You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.
Fred Rogers, The World According to Mr. Rogers
Dieting with the anticipation that someone else will appreciate your new, slender self is ingratiation dieting. Ingratiation dieting only fuels feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness.
According to authors of Your Own Worst Enemy, Steven Berglas, and Roy F. Baumeister, the “ingratiator’s dilemma” occurs when you try to act in a way to get another person to like you, but you have to make it seem as if you are not doing these things to get liked. You have to conceal your true intentions.
When I first dieted, with real intention to succeed, my ambition was to show others that I could actually lose weight and look like a figure competitor. But after the competition was finished, my drive for maintaining my ideal physique was also finished.
I look like a stuffed sausage. I am 120 pounds. Why do I want to be thin? To show up Patty. To be the skinniest person in my class. So I will be a changed and better person outwardly — to fit my inner self.
The words of a young woman from Greenwich, Connecticut, 1969, as reported in News & World Report, October 23, 1995, by Cornell University historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg
Six months after the competition ended, I was 35 pounds heavier and disgusted with myself. Why was I willing to change for other people, strangers even, and not for myself? After the competition, I felt I had no reason, or pressure, to stay fit anymore. All the same, I still wanted to look great, but I was not willing to do the work to look this way.
The “anti-dieting” approach seemed a logical way to stay fit while avoiding a regimented diet. After reading a collection of anti-dieting books, I reasoned that I could eat what I wanted, whenever I wanted, in reasonable amounts, and not gain any weight. Wrong. I gained 35 pounds using this logic.
In short, I needed another reason to stay in shape. This time around, it would not be based on what others wanted or expected from me. Today, my reason for staying in shape is entirely selfish and justifiably so.