Your Body Image: A Live Chat with Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, PhD, author of Fed Up

Finding self-acceptance -- and health -- in a sea of cultural misinformation

What do you see when you look in the mirror? What do you want to see? What is healthy for you? Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, MD author of Fed Up: The Breakthrough 10-Step No Diet Fitness Plan, joined us to discuss how you can develop a healthy body image.

• There's no such thing as bad foods
• We'll help you sort through your fitness possibilities
• Taming that sweet tooth -- it can be done!

The opinions expressed herein are the guest's alone and have not been reviewed by a WebMD physician. If you have questions about your health, you should consult your personal physician. This event is meant for informational purposes only.

Moderator: Welcome everyone. Today we are talking about having a healthy body image.

Member Question: I have a terrible body image. I am 53, and find every excuse in the book to not lose all the weight I should. I do feel very hungry when I try to lose weight, and I do give up, eventually. I really hate being fat!! I don't remember what it like being really skinny. Can you help?

Oliver-Pyatt: I certainly hope that I can help you. However, I think what we ought to start out with is observing that much of the language you use to describe yourself seems to be filled with unloving comments and thoughts.

The first thing I would ask you is, what are the ramifications of self-loathing thoughts? One of the things dieting sets us up to do is to feel like a failure. We need to backtrack even further and become curious about where our definition of beauty or having a satisfactory body is derived from. The preoccupation with body size and shape so prevalent in our society negates the many wonderful aspects about ourselves that are often present and yet ignored or not acknowledged.

So I would ask you to start off by noticing how you're thinking about yourself and where this may lead you. I would urge you to consider looking into Step 3, decide you are good enough today to love yourself today to begin to understand how self-love is the most powerful tool for fitness of mind and body

Member Question: I just received a catalog from Lane Bryant, a company that sells clothes to women size 14 and above. The majority of the models in the catalog are stick thin! How can we accept ourselves if the people making clothes for us won't even show us wearing them?

Oliver-Pyatt: You've made such an important point. We do absorb the images that we are bombarded with daily. You've probably seen nearly 2 million television commercials over the course of your life, and 20,000 magazines containing more than a million ads. Swimming in the sea of cultural images does have an impact on us. One study found that 69% of female television characters are unusually thin and only 5% are larger than the average-sized woman.

We have to take seriously the cultural pressures that cause us to pursue a body size and shape that denies our physical needs. This is why I emphasize, in Step 2, reject the cultural myth that makes you diet and gain weight; the impact of culture on self-esteem. We must pull ourselves away from the television and pull our self-esteem from within, taking seriously the many aspects of our being that makes us who we are. We must be very serious in our effort to ward off the impact of the hostile environment we are currently living in.

Member Question: I want to see my belly a lot trimmer. I'm 66 and I'm having a hard time losing more weight. I'm in a plateau and can't get out of it. Can you help me?

Oliver-Pyatt: The human body was not designed to contain no fat. Our abdomens were not meant to be rock hard. There are a small percentage of people who naturally have a rock-solid abdomen, but much more realistically, our body is meant to have curves and bumps. As we age our body changes. Through the course of even a month or year our body goes through natural changes.

I would urge you to consider self-acceptance, which may be a more powerful tool to help you heal your mind and body than the dissection and critique of various aspects of your body. Our weight is a range, not a number, which changes over the course of the months, seasons, and years.

When our body stores some extra fuel in the form of fat, it may be doing its best to help prepare for an unforeseen circumstance, such as ill health or an environmental disaster. Our bodies don't know that we live in an era where there is an abundance of food, and it makes much sense for our bodies to retain some fuel, particularly as we age and become more vulnerable physically.

Member Question: How do you feel about the new BMI charts? If I met their weight expectations I would not be healthy and not at a weight considered healthy by my doctor. I think the BMI charts are just as guilty of promoting bad body image as advertisers.

Member Question: Isn't our overall health and ability to perform more important than our shape?

Oliver-Pyatt: The BMI chart, in my view, is simply the least worst of the various charts that are available. A person's physical and mental health cannot be gauged by a chart, as our bodies are much more individualized than this. I indeed had significant misgivings about including the BMI chart in my book. The one reason I leaned toward including it was because it at least included a range of weights and I hoped that people would derive a broader understanding of the diversity of size and shape from noting this.

For example, I went to a WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association) game. I was startled to find that, just like with men's basketball, the roster included the women's height and weight. Four of the players on the court that night were 5'9". One weighed 130 pounds, another 162 pounds. And the other two were 148 and 150. That's a 32-pound weight difference between these beautiful and amazingly fit women who were all fantastic and in the best possible shape. We need to take this very seriously. Just look at Venus and Serena Williams, both are strong, powerful and very different women. What we see from Venus and Serena is self-love and appreciation. This is the beauty that glows from within them, and we see that we no longer are concerned with the fact that one happens to be slightly stockier than the other.

Member Question: Do you think body image is related to our race?

Oliver-Pyatt: I think body image is related, in our society, to our race in some ways. Unfortunately, it appears that our society's emphasis on size and shape may be spreading into other cultures; particularly immigrants to the United States have a much higher incidence of developing eating disorders than those who remain in their country of origin.

Additionally, in Fiji, after western television was introduced we saw a tremendous surge in the rates of food and body preoccupation and eating disorders. So it does appear that there are many cultural factors that affect our tendency to diet, weight cycle, and develop eating disorders.

Member Question: So essentially you are saying that if we are within an acceptable weight range, per our doctor's instruction, and have no complications/limitations due to weight, that we should give ourselves permission to be there?

Member Question: Are you saying that if we still are over our weight limit, but have a healthy feeling about us and feel good, we should not worry about the scale weight?

Oliver-Pyatt: Yes, I would concur if your physician feels that your weight is not affecting your health detrimentally, and you're comfortable with your body size and shape, I would see no reason for being tortured over this. I would encourage you to consider what are the risks and benefits of dieting.

However, that does not mean that exploring your relationship with food may not be worthwhile. Learning how to engage in hunger-based eating and developing a relaxed relationship with food can and does lead to fitness of mind and body, which should go together. Many people in our society eat for reasons other than physiological hunger, and have a tense relationship with food.

One of my purposes is to help people to appreciate and respect the presence of food in their life, as well as to learn how to engage in hunger-based eating. We tend to eat when we are lonely, bored, angry, depressed, or anxious. Exploring our nonhunger-based eating is a far more powerful tool for weight loss than dieting.

Oliver-Pyatt: How do I get past negative comments that were made earlier in my life, such as, 'I love you, but you're getting fat' or 'You have a beautiful face, but you're getting fat?' They're all I can remember when I look at myself in the mirror.

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