It seems fairly reasonable to me that following days of celebrating with family and friends over the holidays, most people think about changes to food and exercise when considering their New Year’s Resolutions. Truly, I am no different. My own relationship with food has been a complex one. As I have written in one of my earlier blog posts, I was a fat child. I am okay with using the derogatory term to describe my childhood body type as opposed to terms like mesomorphic, big-boned, heavy, or chubby. Reclaiming the use of the term fat for me helps to further understand the persistent inner-child perspectives about food, femininity, pleasure, and body size. For me, like many other women, there is an emotional entanglement between my female gender and food, especially in light of being regarded generally as a fat girl in my early childhood. It is true that I have always loved food. My Italian mother was a great cook and dinners were a sacred event in our family. Similar to other newcomer families in the sixties and seventies, we all had to gather each evening to eat dinner together – and we did.

My mother always served our dad’s meal first, and then each of her six children in birth order. As the youngest of six children, I was always served last. Of course, my mom’s serving practice had deep and lasting impacts on me and my relationship with food and eating. As a child, I learned that food, especially delicious wholesome food was worth waiting for! I would eat it wholeheartedly and with gusto and sadly, I would often over-eat indulging in second helpings. It was a wonderfully pleasurable experience for me. I loved food and never learned to feel ashamed about my food choices. All food was delicious and nothing was really forbidden in our home. In fact, my mom would give each of us a bedtime snack-pack full of chips, chocolates, and sweets depending on our preferences. Again, in her view, as long as you had eaten a healthy meal, it was okay to indulge in the not-so-healthy stuff. Other than spoiled or rotten food, nothing was off-limits.

As a young child, I was not attuned to the subtle sensation of feeling full, and so I only stopped eating when I was quite full. I ate hurriedly and ravenously, as though the next meal was never a guarantee. In truth, I would stuff myself with the delicious food at home, and my mom always seemed happy to have a daughter with such a healthy appetite. At that time, fat babies were viewed as healthy babies and baby-fat was something that people eventually outgrew. Any shame I learned about over-eating unfolded as a fat girl with five older normatively-sized siblings, and with friends, mostly thinner than me at school and in my community. It really did seem at the time that I was physically larger than most of my female friends. By ten years old, I weighed 140 pounds. Seven years post-menopausal, my weight continues to hover around the same.

At home, I was fortunate to learn that food rewards were not associated with merit. My mom did not change how she served food based on how we behaved. She also never withheld food as punishment. This may have been influenced by her cultural heritage or her own hunger-trauma experiences during the war. My mom simply stuck with her hierarchical practice of serving food based on age. Many cultures practice this way, where no one at the table begins to eat until the eldest is served and begins to eat first. She was also very particular about extending food and hospitality to our neighbours. We had the best birthday parties and holiday celebrations. She was intuitively inclusive and we often had neighbours and friends over to share in good food and company. So, I learned early that food is always to be shared. It was a very hard lesson for me to learn that some children at school were “not allowed” to share their food with their friends. Sharing food with others was joyful and celebratory. Even at this later stage in my life, I find it difficult to eat or drink anything in front of someone else without offering some of it to them. Not surprisingly, I have cultivated friendships with other women who are equally hospitable and celebratory with food opening their homes to host dinner parties or pot-lucks.

As a young child, it did not really matter that my siblings and school mates bullied me for being fat, because all of the wonderful tastes of food outweighed (no pun intended) any harm caused by hurtful and mean words. Again, I am now more aware of the impact of this meanspirited bullying on my sense of self today, but in those early years, I ate unreservedly. As I grew into my own womanhood, my relationship with food evolved. I continued to perceive myself as larger (and I was) than most of my peers until puberty, when my feminine attributes became more obvious somewhat bypassing an adolescent stage. Where many of my female friends were still girlish before the age of twenty, I had long felt physically like a grown woman. Many of my friends of European and Mediterranean descent experienced the same. My eating habits during my adolescence and young adulthood were more scientifically informed. I ate for health and did begin to restrict some of the less healthy foods and to move more. Of course, I continued to eat for pleasure as well. I had already established a real enjoyment of eating, and so I did enjoy eating from the Canadian Food Guide as well.

