HAES – A quick lesson

I know there are some out there in our audience who aren’t sure what HAES is so I wanted to give a quick synopsis of it. 

There is the “program” based on trusting yourself and your body  and then there is the book, “Health at Every Size, The Surprising Truth About Your Weight.”After reading this book by Linda Bacon, PhD., I’ve come away with a huge respect for the author and for all the participants that took part in her research. The knowledge and wisdom that comes in this book is backed up by research, science and by simple fact. If you have not read this book or done any research on it, please consider doing so. You’ll come away a different person, I can promise you that.

For those of you who don’t know much about HAES, this passage will really sum it up pretty well. Very close to the end of the book is a section entitled “Join the HAES revolution”. In this section the author asks for your pledge of support for HAES. The passage I’m quoting will be from the HAES Pledge.

Health at Every Size is based on the simple premise that the best way to improve health is to honor your body. It supports people in adopting health habits for the sake of health and well-being (rather than weight control). Health at Every Size encourages:

• Accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.
• Eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite.
• Finding the joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.

That is pretty much it in a nutshell.

Another passage that struck a nerve for me is:

The only way to solve the weight problem is to stop making weight a problem – to stop judging ourselves and others by using our size. Weight is not an effective measure of attractiveness, moral character, or health. The real enemy is weight stigma, for it is the stigmatization and fear of fat that causes the damage and deflects attention from true threats to our health and well-being.

~taken from Chapter Twelve, Solving the Weight “Problem”, Identifying the Problem

 

Then there is this in Chapter Twelve, Solving the Weight “Problem”, Your Own Health at Every Size Journey: As a Consumer in the second and third paragraphs:

Your journey is a long-term process of change. You are unlikely to wake up one day and realize you suddenly love and trust your body. Reading this book has not magically turned you into an unrestrained eater who loves vegetables and whole grains, lives for biking, and feels sexy in spandex, nor will you instinctively know how to best respond in the moment to friends or acquaintances with concerns about your weight or their own.
Focus on a moment-to-moment awareness, rather than worrying about the big picture. You will have tipping points. Some day you will enjoy chocolate pudding without thinking about the calories. Or you will realize that today, your pleasure comes from the company of good friends and you’re less dependent on pizza for that feel-good hit. The pleasure of eating asuumes its rightful place alongside the many other ways you obtain pleasure, no longer tainted by your anxiety or neediness.

 

There is just so much in this book that I would love to share with you but if I did that, Ms. Bacon might come lookin’ for me!  Please, if any of this piqued your interest, check out the book and the website.  You won’t regret it.

~sas