Childhood Memories
-My Mum and Dieting
At the young age of 14 I embarked on a dieting career which lasted until I was 41.
All my early life I was surrounded by my Mum, her friends and my relatives dieting.
It was what women did.
It was expected.
No one thought anything about it.
And, I don't remember any males around me dieting.
Sadly, it still is to this day due to the diet and weight loss industry which is worth billions of £/$ each year.
I understood women dieted because they had to be thin to be loved, taken seriously, respected, find a partner.
This is what I carried around with me - the need to be thin to succeed in life.
Overweight or fat woman were pitied, critiqued, shamed for their body size. Shockingly, this still happens today.
It was never a secret when my Mum was dieting, she spoke about it openly - what she wasn't allowed to eat anymore, what she was, when she'd cheated or when she'd binged on diet restricted foods.
One of her binge foods was bread straight from the bakers with real butter. I remember her telling me she ate most of the freshly baked bread with lashings of butter as soon as she got in from shopping.
Mum always allowed herself real butter at Christmas as a treat. The rest of the time we had that awful St Ivel Gold in the house. No wonder for years I refused to have any sort of spread on sandwiches or toast!!
She loved butter yet deprived herself of it and then gorged when she could. I know this behaviour all too well, mine was a cheese board.
Mum would go to her diet club and come home either jubilant or disappointed. This set her mood for the rest of the evening and into the next day. Sometimes more.
At the time, as a child, I didn’t connect the two.
As a grown woman, I reflect on my dieting history and I was exactly the same. What the scale told me determined my mood and how I felt about myself.
Hi! I'm Arlene Cullens
Loving life in Scotland with my husband and boys.
I love walking in nature beside the sea or river, board games with my boys, building lego, reading and jigsaws!
My mission is to empower at least 1,000 women to break free from the cycle of binge and emotional eating while taking their power back around food.
In this free resource, I'll show you 3 Steps to Bin Bingeing that will transform your relationship with food.
This is for motivated, entrepreneurial woman who are ready to take action now to live a life 100% in control of food.
CLICK on the resource above
I have huge sadness my Mum went through her life dieting and striving to be thin because she believed she had to be. I don't recall her ever being overweight.
Having lived over 25 years following the same diet journey, I now understand why she was never fully happy with herself, in her own skin.
When my Mum was critically ill, I remember her saying to me that the only good thing that came out of being so ill with cancer was that she was thin and didn’t have to diet to get there.
She said this almost 20 years ago and it still hurts to think she went through life believing her worth was measured on how thin she was.
To my Dad, family and friends, she was deeply loved and cherished and is still a great void in our lives. It didn't matter her body size, the immense amount of love we have for her would never have changed.
I can’t begin to quantify in my mind how many women are in the world that diet from their teens (or even earlier if parents / medical professionals put them on diets) until old age and eventual death.
Continually looking for that one diet that will give them the life they have built up in their mind as being perfect and happy, but they can only have it if they are thin.
How messed up is that?
Society, the diet and weight loss industry have programmed women to believe you can only be happy, successful, worthy, beautiful, strong, desirable, powerful if you are thin.
What has body size got to do with any of that?
A woman in a larger body can be all these things, no thought or question or debate.
Yet here we are in 2022 and it’s still an issue.
Women can be anything they set their minds to be irrespective of body size or weight. Don't you agree?
Ladies, it's time to take control back and step away from the diet and weight loss industry with their archaic views and opinions that are forced upon us everywhere we look.
Dieting is not only the cause of bingeing but it really does affect our mental health as well as our self worth and both body and self confidence.
If you're ready to discover another way to do food that is all about listening to your amazing body then I'd love to hear from you.
I’m so thankful I found my amazing coach to hold space for me while I was on my journey and now I'm free from dieting and bingeing. My life has changed so much, I feel free, happy, content with me, all of me. Exactly as I am.
I also wouldn't be writing this as I wouldn't have had the belief and confidence to become a food relationship coach before my own journey.
My mission is to help at least 1,000 women break free from the diet and weight loss industry.
Why don't you be one of them?
Your next step:
Book a 45-Minute Rewrite Your Food Story with Arlene!
If you've been on the diet bandwagon or are a binge and/or emotional eater then come and have a chat.
In this 45-minute session,
- We'll have a chat about where your relationship with food is right now.
- We'll chat about how you feel about this relationship.
- We'll then chat about what you'd like your relationship with food to look like.
- Finally, we'll develop an action plan that will get you moving on your journey so you can feel the results.
With love and happiness
Arlene x
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