Good advice from When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies

by Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter  p. 273-274 

"When you swore off diets, you promised yourself that you would accept your body regardless of its size. When you then feel pleased about losing weight, that promise rings hollow.

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Since self-rejection always triggers mouth hunger, however, it is important to find a way to feel pleased about your weight loss without rejecting who you were before you shed the pounds. 

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You can best remain neutral after you have lost weight if you do the following: 

1. Remind yourself that you are having a "diet" reaction, if you start feeling thrilled about losing weight.

2. Remember your old body and remind yourself to be respectful of how nice it was.

3. Take a minute to think about your real achievement: that you non longer feel compelled to eat when you are not hungry.

4. Get back to your mirror work, always stricing to inhabit your body out to the edges. If you keep up with the changes in your body, you will be prepared when others react to your appearance and you will not get carried away by their applause. No doubt they think that you look better when you are thin, but they have not challenged their prejudices the way you have. " 

I think that this advice is valid even when applied to not losing the weight, but gaining some. I might well gain more weight and I'm afraid that I'll reject myself if that happens. (I can just have that feeling without food, though. That's "the real accomplishment"! Makes me think I never was as deeply in the hole as the majority who read the book. No wonder, many of them where put on diets as children.) I don't agree with everyone being thrilled with weight loss, that is more American in my view, at least the "tell it to your face"-approach to applauding it. Of course there are people who will now "accept you better". But it's no real acceptance, one just needs to feel the sorrow of being only conditionally "applaused". 

I think about food a lot now; I'm really thinking that it's hard-wired into our body to become obsessed with food when we're physically deprived. Too bad dieters scold themselves for it. I wish for everyone a compassionate relationship with their life and their body.