the advantage of objective and guiltless "failures"

[oolala53]

Just wanted to spread the news. A tall, lanky man I've been dating revealed to me last night that he got very heavy in his twenties. Being from the midwest, he looked mostly beefy and others didn't think he was fat, but he knew he was overeating. He was doing counseling for other issues and the therapist kept emphasizing the importance of not berating yourself for your behavior. He called it feeling guilty unproductive and foolhardy suffering. My date resolved not to feel guilty about anything he ate. Since he didn't do it as a way to lose weight, it didn't matter when he gained a bit. Then after several months of truly giving up the guilt, he got tired of feeling so full all the time. He began eating less and over the course of two years lost 60 lbs. I would never have believed it because he looks like one of those people who can eat and never gain a pound. He said the only time he gained a little back was when he started working at a place that had bakery items around the office all the time, but after two months, got tired of that, too, and allowed himself to partake only on Fridays and only if something looked really, really good. He has naturally gravitated to a "healthy" eating routine because he cooks most of his food himself, and also got interested in improving his fitness and his physique for acting, but has other kinds of food when he goes out. I've seen him eat. He can put it away!

Once again, the wisdom of not drowning ourselves in guilt over food gets reinforced.

Of course, he was also working on this in other areas of his life, so his emotional life improved as well, which may have affected how much attachment he felt to food regardless of the guilt issue.

Which is all a long defense of "Mark it and move on."