The following is adapted from Habit That!
My grandma is in a weight loss group that she lovingly and jokingly calls her “Fat Ladies’ Club.” This isn’t what I would call them; I would never say anything to make such a charming group of people think less of themselves.
I’ve had the privilege of attending this group several times as a guest speaker, and here is what I’ve observed. At the beginning of every meeting, they have a weigh-in. To make it look like they’ve done their work, my grandma and some of the other ladies won’t eat anything the day of the meeting. Forget that all they’re really doing is slowing their metabolism and making long-term weight loss harder. If it takes them a few notches down on the scale, they’re all for it!
After the meeting, they’re starving, since they haven’t eaten much all day. So, they all go out to a restaurant and give themselves permission to eat whatever they want. In a lot of ways, they’re as much a social club as a weight loss group, but their intentions are good. To be sure, plenty of the ladies in this group have lost weight, but for some, I see habits of deprivation rather than of empowerment.
During one of my grandma’s weight loss group meetings, another member was encouraging the idea of food shaming. The shame food of that week, she said, was brownies. Anyone who had eaten a brownie in the last week had to stand up and be shamed.
This kind of stuff horrifies me.
Eating is fun. Eating socially is even more fun—and brownies are delicious! I happily overate at my family’s most recent Thanksgiving, and I’ll happily overeat at other points in my life, too. I can do this without guilt precisely because it is an occasional indulgence rather than a regular habit. It is easily balanced out by the good eating habits I maintain most other days.
We need to take the shame and guilt away from food! It leads to bad choices. Shame and guilt make old ladies starve themselves before weigh-ins. Shame and guilt drive us to hide in the bathroom with candy bars. Shame and guilt drive us to drink odd vinegar-and-baking-soda mixes so we lose our appetites and don’t eat anything.
If You Say It, You Believe It
Shame and guilt also lead to misinformation, and misinformation can be very difficult to combat. You’ve probably learned to put peroxide and rubbing alcohol in a wound, but the truth is that those substances actually impair your healing and make scars worse. Turns out, people are suffering the sting for no benefit!
Peroxide and rubbing alcohol may be a harmful myth, but it’s a harmful myth most of us learned from someone we trusted. So when we hear stuff like that, we tend to believe it—and then to share it. Once we share it, we believe it even more. Soon, we’re saying things like, “Yeah, I hear it all the time, so it’s gotta be true.”
That’s how the fad diets start. Someone hears that avocados and nuts are fatty and cuts them out completely—yet still eats chips and cake. Someone else hears that cabbage soup is chock-full of nutrients and only eats that from now on. Someone else hears that rice cakes are a health food and builds a diet around that. (Spoiler alert, rice cakes are not a health food. We just think they are thanks to clever marketing and bullshit.)
Each of these fads is well-intentioned, but they miss the point. Instead of restricting your diet, I want to help you understand all the good things you can do and focus on that.
You’ve Got That Hangry Feeling
Because they’ve skipped meals before weigh-in, my grandma’s club is always starving after a meeting. So, they all head out to a restaurant. First, one lady orders a burger, and then another. “Oh, this is a weight-loss club,” one of them says, “and look at what we’re doing!” They all laugh, and soon the whole table has ordered burgers.
When we feel bad about eating, we skip meals. And when we skip meals, our bodies start demanding high-energy foods ASAP.
I’ve gone through the different stages of hunger plenty of times at work. With those first hunger pangs, I start thinking about how good a salad sounds right now. Then, my body chemistry changes—specifically, I start to crave fat. By the end of the shift, if I still haven’t been able to eat anything, I want the greasiest burger I can find. I want fries. I want cake. I want to eat the patient’s arm next to me because I’m so hungry.
That’s what we do to our bodies when we skip meals for too long. We go from “Yes, we’re ready for nutrition” to “We need to survive. Eat a whole tube of cookie dough” really quickly.
Next, we begin to rationalize it. Our psychology has changed. “Well, if I’m craving it, my body must need it,” we say. Healthy food literally doesn’t taste as good at this point. Only the fattiest of fats will do.
Nothing good comes out of starving yourself. That “hangry” feeling is real. If you go too long without eating, first you will start to get grumpy, and then maybe even a little shaky. It’s just your body’s way of saying, “I need this, and you’re ignoring this need.”
Skip the shame and instead focus on giving your body the nutrients it craves in the amount it requires. If you stay ahead of your hunger and think about what you’re eating, making healthy food choices will become your default habit rather than the exception.
For more advice on healthy eating, you can find Habit That! on Amazon.
Dr. Jaime Hope is a dual board-certified physician working outside of Detroit, Michigan, in one of the busiest emergency departments in the country. In over twelve years on the job, she has learned that no matter what brought her patients to the ER, they all want the same thing: to live happier, healthier lives. Today, whether she’s helping patients, teaching future doctors, or engaging the local community, Dr. Hope is showing others how to create better habits and make healthy living fun, practical, and accessible.