You are responsible for dealing with your food choices and your exercise habits, but having a weight problem is not your fault. We live in a culture that is stark-raving mad when it comes to food and body size. On the one hand, we're heir to a dietary norm replete with fast food, fried food, processed foods, and sugary snacks and beverages. This kind of eating could have given Mahatma Gandhi the physique of a Sumo wrestler. Conversely, the media implies that we're all supposed to be skinny. (And women are supposed to be skinny and simultaneously having large breasts---a combination that is, without either having surgery or nursing twins, as rare as the black-footed ferret.)

Do not blame yourself for failing to thrive in this schizophrenic milieu that presents every opportunity to be fat while shaming and belittling you for not being thin. The reason to stop blaming yourself is partly to make you feel better, but mostly it's to get you to take responsibility. If you blame yourself, you can get caught in the cycle of, "Oh, I'm such a mess. I just can't do this. What's wrong with me? I may as well stop the bakery."

If instead of taking the blame, you take responsibility, you put yourself on solid ground. In addition to being born into this queer culture, you may have been raised on less than optimal food. You may have experienced childhood traumas that caused you to retreat in Oreos and ice cream, and you're retreating there to this day.

You may have gained weight after an illness or following a couple of back-to-back pregnancies. Or it may have crept up on your through years of sitting at a desk on the same floor as the vending machines. Whatever the particulars, you are not to blame, but if you refuse to take responsibility for the state you're in, you'll stay in it---or it will get worse.

Say these two sentences aloud, leaving some silence after each one. First: "I take responsibility for my life." Then: "It's all my fault." How did you feel after making the first statement? How about the second? This exercise alone should convince you to discard blame and accept responsibility at the outset. Blaming yourself---or even speaking words of blame to yourself---makes you weak; being responsible---even if you're just repeating a statement to that effect---makes you strong. Blame keeps you stuck in childhood; responsibility allows you to be an adult. Blame is demeaning; responsibility is empowering.

This change of attitude will play out in your life. Take the simple act of passing on dessert. In a blaming state of mind, you might think, "I wish I could have that piece of pie but I won't because I'm an ugly, fat pig and I don't deserve anything good." Think that way long enough and you'll eat a whole pie. Straight from the freezer.

Coming from a place of responsibility, you could say no to the pie, or choose fresh fruit instead, with the thought: "That was a nice dinner. It will feel good to go to bed without being so stuffed I'd wake up sluggish in the morning." Do you see the difference? In the first example, "no pie" is punitive. In the second, it's nurturing.

When you take responsibility, you also become more rational. Absurdities like overeating today because you'll diet tomorrow or next Monday show themselves for what they are. The idea that some eating "doesn't count," or that you'll "walk it off" with extra time on the treadmill, might come up, but when it does you'll see it as a throw-back to the way you used to think, a way that doesn't work any more.

You are not to blame. If you can't convince yourself of this, accept absolution from me. If I'm not official enough, go to a clergy person and get yourself formally forgiven for the sin of gluttony so you can go out and start fresh. Do whatever it takes for you, given who you are and the way you see the world, to stop blaming yourself so you can start changing yourself.