As a psychotherapist, I prefer to frame a woman’s relationship with food developmentally and longitudinally. Neuropsychiatrist, Louann Brizendine describes the female hormonal trajectory in her book, The Upgrade as occurring in three main phases over the course of a lifetime. She provides the scientific support to show the connection between female hormones and health. Brizendine argues that a woman’s transformation of sex hormones occurs over several years and impacts all areas of the body and mind. In the first phase during Adolescence, the hormonal storming brings about so many changes that help to understand emotional and behavioural changes described in Mary Pipher’s important 1994 publication, Reviving Ophelia, which chronicles the increased pressures on adolescent females to restrict themselves in all areas of life. In Pipher’s view, this restriction too often leads to a girl’s total loss of voice, character, and vitality seen in her earlier years. Author, Sarah Ockwell-Smith recreates space for girls to be compliant, helpful, gentle, and loving. She has created a series of gentle parenting resources based on sound attachment-based theories that debunk otherwise pathologized views of the good girl syndrome beginning in early childhood. In her view, behavioural compliance results from attachment-parenting where household routines are predictable, structured, safe, nurturing, loving, and clear.

The argument that a good girl or perfect girl syndrome is created in response to social pressures is a real one for many women. Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 publication, The Second Sex introduced the idea that female-disadvantage was for the most part caused by biological differences, especially as they related to females being smaller and physically weaker than males. In her simple yet original version of feminism, de Beauvoir explained that a woman’s power in her time emerged from the possibility of saying “no” to the advancements of males who could overpower women with ease. This notion of the good or perfect girl always-already agreeable and yes-oriented characterized as vulnerable to men may in fact have its origins in the earliest forms of feminism. A good and perfect girl would not have the power to say “no”, and as such, it is important that she be parented to resist and defy. As times have changed and men have grown increasingly educated, sensitive, dignified, and sensible to the rights of women, this characterization of vulnerable good or perfect girls feels outdated to me. In the face of choice today, does a good or perfect girl have the power to say yes or no as she sees fit, and will her decision be respected by the men in her life?

Although the embodiment of the perfect female is traditionally thin in North America, most women report feeling at their best when they carry around less body fat. When my youngest son was six years old, I decided that the extra forty-five pounds that I had been carrying around was no longer related to my pregnancy with him. It was easy to deceive myself in believing that I weighed 165 pounds, when in fact I was closer to 190 pounds. At this point, I was in my late thirties, and looking back, I felt physically very strong and needed to be as a working-mom. Yet, my inner fat girl did not appreciate the reality of being close to 70 pounds over the then standard weight for women my own age.

So, I decided to follow in my good mother’s footsteps, and I joined Weight Watchers. Unlike my mom however, I decided that my weight loss program would be an opportunity to learn more about myself and my emotions. I made the conscious decision to be gentle with myself and to learn more about my relationship with food. I focused on when I eat, how I eat, what I eat, with whom I eat, and how I feel during and after I eat. I learned to discern feelings that had nothing to do with my meal or the food I was eating, but that had been connected to my experience of eating. I learned to enjoy food without over-indulgement or restriction. As I released my emotional baggage with food, my tormented relationship with it also ended. It took me close to a year to slowly lose fifty pounds. My inner fat child is content with my new normal. I no longer feel any guilt or shame with food. I eat everything and no longer feel the need to stuff myself. I can recognize even the subtlest full feeling.

My post-menopausal body does seem to react, sometimes painfully when I eat something that disagrees with me. There are several new sensitivities to foods that I did not experience as a younger woman. Many of my female clients in their forties and fifties also report changes in their ability to digest food with ease. It seems that more and more women experience extreme bloating and pain as the first and second phases of hormonal changes happen to the aging female body. Brizendine argues that the gradual loss of estrogen and progesterone impacts all bodily systems in females until it finally stabilizes, which she argues is the third and final stage of menopause in later life.

