Yesterday, Justin and I traveled about nine hours to run in the Baltimore Running Festival tomorrow morning. This has been many (many……!) months in the making and we are so thrilled for the weekend to finally be upon us. To me there’s nothing like a marathon. The excitement of the city is palpable, with thousands upon thousands of people collected in one place for a common purpose – to fulfill a dream. Whether it be walking in his first 5k or completing her tenth marathon to qualify for Boston, it’s incredible to see thousands of eager participants gearing up to accomplish something they never thought they could.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m running tomorrow to support Girls on the Run, an incredible organization dedicated to promoting the health and happiness of young girls in our communities. I’ll be proudly sporting my GOTR shirt and reminding myself of the thousands of young girls who are inspired daily by the programming they are offered. Watch this inspiring video and tell me you don’t want to support this program?

Meanwhile, Justin will be running the full marathon and trying to do it under three hours – a bit ridiculous, if you ask me! We’ll both be running with passion, and I ask for your thoughts tomorrow morning!

One more article of business before the Friday picks… Please don’t forget that both bloggers and non-bloggers are invited to participate in the new Self-Discovery, Word by Word series. You can check out the introductory post to get all the details, but all you have to do is share your thoughts on gratitude and then send me a link or paragraph to include in the round-up next week! I’ve adored getting to read everyone’s beautiful expressions of gratitude over the past ten days. Thank you all for participating!

Now, on to all the amazing things around the internet. The theme for me this week seemed to be empowering daughters and young girls in our lives (which was ironically not a conscious effort) I hope that you’ll check out my top five and leave lots of comment love for the writers. Just as I am doing through running for GOTR, these writers are striving to make a difference in the health and well-being of others. So support them and, of course, enjoy!

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• This post technically wasn’t this week, but it really resonated with me. And since I make the rules on my own Five for Friday, I’m including it! So what is it? Sarah Wilson talked about the simple act of asking the question, “Are you okay?” I can recall so many points in my own life when that short phrase meant the world to me.
• Marianne Schnall on Adios Barbie, a fantastic body image site, let down her hair in a post about battles with her mane. She talks about loving yourself for you who you are and teaching your daughters to do the same.
• Over on Pigtail Pails, a blog and store that empowers girls to “redefine girly,” Melissa talked about fat talk, sharing some startling statistics and featuring a moving video based on Dr. Robyn Silverman’s book, Good Girls Don’t Get Fat.
• Empowering Girls is a blog and resource that “empowers girls to fly high!” Read this awesome post about how our beliefs impact our girls’ identities. This is great information for both parents and those considering how thei own identities might have been shaped.
• Michelle from Eating Journey celebrated the one year anniversary of Exposed, a movement she started to inspire others to reveal themselves fully and put aside body-shame. Here’s a quote I loved from her post:

What I can say is that being Exposed is about being raw with who you are, letting your spirit be at peace and marinading in the beauty of what body you have been given.

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Reader Comment of the Week :: Margarita on The meaning of food choices

…I love asking all those questions to get at the deeper meanings that food has for us (not always, but oftentimes). And your example of associating ice cream with safety and comfort is so familiar to me. For me, there are many foods that evoke past memories. For instance, when I eat certain Russian foods, memories just flood into my mind. Some foods remind me of my grandma (like potatoes made on the skillet with mushrooms) or of my dad (shrimp with spaghetti). It’s really neat to think about!

As always, make sure to share what great things you’ve been reading or writing this week! Have a great weekend!

“I could NEVER wear skinny jeans with my legs!”

“I would do anything to lose these last ten pounds. Uhgg! My stomach!”

“Why not have another donut? There’s no way I’m getting into a swimsuit anyway.”

Take a moment and consider your reaction to these statements. Are they familiar to you? Do you find yourself saying things like this? Do you hear your friends or coworkers talking like this? How do these statements make you feel? Do they lift you up? Do they cause you anxiety? Close your eyes if you need to and feel the emotional weight of these phrases.

This type of communication is called “fat-talk” and it’s what Denise Martz, PhD, of Appalachian State University, researches. You can read an awesome interview with this clinician and researcher over on Weightless, a blog by the lovely Margarita Tartakovsky, MS about body image, the skinny fad, and freedom from numbers. What Martz tells us is that interview is fascinating, saddening, and hopeful. Two things she says are that normality of fat-talk has been somewhat accepted and expected in our culture and that it may be a function of fitting in, or an attempt to do so.

Have you ever engaged in fat talk as a means of relating to or connecting with a group?

