A Workbook of Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns

The Accept Yourself! Framework

Margit Berman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351654241
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

This three-part workbook offers a concise and forgiving research- based guide to clients' diffi culties

with sustained weight loss. Part 1 is a review of your client's previous efforts at weight control and

image change, as well as information and a review of research to help your client understand why

weight loss might not have worked in the past. Part 2 contains information and exercises to help your

client develop a new acceptance of their body and their relationship with food, as well as tools to

develop mindfulness and self- compassion. Part 3 will help your client identify, experiment with, and

commit to values related to food, appearance, and other important areas of life, tackling troublesome

mental and practical barriers along the way.

Part 1

Your Weight, Your Body: Can You Control It? (And Why Not?)

1

Your Body Struggle: Evaluating Your Progress Thus Far

If you’re reading these lines, chances are good you’ve spent some period of time – weeks? months? years? decades? – engaged in a struggle with your body. Chances are, this book is not the first thing you’ve tried to feel better about your weight, shape, and how you look. If this book has any hope of really changing your life and your relationship with food or your body, one thing we should avoid from the outset is repeating mistakes you’ve already made. So this chapter asks you to take a hard look at why these issues are a struggle for you, what you’ve already tried to solve them, and what that means for what you should try next. Many people feel overwhelmed or hopeless about solving their problems when they look at a long list of strategies that once gave them hope but didn’t fulfill their promises, so don’t be surprised if this chapter is painful or emotional for you to complete. But, by honestly evaluating what you have already tried and its effects, you may uncover a new path. The struggle that has engaged you has been painful. This book offers you a new and very different path towards your dreams. But first, let’s examine the road you have already taken.

What Has Your Struggle Cost You?

One way to begin considering a problem is to name it, to come up with some word or phrase that captures exactly how you think about this problem. Susan, who had struggled with her weight and eating since childhood, experiencing bulimia nervosa, Overeaters Anonymous, Weight Watchers, fitness work with a personal trainer, a variety of diets and diet books, and finally two weight loss surgeries with weight loss and subsequent regain along the way, called her problem “being stuck.” You may call it “my weight,” or “my overeating,” or “my fat,” or something else. Take a moment, close your eyes, and dig down in your mind deeply, to the center of the problem. What is at the core? What do you call it? How do you name this problem? Write its name on the next page, at the top of the worksheet “What has this problem cost you?”

Now that this problem has a name, take a moment and consider all the ways this problem has cost you. How has it hurt you? What opportunities has it taken from your life? Has it cost you money? Relationships? Work? A positive self-image? Other good things in your life? List all the costs – everything it has taken from you. Don’t leave anything out. (Feel free to add space on another page if this worksheet isn’t enough.)

You may notice tears, rage, or anxiety emerging as you make your list. If that happens, welcome those feelings in. This problem may have cost you a lot. This is a place to mourn those losses in your life. Write everything down.

What Has This Problem Cost You?

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What was it like to make your list? Was it easy? Difficult? Was the problem more costly than you had imagined? Did you feel any emotions as you made your list? Many emotions are possible, from anger to rage to sadness to hopelessness to guilt and shame. These feelings can be quite intense, but, for now, just notice them and welcome them in. After all, they’re there for a reason: As we’ll talk about more later, we live in a culture that prizes physical appearance, and if your body has ever been in any way less than “perfect” in your own eyes, the eyes of people you care about, or even compared to people you see in the media, you may have paid a price. Perhaps even a very costly, painful price.

Your Body Over Time

Looking at all the ways this problem has cost you may make you angry, sad, or ashamed: This problem has been painful. This problem has hurt you. But it may also leave you feeling determined: This is why this problem has to change. To have a good life, you may feel that you have to get rid of your problem, to solve it. Is this feeling familiar? Perhaps you’ve had these feelings – the anger, the sadness, the shame, the guilt, the fear, the determination about your body and your eating – before. In fact, these feelings may have hung around for a long time, along with lots of other positive and negative feelings and experiences in and with your body.

The Timeline Exercise (adapted from Heffner & Eifert, 2004) allows you to organize your history in your body in whatever way makes sense to you. It lets you capture in a visual format all of the important life events in your body history. On the next page, you’ll see a simple timeline. The blanks along the bottom let you fill in dates, ages, whatever way you want to organize time. You can take the timeline up to the present, or project it into the future. It’s up to you. In terms of what to put on the timeline, that’s up to you, too, but it might include your weight or shape history, your dieting history, health events that affected you, and other events that affected your self-image. It should definitely include other important life experiences, positive and negative, that shaped who you are today. Some people like to put positive events above the line, and negative events below the line, but you can organize it however you would like, because it’s your history. You might want to paste in photographs, write in comments, or personalize it in some other way.

Your Body Timeline

Reviewing your timeline, what do you notice? One thing you may notice is that body shape and weight don’t take as big a role as you might have expected. Therapists Michelle Heffner and Georg Eifert (2004) have pointed out that despite using timelines like these for many years with women with anorexia, to whom achieving a goal weight is often extremely important, they had never seen a client list a weight-related achievement. Like their clients, you probably didn’t write “reached 90 pounds!” or “fit into my skinny jeans!” as major achievements on your timeline. Instead, the events that are significant to you may reflect your values and passions, or your personal tragedies.

The struggle with weight and shape may also have appeared on your timeline, in the form of weight loss efforts, eating disorders, or negative weight-related comments or cruelty by others. Is this true for you? How do weight and shape struggles appear on your timeline? What does this mean to you?

Some people note their weight in various places on their timeline, and some don’t. If you didn’t, notice that: Most people do not, and that may be because deep down, the number on the scale doesn’t matter as much to us as the experiences and life events we truly value. Some people do put in significant “numbers on the scale” in their struggle with weight. Notice that, again, this isn’t because they are valued achievements. Sometimes the weights noted are linked to negative experiences – being weighed by doctors, family members, or for sports, and experiencing abuse from others related to the numbers on the scale. Another interesting thing about weight numbers, if they appear in your timeline, is to observe their pattern over time. For many people, seeing weight gain and increased body dissatisfaction over time is not unusual, but typical. Whether you charted in your weight numbers or not, consider: Is this true for you? Have you gained weight, lost weight, or stayed the same over time? What has happened to your body image over time? Has it gotten better, worse, or stayed about the same? Take a moment and jot down your answers to these questions, as well as any thoughts you have now about your body timeline.

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What Have You Already Tried to Solve This Problem?

Completing the timeline may have reminded you of some of the efforts you have tried to solve your problems with weight, shape, food, or body image. Considering these strategies is of essential importance, because an honest evaluation of what you have already tried and how well it has worked may point to solutions that worked well but have been abandoned prematurely, as well as steering you away from solutions that will not work no matter how hard you try to implement them. On the next page (and in a notebook, if you need more room), make a list of every single thing you have tried to solve the problem you have just named. Be exhaustive. Your list may include medications, therapies, surgeries, exercise programs, fashion changes, diets, self-talk or other attempts to change your thinking, gym memberships, personal trainers, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Who This Book is for and How to Use it
• Part 1 Your Weight, Your Body: Can You Control It? (And Why Not?)
• Part 2 Body Acceptance
• Part 3 Can You Live the Life You’ve Always Wanted, in the Body You Have Now?
• Index