When Trying to Stop the Criticism Becomes Part of Your Weight Regain Problem
What if some of your attempts to lose weight have been less about the weight itself and more about getting other people to stop criticising you?
When Kelli began examining her history of repeated weight regain, she described something that had occupied an extraordinary amount of her attention. She had spent years trying to insulate herself from other people's criticism.
She had dieted regularly, tried exercising and made repeated attempts to lose weight. But alongside those efforts was another objective. She wanted people to recognise that she was trying. She wanted to be seen doing the right thing.
To understand why, we need to look at the two very different family cultures that had influenced her relationship with food and weight.
When food represents success
Kelli's parents migrated to Australia from a small Greek island where food had been scarce. In Australia, they discovered supermarkets overflowing with packaged and processed foods.
For them, this abundance represented prosperity and belonging in their new country. They wanted their only daughter to enjoy what they hadn't had, and they didn't want her to stand out as different at school.
Kelli grew up eating packaged macaroni cheese for breakfast, with extra grated cheese on top. Her lunchbox contained chips and other processed foods. After school, she could raid the pantry without restrictions.
By eight, she described herself as 'tubby'. At fifteen, she began her first diet after a boy told her he would date her if she lost weight.
Already, changing her weight had become connected with gaining someone else's acceptance.
When another family decides you need fixing
Years later, Kelli married into a military family where slimness was valued.
After having two babies within twenty months, her weight changed significantly. Her husband's solution was to go for a run every day, just as he did. Her mother-in-law bought her a gym membership for her birthday. When they visited for meals, diet food was served.
Kelli felt her in-laws had collectively decided to fix her weight.
Behind their advice were three judgements I call the three ‘w’s: wanting, willpower and weakness.
The assumption was that Kelli didn't want to lose weight enough, wasn't exercising sufficient willpower, or was simply too weak to maintain the result.
These were judgements about her character, presented as explanations for her weight.
How criticism can reinforce the weight regain problem
Kelli's repeated dieting was taking place under considerable pressure. She wasn't only trying to lose weight. She was trying to satisfy other people's expectations and end their criticism.
When her weight increased, the pressure to demonstrate effort increased too. Dieting provided a visible response. If she lost weight, some scrutiny might ease. When the weight returned, the criticism returned with it, creating renewed pressure to diet.
This is a reinforcing relationship. Criticism encourages another attempt at weight loss, while weight regain invites further criticism.
It doesn't mean criticism caused Kelli's weight regain. It means criticism had become part of the circumstances surrounding her repeated attempts to change it.
And all the while, important information about her eating remained unexplored.
The history another diet couldn't explain
When Kelli stopped dieting long enough to examine her history, she began understanding why her parents had provided the food they did, what she'd learnt about eating as a child, and how other people's expectations had influenced her adult decisions.
Her family food culture was more than a collection of childhood meals. It contained the conditions in which she learnt about food availability, quantity, choice and belonging.
The criticism she'd experienced couldn't explain those things.
Neither could another diet.
If you've experienced repeated weight regain, your own family food culture deserves examination.
What was normal in your childhood home? Who decided what and how much you ate? What did particular foods mean to your family?
These aren't questions about assigning blame to your parents. They're questions about understanding the eating history you brought into adulthood.
The Weighting for Happiness Family Food Culture diagnostic provides a structured way to examine that history, including the access, choices, rules and expectations that surrounded your childhood eating and how this reflects in your weight regain problem today.
Before committing to another attempt at weight loss, find out what your own food history has to tell you.
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