When I asked myself this question, my immediate reaction was, “No, I would never do that!” But then I decided to take more than three seconds to consider this and challenge my own infallibility. Once I started thinking about it, I realized that I actually do engage in fat-talk… like, all the time! I became cognizant that I make derogatory remarks about my body (e.g. bemoaning my small chest)  or compare my own to others (e.g. lamenting the fact that I will never be able to pull off capris, while my friend is rocking them). I realized that often I do it to be comical or to fill the empty space with a new acquaintance.

Once you start paying attention, you’ll notice that fat-talk flows off of our tongues with a disheartening ease. The tricky thing about fat-talk, however, is that it isn’t always obvious. For example, seemingly positive remarks like “Oh, I wish I could eat whatever I wanted and look like you!” or “You’re a rail!” can still be hurtful to the recipient. And like I said in this post on being body-talk free, such comments create a culture in which we focus too heavily on weight and size.

Now for the good news! Martz also tells us that, despite our perception that fat-talk leads to acceptance, women tend to prefer other women who say positive rather than negative things about their bodies. Hallelujah! While pleased, I can’t say that I’m surprised by this finding. I notice that I am much more attracted to individuals (of both sexes!) who exude confidence in themselves. There is of course a fine line between confidence and being an arrogant jerk, but fortunately I am usually surrounded by the former. I notice that when I’m with women who love their bodies and feel comfortable in their own skin (like, fortunately for me, many of my best girlfriends), I feel so much more at ease in my own. For my girlfriends, I think that we all feel better about ourselves because we’ve created an environment in which fat-talk is not the norm. And it just feels good.

Hopefully you’ve created such an environment among those closest to you as well. If not, now is the time. It’s important to let others know that fat-talk is not good for you, it’s not good for them, it’s not good for our young people, and it’s not good for our culture as a whole.

You can add your voice to the the initiative by joining the End Fat Talk facebook page and signing the pledge to be Fat Talk Free for the week of October 18th.

How have you observed fat-talk in your own life? Are you going to sign the pledge?

Did you get a chance to “weigh-in” (pun intended!) in on the debate about the “f” word? If not, check it out here.

I was totally in love with all of the comments offered in the debate. It’s what I love about the world of social media – it opens us up to enriching discussions where we can learn so much from disparate views.

So, as promised, I wanted to offer my own thoughts on this topic. Like many of you, my reactions and opinions shifted somewhat as I thought about the various aspects of this argument. However, the psychologist training in me won out and my opinion came down to answering the question, “What works?”

The problem with providers using the term “fat” to scare people into losing weight to me isn’t as much of an issue of the word, though I’ll get to that in a moment. What it ultimately boils down to for me is that using this word is an attempt to shame individual into losing weight, and we know that shame-based interventions do not work. Unfortunately, the idea of shaming people into action appears on the surface to be fairly easy and effective. However, major behavioral changes, whether individual or cultural, do not develop due to shame. As some of you pointed out, shaming others often leads them to further into a behavior – because shame generates fear and fear makes us retract in the behaviors that we know. Just look at how ineffective scare tactics are at reducing things like teen pregnancy or drug use, for instance. So if shame techniques don’t work, there’s no reason for a medical provider to use them.

Now on to the more heartfelt part of my argument. I believe that words have incredible power. While some argue that a word is just a word, I think that most of us can acknowledge that words have immense influence over our thoughts, our feelings, and our conceptualizations of the world. In fact, research on various therapies (there goes my empiricism again, damnit.), such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Narrative Therapy, show us that words help shape our realities.

Further, words cannot easily be separated from one another – they are inextricably linked by the connotations in our minds. Regardless of your own lack of biases, the word “fat” has taken on the connotation of “lazy”, “indulgent”, and even “stupid” in our culture. As hard as we may try, we cannot separate the word from the meaning that resonates in our minds. And thus when a provider calls a patient “fat”, (s)he also calls the patient all of these other things. Which is unprofessional, hurtful, and once again, not useful in accomplishing the ultimate goal of pushing the patient toward health.

One more point: A patient may be over what is considered his or her ideal body weight, but that does not necessarily mean the person is unhealthy. A (small) percentage of individuals considered “obese” can be considered metabolically healthy. While it’s likely that someone who is overweight does face medical issues, it’s important to consider the individual in providing care. If the person does face increased risk, then providers should bring up those health concerns. Focusing on weight, rather than health, often leads to “dieting” rather than lifestyle changes, and we know DIETING DOESN’T WORK!

So those are my thoughts. Thanks to everyone for weighing in, and please continue to do so below. Disagree with me, please! I’d love to hear more on this…