Download day 4 worksheet here.

Transcript:

I’d like to read you a short excerpt from one of my all time favourite books, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. (Pg 15.)

“When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realise you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.

You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other “normal” people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies”

Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker”, which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

When you listen to that voice, listen impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realise: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realisation, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

Now, here are some notes I made on this in July 2018 -  I told you this workshop has been in the making for a long time didn’t I ;)

The voice in our mind that tells continual, non-stop stories is our condition mind. It takes what we have learned from the past, our past experiences, lessons, upsets, achievements - all our history, along with the collective cultural mindset we have inherited, to tell us stories - usually in order to protect us. Our mind does this because it has pieced together that this is how we survive. It’s found that from somewhere we have been rewarded for particular past actions, even if that’s a “well done” for losing all of that weight - “you look great!” That social acceptance is a huge reward for our ego.

The issue is our present is clouded by judgement. This judgement is created through the eyes of our past so we get a totally distorted view of our present. For those struggling internally with thoughts and stories they tell themselves about their body and food, this realisation is huge. In order to take control of our mind we must pay attention and listen. Listen to what stories we play over and over again to ourselves.

“I’m not enough"

“I can’t eat chocolate, it’ll make me fat”

“I have no self control”

Take these thoughts and write them down. Flesh them out non-judgementally. If we judge these thoughts, we are identifying with them. We are once again becoming “the thinker”. Observe impartially, write the stories down and try to get to the bottom of why you tell yourself these horrible things. In order to take control, we often need to get to the bottom of why we tell ourselves something first.

“My sense of self does not depend on the contents of my mind.”

Society and the media projects an idealistic image of the human body. For women it’s often glowing clear skin, tiny waists, toned arms and legs, big eyes and perfect hair. For men it’s six packs, huge shoulders, a perfectly chiseled jaw and towering height. None of us can actually achieve this because 99.9% of the imagery has been digitally modified. Our brains are constantly being shown images of what a “human” looks like only for us to look in the mirror and not match up. Our minds are being bombarded with what we should look like, we’re not consciously thinking the images we’re receiving have been modified, we’re just noticing the differences.

The average adult in the western world sees between 3000 and 5000 advertisements a day. Numbers vary depending on the study you look at, some claiming that it is up to 20,000 advertisements a day.

Have a think about the different places you see adverts: tv, radio, on the side of a bus, billboards, online on facebook, instagram, twitter, your favourite blog, newspapers, magazines  - the list is endless. How often are you shown a digitally modified version of a person in those adverts?

Anne Becker an expert on Eating disorders at Harvard Medical School in Boston decided to look into this. She chose to study females in Fiji. Why? Because up until the mid 1990s there was only one reported case of anorexia nervosa in the whole country. In 1995 the Government of Fiji allowed Western TV Shows to be broadcast on the television stations in fiji and even then remote parts of the country were only just starting to hear about TV.

In 1998 Becker held a small survey which was later reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2002. Just 3 years after Western media arrived in the country, one in every ten girls reported having vomited to lose weight.

By 2007 Becker’s team had spent over a decade studying the impact of the media on females in Fiji. More than 500 girls ages 15 to 20 were surveyed, the results showed that at least four in every ten reported vomiting to manage their weight. This report also showed that the girls didn’t have to directly consume the media, they were being influenced by those in their social circle - family and friends, who had consumed western media.

Up until 1995 Fijian culture valued large, strong women, it had a very positive message around women eating a lot. This study alone shows just how much the media can affect us.

But it’s not just teenagers and adults that are affected. Our behaviours around food and body image can often be traced right back to our childhood. Have a think about the toys you played with as a young child. Barbies with perfect bodies, Polly Pockets with their cute little outfits and pretty hairstyles. Action Men with six packs...ever seen a Barbie or an action man with even the hint of soft, gentle, huggable skin on their tummy? I don’t think so. Even Pregnant Barbie was absolutely tiny with a magnetic perfect bump. According to a study held in 2002 by Cash and Pruzinsky, 90% of girls aged 3 to 11 own a Barbie doll. The Yale Center For Eating and Weight Disorders looked into how a young adult woman could achieve Barbie’s proportions - it was medically and physically impossible.