So, my New Year’s resolutions in 2025 are much like my previous ones. I will purchase my first ever TO-All Access Pass that will allow me to participate in drop-in fitness classes with friends or on my own that suit me best. I will keep my LA Fitness membership as they offer court play. I hope to learn Tai Chi and to brush up on my long neglected guitar. I will continue to explore food reactions on my body and do my best to choose foods that make me feel healthy and well. I will support the people in my life who are ill and whose bodies are fighting for survival. I will continue to practice gratitude for all the goodness living in such a privileged city and country yields. Finally, I will continue to provide my best clinical-self to my amazing high achieving clients from various professional fields whose commitment to self-care and mental wellness in the workplace incentivizes me to continue as well.

Best wishes for a Happy & Healthy New Year in 2025 as you continue to realize your dreams.

Lisa Romano-Dwyer MSW, PhD, RSW

In North America, this is traditionally the last week at work before the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays when most businesses and organizations slow down or close up altogether. Rather than writing my typical Christmas Blog, I thought I would salute the end of year reflection with a piece on Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead published in 2013. Listening to the audio version of this book has been a great assist to my psychotherapy-informed coaching role with working professionals.

Written before the “Cancel Culture” and “Me Too” movements in 2015 and 2017 respectively, Sandberg scatters her chapters with pearls of wisdom that are applicable to all working professionals. She likens a person’s professional trajectory as a jungle gym instead of a ladder, and explains that most people’s climb up the proverbial corporate ladder is neither linear nor as planned as one might think. Sandberg actually challenges the use of developing long-term goals and instead fosters the importance of flexibility in the face of growth and change. It is as important to know when to move to another company, role, or line of work as it is to stay. Understanding the impact of ongoing obstacles at work in light of your own desires for growth and change may be a real indication that the environment is simply not the best place for you to thrive. She shares several examples where people move upwards in the face of adversity.

Over the course of the past six years in private practice, I have witnessed a number of high quality professionals feeling exasperated by a number of factors at work that mostly stifle professional growth and creativity. Often bogged-down by confusing processes for which few were accountable, many people just decided to leave and move on to new positions. High quality professionals and subject matter experts do have options, and have exercised them pre and post-Covid. Many workplaces have learned to accommodate up and coming talented employees who simply left environments that failed to understand the needs of growing families, team work, the impact of family medical emergencies on work, and the role of health insurance and financial benefits on health and wellbeing. Most successful companies have updated their approach to recruiting and maintaining productive professionals.

Sandberg cites many sources in her book that support her views about the impact of being female in the workplace, most specifically the negative impacts. Sandberg suggests that women benefit from male mentorship, especially in light of the persistent reality that men dominate most of the top-tiers of business, government, and industry. In many ways, her book developed a post-gender model of mentorship where people engage and contest issues based on fact, productivity, and merit. Sandberg’s lengthy professional career and personal life as a working mother provided her with many anecdotes and firsthand accounts about working in fast paced growth environments where rumour and gossip prevented women from advancement. Perhaps, the explosion of data-based decision-making in all fields is an effort to minimize the negative blows on workers based on gender, race or lifestyle choices.

The current claim of data-based decision making is that your business – whatever it may be – has outcomes that can in fact be measured. For example, if your business is in retail and aims to sell a variety of products, then the the number of items sold is the data that would indicate your on the right track. Service industries that aim to build and retain a client-base for which particular services are provided measure success by the number of clients served, as well as client-retention over time. Industries that make and create products report data based on the numbers of items produced, and usually how widely these items are sold. There are also many other types of organizations that aim to improve the environment, reduce crime, increase affordable housing and more. Everything can be converted into data and measured once the unit of measurement in your industry has been identified. Even your personal wellness can be converted into data, once you decide what is the best way to measure your own health and wellbeing.

Data can also be helpful during difficult situations at work, where individuals appear to be difficult with peers, negligent in their duties, or absent from team work. Establishing clear measures of success and productivity can help to re-incentivize disengaged professionals and teams to work together in ways that bring out the best in one another and where everyone feels there is room for creative contribution and growth.

