That society discriminates against overweight people is a fact of life. It starts in school, and anyone who has been larger than his classmates can tell tales of the rejection and ridicule that come out from the mouths of thinner peers. That the prejudice is widespread in the business world, too, is well documented. And countless men and women can tell you that their weights and their dissatisfaction with their bodies keep them from getting close to other people or sometimes even enjoying sex with their spouses.
Being overweight takes a toll on your self-esteem and the way you relate to others. Self-esteem is key to your relationship with food, too. If you don't feel good about your body, you may not feel good about the food you put into it. And without a healthy relationship with food, your body image will plummet. It's a Catch-22 situation.
This section is about body image: finding out how to feel good about who you are, regardless of your body size or shape.
Just whose ideal are you anyway
According to research conducted by the Kellogg's Corporation (published by the Opinion Research Corporation), women in the United States determine their ideal body size and shape from the way models in television ads and fashion magazines look, not from the way women look in real life. Women are obsessed about their weight, fueled by a society that sets an artificial standard for beauty based on the way models look. Women also believe that how they're described by men and by each other promotes the notion of an ideal woman, whom they will never be able to match.
The Kellogg's survey found that women tend to focus on the specific body parts they don't like, not on their bodies as a whole. They may like their hair color and think that they're tall enough, but only 14 percent of the women surveyed were happy with their weights. Almost a third of the women surveyed said that a woman's ideal weight is between 110 and 125 pounds, and half said that a weight between 126 and 145 is ideal. But in reality, there is no such thing as an ideal weight, because people are genetically programmed to be different shapes and sizes.
That so many women are confused about what they should look like isn't surprising. The role models look nothing like the average woman. In fact, if you think about it, it's the fashion models who don't conform to the standards of the average adult, not the other way around. Only 1 in 40,000 women has a supermodel like body - 40,000! That ratio means that out of the entire population of Indiana, a state with more than 6 million residents, only 152 women have model-perfect bodies!
The following table compares the average American woman to the media's and society's ideals, demonstrating that when it comes to selling clothes, life doesn't imitate art. In fact, it's getting farther away from it. Marline Morn, the pinup girl of the 1950s, wore a size 14 dress - the same size that many women in the United States wear today. This isn't to say that a size 14 is healthy for all women. It depends on your height and other factors. If you're 5 feet tall and you wear a size 14, then you're probably unhealthy. But if you're 5 feet 6 inches tall, a size 14 may be okay, even though you'd still be considered on the large side by society's standards. The scary thing is that today's models, who are usually at least 5 feet 8 inches or taller, typically wear only a size 6. And between 1955 and 1998, the measurements of a Playboy centerfold dropped by 35 percent.
| |||
| Average Man | Mannequin | Model | |
| Dress size | 12 | 6 | 6 |
| 152 | 120 | ||
| Height | 5'9" | 6' | 6' |
| Body measurements | 37-34-40 | 34-25-34 | 34-25-34 |
| 37 waist | 30 waist | 30 waist | |
| 34 | 28 | ||
| BMX (Body Mass Index) | 26.1 | 17.2 | |
This phenomenon isn't unique to women. Even male models and mannequins are smaller than the average American male. Table illustrates the differences.
| |||
| Average Man | Mannequin | Model | |
| Pant size | 37 | 30 | 30 |
| Suit size | 42 regular | 40 regular | 40 regular |
| 180 | 145-150 | ||
| Height | 5'9" | 6' | 6' |
| Body measurements | 41 chest | 39 chest | 39 chest |
| 37 waist | 30 waist | 30 waist | |
| 22 | 15 | ||
| BMX (Body Mass Index) | 26.6 | 205 | |
The important point to take away from these tables is that you need to stop comparing yourself and your weight to unrealistic numbers. Even if you diet religiously, you probably won't end up with the body of a super model. Stop beating yourself up for not meeting standards that are clearly unrealistic and concentrate on the things you can do to make your body healthy. And begin to feel good about your progress, too.
One study of obese women - their average weight was about 218 pounds - conducted by Foster and others at the University of Pennsylvania did just that [see the Journal of Consulting and clinical Psychology 65(1), 1997]. The women were asked to write down their goal weights and then the weight-loss amounts that they would consider "acceptable" and "disappointing." Most women set their goals 32 percent lower than their starting points (about 72 pounds). "Acceptable" was about a 25 percent loss (55 pounds), and the women considered a weight loss of only 17 percent of their starting weights (38 pounds) to be "disappointing."
After 6 months of dieting, exercising, and behavior modification and 6 months of maintenance, the average weight loss that these women were able to maintain was only 16 percent of their defined starting weights (or 36 pounds). They hadn't even reached their "disappointing" weight_ Did they fail? No. These women can be called successful for several reasons: A weight loss of just 10 percent is enough to bring down high blood pressure, lower cholesterol and triglycerides, and improve overall health. And these women beat that goal by 6 percentage points.