Self-Compassion To
Support Dietary Changes
There’s no question that
implementing substantial dietary changes to improve our health and/or lose
weight can be difficult; the dietary habits that we practice have been practiced
over the course of our lifetimes. It may be tempting to fix the problem by
“going on a diet,” but we have seen and heard (and probably experienced
first-hand) that dieting doesn’t work long-term for a large portion of
Americans. This seemingly fatalistic fact can be demotivating, or worse, can
lead to hopelessness, causing dieters to abandon efforts to improve their
health. In fact, in a recently published study by Dar-Nimrod et al
(2014), patients with obesity who were told that their condition had a genetic
(and therefore assumed to be deterministic) cause were more likely to overeat
than those who were told obesity has a non-genetic, psychosocial cause.
Dieting as part of the problem
But what if “dieting,” as it
has been promoted in America, is more a part of the problem than the solution? Standard
dietetic dogma considers all calories as if they are treated equally by the
body, and has become deeply engrained in mainstream American society—nearly anyone
trying to lose weight will tell you they are counting calories (and probably
also limiting fat). From a metabolic standpoint, this advice is not only
misleading, it’s damaging. Food quality affects metabolism in several important
and intricate ways that a mere calorie count fails to capture. Foods promoted
to dieters as being “low-calorie” or “low-fat” are usually also highly
processed and contain either large amounts of refined sugar or artificial
sweetener. Unlike refined sugar, fat is a vital nutrient for the creation of
important appetite- and mood-regulating hormones, and for overall cellular
health. Refined sugar also sets off a cascade of metabolic events that counterproductively
increase consumption and encourage fat storage. Thus, “diet” foods are
typically a misnomer.
Sugar addiction
As with metabolic health, an emerging area of research also
supports an effect of food type and quality on mental health (Jacka et al, 2014). A growing body of evidence supports
the notion that sugar is addictive,
which can cause increased consumption despite efforts to reduce intake, further
enhancing its adverse metabolic and mental health effects. In susceptible
individuals, sugar stimulates the endogenous dopamine and opioid systems in the brain that reinforce increased consumption, such
that eating sugar causes increased cravings for sugar. Far from being
fatalistic, the knowledge that sugar is addictive should actually provide hope rather
than despair for those who suffer.
Not a personal failing
Mainstream understanding and acceptance of the addictive
properties of sugar is on the rise, but unfortunately damaging messages
regarding personal responsibility prevail. Some individuals, whose sugar
addiction has led to overweight or obesity, regularly hear messages that label
them as gluttons and sloths (thinly veiled as the advice to “move more and eat
less”) and are often victims of fat-shaming (“you
know better, so you should be able to do better”). Hand-in-hand with the
profound abundance of negative external messages comes a near-constant barrage
of internal negative self-talk. These damaging internal and external messages
increase the negative mindset and further encourage comfort eating, making
change even more difficult.
Struggling with sugar addiction is not a personal failing;
our brains have been hijacked by the intentionally addictive highly processed
foods that are so readily available in modern society. Despite this, one of the
beautiful capacities of the human body is its seemingly infinite capacity to
adapt. We can reestablish a healthy relationship with food by returning to
natural, whole foods, and avoiding highly processed foods. During this process,
a lot of patience and self-compassion are needed, as the solution is simple,
but not easy.
Self-compassion
A practice of self-compassion may bolster against negative
self-talk and build resilience against negative external messages. Compassion
is a central tenet of several of the world’s religions, most notably Buddhism,
though it does not require any religious belief; compassion simply requires
observing suffering and a genuine desire to alleviate that suffering. When
applied to one’s own suffering, it is termed self-compassion, and encourages a
kinder, gentler approach to dietary improvements than what is often described
in military terms (eg, “combating” obesity). Self-compassion, with its
non-judgmental desire to alleviate one’s own suffering, negatively correlates
with depression (Neff, 2003),
alleviates psychopathology, and predicts positive psychological states, such as
happiness and optimism (Neff, Rude, & Kirkpatrick, 2007). Self-compassionate people are also less likely to catastrophize
negative situations, experience anxiety following a stressor, or avoid challenging
tasks for fear of failure (Allen & Leary, 2010),
all of which may help an individual whose go-to coping mechanism is comfort
eating to improve their eating habits, increase resilience in the face of
set-backs, and reduce the negative effect of societal norms.
For some reason, our society tends to think the only way to
improve oneself is by beating ourselves up for our shortcomings. Treating
oneself kindly is often equated with being soft or complacent, and perceived as
being incongruous with the motivation to improve one’s condition. Self-criticism,
which is often believed to be an effective motivator, correlates strongly with
many psychopathological conditions, including depression, anxiety, and eating
disorders (Longe et al, 2009).
Showing oneself kindness and compassion shows that we understand that our
suffering is real and difficult, and is part of the universal human condition.
Self-compassionate eating
For a self-compassionate approach for improving health to
work, one needs to abandon traditional forms of dieting, and re-establish trust
in the body’s innate abilities to self-regulate. When fed nutritious, whole
foods, the body intuitively knows when to start and stop eating. Dr. Ellen Satter
has developed a beautiful explanation of what “normal eating” looks like, and I
encourage you to visit her website.
While a large component of self-compassionate eating
involves not judging what is eaten, being self-compassionate also suggests that
one generally eat in a manner that supports overall health, because this
approach alleviates the most suffering. Regular or excessive unhealthy eating
can lead to great suffering in terms of health and overall quality of life by
leading to diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, high cholesterol, and
many other health conditions; a desire to avoid these health problems should be
a large part of a self-compassionate approach to eating.
Increasing self-compassion
One way to start increasing self-compassion is to start
noticing the sorts of self-talk in which we engage. If you find that you berate
yourself for every shortcoming or mistake that you make, it’s an excellent
indication that you may benefit from cultivating some self-compassion. A
general compassion-developing exercise has been used in the Buddhist tradition
for centuries. In this exercise, one sits quietly and focuses on cultivating
feelings of loving-kindness for oneself, then progressing to a loved-one, a
neutral person, a difficult person, all four of these individuals equally, and
then for the entire universe. The progression can be done over the course of a
single sitting or over several months, depending on how difficult bestowing
these feelings for these individuals may be. There is no “right” or “wrong” way
to do this exercise, it simply requires a genuine desire to love oneself and
others, and can be done at any pace.
In the end, all beings suffer in one way or another. What
better way to acknowledge that than to extend compassion? In the process, we
can reclaim our physical and mental health.
No comments:
Post a Comment