As we all begin to turn our minds to family traditions, and to slow down to appreciate all the goodness in our lives here in Canada, it is a fitting holiday time to re-appreciate Sandberg’s publication in the spirit in which it was written, and in retrospect of the important social movements of recent times that yelled loudly at us all for attention. As we inch towards a New Year with trepidation, excitement, and uncertainty with which each new beginning hails, there is some reassurance that the data may in fact help to lead the way forward.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Lisa Romano-Dwyer PhD, RSW Owner, Lakeside Wellness Therapy Affiliates

Scientific research on mental health and wellness continues to show that healthy habits are essential for both physical and mental health. The Amen Clinic in the US is perhaps one of the leading centres on promoting “brain warrior” health, that is, ensuring that everything you do nourishes, protects, and heals the brain. Dr. Amen’s research relies on a fusion of psychiatric and neuroscientific diagnostic brain-scans followed by customized treatment options that include talk-based counselling and psychotherapy, and a range of holistic services such as nutritional, vestibular, and other integrative medical and paramedical approaches. This exciting research underscores the importance of the brain in every aspect of your life.

The ability to perform mental math is one simple example that may reveal how well you are doing. For those of us who were taught in early childhood to do simple calculations by rote, that is rigorous early instruction based on memorizing multiplication tables, and learning basic addition, subtraction, and division tasks, deep memories of facts and cognitive functions are stored in our brains. In this sense, it is not only the retention of facts that is important, but also the neuropathways created when learning to conduct basic mathematical operations. The brain has thousands of neuropathways that support cognitive functions of every kind.

Recently, I was in a local grocery store that had cereal bars on sale. The items were listed in small and larger boxes wherein 8 were selling for $2.99 and 16 were posted at $6.70. It only took me a few seconds to calculate that the smaller box was actually more affordable than the larger one per unit. In fact, the larger item was seventy cents more expensive. When I approached the sales person at the counter to inform her about this discrepancy in costs, she replied by saying that she had “no control over the pricing of items in the aisles”. Despite the social justice issue created here for people purchasing items in a hurry and buying for larger families paying more per unit than those with the privilege of time to mindfully compare costs, I was reminded about the importance of mental math and its impact on health and wellbeing as we age.

This ability to perform quick mathematical computations in our heads is certainly an important life skill that we can practice on a regular basis as a measure of our abilities to think. At the age of 16 years old, I was the “head cashier” in a Shopper’s Drug Mart where making change to customers was also calculated in our heads. The cash registers back in those days did not calculate change. The line-ups at the check-out counters were as long as they are today, and the customers as equally demanding. We had to ring in the items, collect money, and ensure that customers received the accurate change. One of the roles of the head cashier was to calculate the overall earnings at each till at the end of each shift, and to ensure that every till balanced within $20 of the total earned for that shift. I prided myself on balancing the till most evenings even when my cash register surpassed $10,000 dollars per shift. Today, there appear to be many cashiers, perhaps too many who struggle to make simple change. Many cashiers are stumped whenever you hand over small change to help round out the total. I find this new normal sad.

As we age, the ability to remember becomes increasingly challenging. So, it is more important than ever to focus on brain health as well. I worry about generations of young people who are unable to perform simple mathematical computations without the assistance of a calculator or device. What are we collectively doing to the brain when we fail to promote health neuropathway development in young children and youth? I understand the modern argument is that there will always be devices to assist us in calculating simple equations. However, we simply do not know enough about long term impacts on overall cognitive functioning and wellbeing when less rigor in early mathematical learning is normalized.

The notion of Math Anxiety has been circulating for several years now as well. It seems clear to me that emotions are evoked when solving problems, especially when it is hard to figure out a solution. The level of tolerance to frustration increases when people cannot understand the steps required to solve a problem. This is as true in solving problems in everyday tasks of daily living as it is in math. Some frustration is common in all forms of learning – it can be struggle to see something new for the very first time until you do.

As a clinician, working in an educational milieu for many years, I have always viewed a connection between learning and social wellbeing. Students who struggled with learning, often struggled in social situations as well. The inability to solve problems in math often seemed to be associated with a generalized inability to solve problems with friends and family. To me the equation is simple, learning basic math in early childhood builds the sophisticated cognitive neuropathway support for everyday problem solving as well.

Lisa Romano-Dwyer BSc, MSW, PhD, RSW