According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders  81% of ten year olds are worried about getting fat. This isn’t solely down to the media though, it’s the subconscious messages children are receiving from those around them. How are the adults in their world acting around food? How do they speak about their bodies? What are their reactions to body image? Whether we like it or not, all of this impacts a child’s perception of the world.

I’d like you to ask yourself: 

• Does the number on your scales reflect the person you are inside? Does it show your kindness? Your intelligence? Your loyalty? Your love? Your passions? Your interests? Your strength?

• If you’re a shoe size 6, would you choose to push yourself into a shoe size 4? Would you aspire to one day be a shoe size 4?

• If you could take yourself back to your childhood, what age would you have been when you first became aware of your own body image?

• What would you say to little you now?

• What advice would you give?

Body positivity isn’t about celebrating fat bodies, it isn’t about encouraging people to put on weight, it isn’t about promoting obesity. It’s about celebrating the body you have right now, celebrating yourself, your bloody wonderful body and all it can do right now. Not once you’ve lost that weight, not once your skin is clear, not once your thighs are slender. It’s about accepting and celebrating your amazing body just as it is, learning to like it and eventually love it. 

Have you read the book Body Positive Power by Megan Jayne Crabbe otherwise known as BodyPosiPanda? In my opinion it’s a must read for everyone and I wanted to share a few really important points that Megan makes in the book. 

“Fun Fact: Studies have shown that the more we enjoy our food, the more nutrients we absorb from it. In one study that Linda Bacon describes in Health at Every Size, two groups of women were served a traditional Thai meal, one group was from Thailand, the other Sweden. The Thai women liked the meal more, and absorbed 50 per cent more iron from the food than the Swedish women did. Which means forcing yourself to eat things you don’t like in the name of health isn’t as good for you as you think it is.” Forcing ourselves to eat foods we don’t enjoy often stems from a want to control our appearance - usually weight related. 

Many of us have thought a little too much about what life will be like once were “thin”. The amazing things that will happen, how people will look at us, treat us, fall in love with us. The clothes we’ll be able to wear. The jobs we’ll be able to do. The holidays we’ll finally be able to go on. The new friends we’ll have, the new way in which our family will love us. Megan puts it perfectly on page 122 - “It says a lot that in the ‘When I’m Thin’ fantasy we don’t just have a different body, we are a completely different person. We really believe that reducing the amount of flesh on our frames has the power to change every single thing about ourselves that we don’t like. Kudos, diet industry, genius marketing plan, but also, screw you.”

Another truth bomb that Megan touches upon in the book is who funds particular research. When we read studies and research, when headlines scream statistics regarding body size, health and wellbeing at us, how often do we take a proper look into the study before accepting what the tabloids want us to believe? How often to we uncover who actually funded the study? I’d hazard a guess at hardly ever. “Obesity research is almost solely funded by the weight-loss industry. Conducting studies is expensive, and government funds don’t even begin to cover them all. Luckily, our good friend the diet industry is there to give millions to studies aiming to prove that fat is killing us, meaning that in turn their sales go through the rood as we all run, terrified, to ur nearest weight-loss group.

Megan goes on to write “A perfect example of this lies in the holy grail of health myths: the BMI chart. Not too long ago the cut-off point for women not be in the ‘normal’ weight range was up to 27.3 on the BMI chart. These days, the cut-off point is 25, what happened?

In 1997, the National Institutes of Health in the US brought together a task force of nine medical experts to decide whether the BMI categories should be lowered. Despite a lack of evidence those with weights in the upper end of the categories experienced more illness or decreased life expectancy, the experts went ahead and lowered the cut-off points anyway. 

The day before the ruling, 58 million Americans were considered overweight or obese by BMI standards, the day after the ruling that number jumped to 97 million. Which means that millions of people in the US had become medically fat overnight, without gaining a single pound. 

So why were the cut-off points lowered? Two journalists from Newark-based The Star-Ledger shed some light on the question when they uncovered some serious conflicts of interest: ‘Eight of the nine members of the National Institutes of Health task force on the prevention and treatment of obesity have ties to the weight-loss industry, either as consultants to pharmaceutical companies, recipients of research money from them, or advisors to for-profit groups such as Weight Watchers.’ 

