Body Clutter
Mar 5th, 2007 by Bethany
Saturday afternoon I got another birthday present from Sonja, my mother-in-law. It's a book I've mentioned before called Body Clutter by Flylady and the Dinner Diva. I read the entire thing that evening. The book encourages you to not take on another "diet" and to quit thinking about the word "diet" negatively. The idea is to learn to be grateful for the body you have and to learn to take good care of it so that you can live healthily a long time to complete the tasks God sent you here to do. She talks about making very small "babysteps" one at a time and integrating them into your routines. The key is to do just a little at a time in realistic steps that you're willing and able to plan to do for the rest of your life, not just for a few weeks or months while you're trying to lose weight.
Each chapter has a few practical writing assignments at the end for you to do to help you make plans and deal with your issues. An interesting thing about this book is that, unlike any other "diet books" I've read, they work on the premise that you need to figure out why you don't take care of your body (why you put the weight on) in the first place in order to make long-lasting changes. They discuss reasons like abuse, stress, and rebellion. There's an entire chapter on forgiveness and how you have to be forgiving in order to be healthy.
Another point they make in this book and throughout Flylady's writings is that many of us are so perfectionistic that we decide if we can't do it perfectly, then we won't do it at all. We procrastinate until it's too late, then say "why bother?" That's why they advocate babysteps–because it's too easy to make a huge goal, then make one mistake and give up on everything altogether. For people like me who have this attitude, it's better to focus on improving just a little bit at a time, being just a bit better today than I was yesterday, than to focus on how much ground I still have to cover. That way, if I make a mistake today, instead of giving up tomorrow I'll keep working at it. I haven't actually done the exercises in the book yet, and I'm not resolved yet to make any changes, but it's rolling around in my head and I think I'm already making some better choices about what I eat since I read it. Thanks for sending me a happy education, Sonja!