, people rarely knew how much angst was going on in my head. That night, people saw it: the unease around food that had been visiting me, in varying intensities, since around 11 years old.

I’d already been on various diets before I hit my late tweens, when suddenly and without my consent or knowledge, my common dieting slipped into disorder, anorexia nervosa. Seemingly overnight, my favorite foods became inedible. Swallowing nearly anything other than my safe, steamed broccoli felt like a sandpaper-worm crawling down my throat. Obviously, this made eating a challenge.

Alarmed by my dramatic physical changes, like protruding vertebrae, my parents sought professional help. However, treatment in the 1980s was in its early stages. It was a terrible experience (super blaming on others) and caused me to mention little-to-nothing about food or weight in future therapy experiences.

After I gained enough pounds, I wasn’t considered anorexic anymore. People seemed to think I was fixed and fine because I no longer looked sick.

I then spent decades on various regimens. Mostly, I tried to eat a healthy and low/no-fat diet and worked out for hours in the gym. I also replaced real foods with engineered food-like products. (As I write this, I can still taste my cinnamon toast made with saccharin and fake butter spray. Nasty.) I did the newest popular diets and followed celebrity diet-tips. One fad program I purchased had these weird pills that creepily filled your stomach once inside you. I mastered counting calories in and exercised off. I tried aids like over-the-counter diet pills that curbed my appetite but messed me up—they made me chase my speeding thoughts but not catch them. I smoked cigarettes to avoid eating. And I purged (got food inside me, out).

For years, I nonchalantly called these health and weight management practices my maintenance. I accepted my demanding relationship with food and body as status quo. In public, people often complimented me on what they viewed as my healthy choices and discipline. In private, the few who knew of the periods of bingeing and purging said little to nothing about it. One best friend used to stand in the bathroom doorway, chatting with me as she watched me make myself throw up. So, no big deal, right? Besides, I wasn’t taking Fen-Phen, which I thought was way too severe and scary. I judgmentally elevated myself above anyone who did that. (Back then, everything diet-related brought out a snotty jackass part of me. I didn’t like or want to feel so petty inside, yet it happened often.)

After my initial, fairly short period of emaciation, I was never that skinny-skinny again. In fact, I gained a lot of pounds (a freaking lot—I couldn’t fit into average sizes). Then I lost most of that weight and continued to bounce around between my extremes. My maintenance practices spanned from mild to severe methods, frequent to less frequent. Mostly, though, I looked normal in our society, and my constant dieting practices were normalized every day by advertisements, articles, and social conversations. I now realize that I would have qualified as having both clinical (meeting the actual diagnosis) and subclinical (problematic but not matching any diagnostic label) eating disorders throughout these decades.

Though I didn’t believe myself to be in danger at any time, physical quirks happened that were likely a result of my maintenance practices. In addition to a regularly edgy mood and irregular sleep, I occasionally experienced a puffy face, dizziness, and feeling weirdly off inside my body. Usually, we don’t feel or notice our insides or heartbeat;