Just think how many people overnight were willing to hand over their bank card details to the weight loss companies. I’m not saying that we all need to put on weight and become medically obese, what I am saying is that it is no wonder society is so fatphobic. It’s no wonder we grow up never ever ever liking our bodies and constantly wanting to change it. We’re only human, we’ve only been going along with what our society has taught us.

Society also has a lot to say about exercise and sculpting the perfect body. Megan writes “Laura Fraser wrote in Losing It that ‘the goal of exercise, for many women, isn’t to achieve good health, but a perfectly disciplined, slender body’. But why do our bodies need to be disciplined? You only discipline something when it’s wrong, when it’s broken the rules, when it needs to be taught a lesson. The fitspo image is providing us with one more way that we believe our bodies are wrong, they’ve broken the rules of what a fit body should look like and need to be taught, with punishing workout regimes, a lesson in how to conform. Haven’t we punished our bodies enough already?” 

So, the way we feel about our body has a hell of a lot to do with how society and specific industries want us to feel about our body. But, what if we took back control? What if we looked into finding ways to love and appreciate our body instead and more importantly look at the strengths we have as a person - after all the way we look really is the least important thing about us. In your homework this evening I’ve included a list of possible strengths, have a quick look mark some of the strengths you possess. 

I’m great at making up stories and reading them aloud to children, laughing at jokes, looking after loved ones, cleaning, Christmas in general, cat cuddling, wrapping gifts, making an awesome cup of tea and using the unicorn emoji in professional settings where it could be received as rather an unprofessional touch but always gets a smile. The things that your noticing now, those strengths, make up a part of you and to those who love you, they matter so much more than the way you look. 

So, do we just ignore the parts of our body we don’t like? Absolutely not! You know how when you have a worry and you keep it to yourself it’s like a balloon that just gets bigger and bigger until it pops? It turns into something absolutely huge, so out of control you have no idea how you’ll ever live a normal life again. Your mind spirals, it keeps you awake at night and then you share it with someone. Suddenly it’s like realising what you thought was a scary monster about to kill you in the dark is actually just a shadow. It’s importance diminishes. 

For me I used to hate my tummy - I hated the podgy roundness of it. In admitting this, saying those words out loud I realised how mean I was being, I would poke and prod my tummy in the mirror. Look for it immediately in photos, cover it up, suck it in, have the most awful thoughts about it. I knew something had to be done so I began to turn my language towards my tummy into something more positive. When I’d notice negative thoughts in my mind, I’d think “My tummy is cuddly and soft. It’s often used as a pillow by little munchkins. It holds food for me and cup upon cup of tea. It keeps me upright. It’s where I feel my instinct, that gut feeling comes from there - it guides me to do the right thing, to follow the right path.” These thoughts weren’t easy to conjure up at first, I wrote them down, I’d often journal about it, but gradually I began to notice they’d automatically pop into my mind because I was re-programming the thoughts corresponding to that part of my body. Do I ever have negative thoughts towards my tummy now, sometimes - pretty much only due to comparing myself to others and when this happens, I ask myself apart from their tummy, would I want the rest of their life? Would I want their family? Their job Their life circumstances? Would I want to be them? Or would I prefer to be me? Then I tune back into my good thoughts about my tummy. It takes time and patience, it’s about being mindful but it’s so very worth it.

We’re going to try something and I need you to be really brave and really really courageous for this next exercise. Note down just one thing you dislike about your appearance and why you dislike it. Feel the weight and pressure life off your shoulders. Now I’d like you to think of your own positive phrase or things you can say about that part of your body. Scribble this down somewhere and remind yourself of it.

For now, just focus on retraining your brain to appreciate and feel gratitude towards this one part of your body, don’t overwhelm yourself. It’s take a lifetime of negative thoughts to get to this point, it’s going to take a little while to feel love for your whole body, most of the time.

Let’s recap what we’ve covered today:

• What influences body image

• The effects the media has on our own body image

• Body positivity

• Why society wants you to hate your body

• Our personal strengths which are non-appearance related

• Turning something we hate about ourselves into something we can learn to appreciate