BY TAMAR LERER

In print | Published September 25, 2008 — Updated December 05, 2008 10:10

Let’s say you’re trying to lose weight. For the moment, I’m not going to go into how you made this decision, but will assume that you have put on some weight that is above your healthy weight (thank you, Student Special and late-night 30 Rock marathons). The problem is, usually, not the general desire to be thinner. I say “usually” here very purposefully. This column is not meant to advise readers who have gone above and beyond unhealthy eating. I wish to emphasize this point early on: if you or a friend has an eating disorder, my experience and advice are limited and amateur at best.

That being said, the problem is not in the desire to be thin; the problem is in the way we approach this problem and therefore its solution. The problem, in a word, is irrationality. Irrationality takes a desire to change your body and turns it into a painful experience that can make you feel the worst about yourself.

Blame my economics major, but I feel that “irrationality” sums up quite succinctly the major problem many people run into when viewing their body and trying to make changes to it. The take home lesson from economic theory is this: Rational people behave in ways that improve their well-being. Irrational people, prompted by irrational thoughts, behave in ways that harm them. Of course, I could be totally wrong and put my professor to shame when Lorenz Goette denies me my honors in the spring, but it’s from this understanding that I am going to proceed.

Irrational Expectations
There are two main types of irrational thought that will bring you down when viewing your body or trying to lose weight. The first revolves around the sort of body you wish to achieve. While it’s all well and good to have a pair of “skinny jeans” you’d like to fit back into, it’s not okay to have a bathing suit you want to fit back into…that you first bought when you were fifteen. If the weight gain you’re fighting against is due to puberty, I’d like to point something out that took me years to accept, but is absolutely necessary to understand: Women and girls look different (also, the obvious corollary: Men and boys look different). As you get older, you are supposed to get wider hips, a larger ass, and an overall filled-out frame. And this change doesn’t stop with the first years of puberty — with some people it can keep going until they’re 20. The expectation that at 18 you should or could look like what you did at 15 is irrational and counter-productive, so stop it.

You also won’t look like a model, so stop using that girl from “Glamour” as your motivation. Her job is to be thin. She is paid to sacrifice whatever she needs to look like that, and she’s airbrushed on top of it. If you need to tell yourself that she’s probably not as smart as you or as good at Rock Band to make yourself feel better, that’s fine (and probably true), but the reality is this: That model is not you. Stop trying to be her. You are you and she is she and she was born with a certain frame and metabolism that you don’t have. That’s okay. You shouldn’t be trying to be her; you should be trying to be the healthiest and happiest you that you can be.

The second type of irrational thinking centers not on your goals for weight-loss, but on how you expect the process to be. Let me put it simply: This will not be quick and this will not be easy. Changes in your body happen gradually. The process of getting thinner — or rather, preferably, healthier — takes energy and time. It involves going to the gym regularly, it involves eating better, it involves learning about nutrition, it involves self-control — including some sacrifice of beloved but bedeviling foods and the cessation of (my favorite pastime) eating your feelings. Any diet that tells you that you won’t have to give anything up, any magazine that tells you that you’ll lose 10 pounds this week, and any low-fat food that tells you that you won’t even notice the difference is lying. Also, sometimes you’re going to deviate from the path you outline for yourself. It’s called being human. Take your time and be patient with yourself.

Irrational Behavior
These irrational expectations combine to lead to the most common and most destructive irrational behavior in the weight-loss world: yo-yo dieting. All of those expectations put an ordinate amount of pressure on a person. If you expect to look like your pre-pubescent self or Giselle in two weeks while eating Sharples cake daily, your weight loss plan will fail. It will lead to the following: Today you tell yourself you will eat only salad, because you’re not as skinny as you want to be yet so if a little bit of salad is good a lot a bit of salad must be even better. Though feeling a little faint, you make it through the day, only to end up in your room at 11, after Sharples is closed, starving out of your mind. You end up consuming the whole family-sized bag of Doritos you bought for seminar break, along with 2000 calories and 500% of your daily sodium. You feel like crap about yourself for not having self-control and you feel kind of sick because the nacho cheesiness was a bit much. The next day you figure that since you already messed up you might as well give up because you’re not going to ever make it. Two days later you’re punishing yourself for those two days by eating only red vegetables. And so on.

This is not maximizing your well-being, physically or emotionally. If you’re too hard on yourself and have irrational expectations for how you should look or how fast you should lose weight, you’re going to end up feeling like crap every day, at every meal, every time you look in the mirror. Rational goals—being healthy as opposed to skinny—and rational expectations—say, losing a pound a week or having only one cookie for dessert—will lead to rational behavior. I don’t have enough space to cover this week what healthy behavior is, but the traps I laid out above are common. Don’t fall into them. It’s easier to be irrational, but destructive in the long term. Please remember that life is complicated and so is healthy living.

On a side note, I received an overwhelming response to my column last week and am considering having a meeting with other people interested in body image and related issues. If you’re interested, please send me an email. I also want to note that I absolutely want to hear and understand more about men with body image and eating issues. My columns focus mainly on women because I know about women’s gendered experiences with these issues. That being said, I know these issues exist among men as well and don’t want to make anyone feel alienated by my column. All feedback is always encouraged; please feel free to contact me about future topics you’d like to see covered or anything else.

Tamar is a senior. You can reach her at tlerer1@swarthmore.edu.

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