Extract: Mrs D is Not on a Diet, by Lotta Dann

Would you start another diet if you knew it would probably fail? Would you love your body if our culture didn't tell you it was wrong?

Lotta Dann's journey with extreme dieting and drastic weight loss led to endless praise for her skinny body. But no one knew what she had to do to maintain it. When the weight came back on, Lotta started asking fundamental questions that she'd never considered before. Extracted from Mrs D is Not on a Diet by Lotta Dann, published by Allen & Unwin, RRP: $37.99 Negative body image thoughts as a distraction from tough emotions? This is interesting.

Emotional avoidance is a topic I am intimately familiar with, having been through my own awakening on this since I got sober. When I first quit drinking, I had no idea that my steady, heavy, twenty-plus-year wine habit was actually a misguided way of trying to manage my emotions. Seems obvious, I know, but trust me — when you’re inside addiction you don’t often see things for what they are. I simply thought I was an ageing party girl who’d let her drinking habit get out of control. It wasn’t until I quit drinking and got SO FREAKING EMOTIONAL that I realised I’d been using wine to numb my feelings.

I thought that getting sober would involve learning how to resist cravings and socialise without alcohol. And yes, it was those things, but mostly it was about acknowledging my deep-down sadness, expressing anger, feeling frustration, managing envy, dealing with disappointment and coping with grief (plus all the other emotions you can name). Basically, living without alcohol over the past ten years or so has involved me learning how to live as a fully realised, emotionally whole human being. It’s been hard bloody work — a lot of grinding through tough times and squirming through discomfort — but today I’m a totally different beast when it comes to being emotional. I’m more comfortable crying (a good thing, because I do it all the time), and I’m slowly getting better at letting out anger. Truth be told, the letting-out-anger bit is still a work in progress, but generally speaking there’s no doubt I’m more comfortable with my emotions and therefore more grounded than I ever have been. I’m definitely more connected with myself and everyone around me, and unquestionably I’m better at riding the waves of life.

Or at least I thought I was. I’m now questioning that fact. Am I really that good at dealing with life in the raw? Or is all this food and body obsession just another distraction from my feelings?

—

There’s a lot of talk in the recovery and sobriety communities about ‘transfer addictions’. That is, people giving up one thing but quickly switching to another to keep dulling the sharp edges of life. No longer drinking beer, but instead smoking marijuana most days. No more nightly wines, but instead obsessive over-exercising. No more stimulants, but still speeding by working 90-plus hours a week. The primary substance causing all the harm might be gone, but other addictions are in place to keep the distraction, numbing and avoidance going. Is this what I’m doing? Are my negative body image thoughts distracting me from thinking about other stressors in my life? Is my hyper- fixation over what I’m putting in my mouth stopping me worrying about other unhappy things? Do I eat mini bowls of icing on days when I’m sad? Worry about the fat on my thighs when I’m stressed? Gobble white chocolate when I’m frustrated or disappointed? Eat carbs to squash down my anger?

I think about this a lot as the weeks go by after Kimberley’s visit, staying alert to how I’m feeling when I’m snacking or thinking negatively about my body, and I come to somewhat of a conclusion. The truthful answer is, yes and no. I accept that absolutely there is an aspect of emotional avoidance or emotional management (call it what you will) wrapped up in all my actions and thoughts around food and my body. I do sometimes eat sugar when I’m feeling strongly about something, and I do sometimes have bad body image days when I’m having a tough time. There’s no denying that whatsoever. But not always.

Sometimes I have sad days and numb myself with fudge or biscuits while mindlessly scrolling Instagram Reels or bingeing Bravo’s Summer House. But sometimes I have a sad day and let my feelings out by crying while walking the dog or sharing what’s troubling me with a loved one.

Sometimes I feel anger and shove it down by stuffing peanut butter toast in my gob or necking a colossal plate of leftover pasta. But sometimes I feel anger and express the reasons for it to someone who can help, or allow myself to feel it while slamming around the house putting away the washing.

Sometimes I get super stressed and anxious and divert attention away from the difficult things going on in my life by hating all my clothes and the way I look for a week or two. But other times I get stressed and anxious and listen to loads of Tara Brach (who always helps me process difficult things in my life), or I practise acknowledging my thoughts and feelings and applying acceptance and self-compassion.

There’s an awful lot of things I’ve got to be thankful for from thirteen-plus years in recovery from addiction, and one of them is having numerous strategies to cope with the sharp edges of life. However, I’m now realising that I need to acknowledge that there are emotional drivers behind some of my food behaviours and thoughts about my body. Yes, it’s still the shitty patriarchal social system and messed-up diet-culture norm we live in, but there are also emotional management factors at play. But you know what?

I truly think that’s OK, and all the fabulous people I’m now reading and watching think so too.

‘There’s no reason to demonise the practice of eating to soothe emotions,’ says Christy Harrison in Anti-Diet. ‘It’s perfectly OK to eat for emotional reasons rather than strictly biological ones. Turning away from guilt over eating emotionally is a part of rejecting diet culture. It’s diet culture that tells us any food that isn’t the bare minimum to stay alive but maintain the thinnest body you can is bad food. It’s diet culture that makes us layer guilt for eating when feeling tough emotions on top of the tough emotions that were there in the first place. And not just the tough emotions, but the good ones too.’

‘Plenty of people eat for reasons beyond hunger,’ writes Aubrey Gordon. ‘They eat to comfort themselves, to celebrate, to socialise, to pass the time. They are all valid reasons to eat food, and most of us have engaged in most of them.’4 Oh, for sure — who doesn’t love a bowl of hot soup when they’re feeling low? A piece of cake on someone’s birthday? Cheese and crackers at a party? Chips and dip when it’s two in the afternoon and you’ve got a headache from writing all morning and the house is empty and you’ve got nothing else to do? (I just did that.)

I love knowing that it’s perfectly OK to have food as one of my go-to emotional management tools — no guilt here! I’m not failing at life or being a bad person when I reach for my deliciously soothing foodie treats on a rough day. The trick is to be aware that I’m doing that, and make sure it’s not my only go-to. If eating was the only tool in my emotional management toolbox, that wouldn’t be wise. But it isn’t. I have other things that bring me joy and comfort, things that I lean on when the going gets tough. And yay for those. Yay for reality TV and social media and jigsaw puzzles and dog walks and Tara Brach. Yay for feeling things in the raw and being OK with discomfort and practising mindfulness and expressing emotions openly to myself and the people around me.

And yay for food.