Book ~ "Thin Is the New Happy" (2009) ~ Valerie Frankel

From Amazon ~ Frankel was only 11 when her mother put her on a diet. She went from 100 to 88 pounds in six weeks, making her mother ecstatic, although she gained back four pounds right away. Frankel learned a basic lesson: she could enjoy eating or have approval, but not both. Although she blamed her mother's fatphobia for her unhappy childhood, from middle school on her peers were her cruelest tormenters. As she got older, her bad body image translated to anorgasmia; research shows that women who feel unattractive often develop sexual dysfunction. Later, working at Mademoiselle, where so many co-workers had eating disorders, she realized that an obsession with diet was one way of avoiding life's thornier issues. In her 40s, Frankel decided to jettison all the emotional baggage she was carrying about her weight, to free herself, finally, from dieting. After hiring a photographer to shoot a portfolio of her nude, having a friend help her find her personal style in clothing and coming to terms with her husband and her mother over fat issues, Frankel finally got rid of her body-image negativity.

A lot of the time it's not just a physical reason why we are overweight but more an emotional. We all carry so much baggage. If we first deal with the baggage and let it go, the weight should drop off because we don't need to hang onto to it anymore.

Frankel decided on a "no diet policy" while she dealt with her baggage. She only had two rules:

1. Eat whatever she wanted when hungry
2. Stop eating when full

It sounds similar to the "no diet" re-enforcements Barb the hypnotherapist put in my head when she hypnotized me in November. She also added that I would only want to eat healthy food.

Frankel believes that you can get down to your "genetically predetermined true weight" by:

1. Stopping dieting today
2. Silencing your negative inner voice
3. Forgiving everyone who'd contributed to you forming a bad body image
4. Working out four times a week

Frankel's mother, Judy's theory was that if you hounded, insulted, harassed and bugged enough, we would stop eating and stay skinny. After all these years, Frankel, now in her 40s, was looking for an apology from her mother for doing that to her when she was a kid because it messed her up emotionally. Judy's response was that's how that generation dealt with it and she wasn't sorry ... so Frankel never got her apology.

My mother had the same theory. One instance stands out in my mind and I still shake my head ...

I went home for a weekend when I was 24 or so (I lived about three hours away). I walked in the door and the first thing my mother said was, "Boy, are you fat!" I ignored it and said, "It's nice to see you too." She said, "That's not what I said ... I said you were fat." So I said, "I know what you said and it was rude."

Did that exchange make me rush out and cut out junk and lose the extra 20 pounds!? Of course not!