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I’ve been admiring Margarita Tartakovsky’s amazing Weightless blog for some time now.  Happily, the stars aligned, and Margarita and I had the opportunity to interview each other!  Below is my interview with Margarita.  You can go to her blog to check out her interview with me!

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.: Tell me a little more about your background.

Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.: I received my BS in psychology from Florida State University and my MS from Texas A&M University, where I studied clinical psychology. My research in both undergrad and grad school looked at the precursors to disordered eating and eating disorders.

Sort of an interesting tidbit: My family and I moved to the US when I was seven from Moscow, Russia. I feel like I have to specify the country, because there’s actually a Moscow, Florida – who knew there’s a Moscow in Florida! And, oddly enough, there’s an Odessa, too, which is a small city in the Ukraine. Talk about random.

Golda: How did you become interested in issues of body image?

Margarita: I think it was partly personal. I’d struggled with my own body image, always wanting to be thinner, prettier. I never thought that I was good enough just as I was. Like so many people, I thought that true happiness would come with being thin. My appearance was also wrapped up in my self-worth, which is true for many, many people, too.

I was also fascinated with our society’s deep-seated thin ideal, women’s magazines, the diet industry, pop culture, along with what contributes to poor body image and disordered eating (habits like restricting, bingeing, yo-yo dieting).

Golda: Where do you find inspiration for your blog ideas?

Margarita: Everywhere, really. Sometimes ideas just pop into my head, especially when I’m in the process of writing a post. I tend to go on tangents. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I can talk about 80 things at once, but I do eventually return to my point. So those tangents get written down in my notebook (or on a napkin, or envelope).

Other times, I find inspiration from blogs (not always body image or eating disorder ones; I follow writing and mental health blogs that are great for ideas, too) or from Twitter. I’ve connected with many wonderful people on Twitter, who’ve graciously given interviews, and who post links to interesting articles. Books are another wonderful source of inspiration and ideas. I’ve gotten several valuable body image tips from books.

I keep a composition notebook for ideas (that’s where I insert the napkins and envelopes, too). Anything that comes to mind or I find, I just write in there. I also keep files on my computer. I typically have tons of questions and not many answers, so those will usually drive what I write about.

Golda: I love the fact that you’re promoting Health At Every Size, which is still not quite mainstream, on a more mainstream site.  How did you end up writing for psychcentral.com?

Margarita: Thanks! I love the Health At Every Size approach because it focuses on the keys to being truly healthy: self-acceptance, self-care, honoring and listening to your body, mindful and intuitive eating, doing physical activities that you enjoy. This approach doesn’t promote shame or guilt, which we’re more used to in this society. It doesn’t discriminate against anyone and it takes weight and unreliable indicators like BMI out of the equation. The point isn’t in losing weight but in adopting healthy habits. If we lose weight but do it by engaging in practices like starving, using diet pills, ignoring our bodies when they’re hungry, restricting ourselves to a low calorie intake, aren’t we being unhealthy? Weight loss is not the end all, be all. And trying to lose weight at all costs is only detrimental to our health.

I’d been a big fan of Psych Central for quite sometime. One day, I finally got up the courage to send John Grohol, the founder and CEO of Psych Central, an email with my resume. He liked my writing and said I could start. My first article for the site was on the efficacy of equine-assisted therapy. Then, from there, I contributed more articles, books reviews and blog posts for the main blog World of Psychology. I’d always wanted to write a blog on body image, so I drafted a proposal for John and he accepted it for the Fall. To say I was ecstatic is an understatement!

Golda: What do you find is the biggest challenge in promoting the message of body acceptance?

Margarita: Wow, that’s a great question. I think the biggest challenge is the idea that you can only accept your body if you fit society’s skinny standard. Magazines, TV shows and even the government tell us that we can’t accept ourselves as we are – until we lose weight, that is. Only then can we fully and happily accept our bodies. If we accept our bodies as they are right now, we’ll become complacent and won’t want to get “healthy” (i.e., drop weight; even though health is what counts anyway, but that’s another story!).

So our culture encourages shame and stigma. If you don’t fit the thin ideal, then you must be ashamed of it, because clearly you aren’t healthy and you aren’t attractive, so why accept, or worse be proud, of being larger? You can only accept your body if you’re thin. How can we accept our bodies when we have flab?

Obviously, this is ridiculous, inaccurate and incredibly damaging. But I think some people just don’t feel like they’re allowed to accept their bodies. They may think that they don’t have the right to, because they’re in some way unacceptable. And, again, that’s outrageous!

Golda: Do you ever find that, even now, you have a day or two where you don’t feel great about your body?  If so, what tools do you like to use to bring yourself back to feeling good about your body?  If not, what are some of your favorite tools for helping others feel good in their bodies?

Margarita: I’m so glad you asked this question! Having a positive body image is an ongoing process. I hope people don’t beat themselves up about that either – that if they aren’t feeling great about their bodies all the time that they’re doing something wrong or they’re a failure.

So the answer is: absolutely! I’m by no means immune to negative thoughts or bad feelings about my body. Usually, this occurs because I’m either sleep-deprived or I feel like I’m not taking good care of myself. But of course, I don’t say that. Instead, I say “I feel fat”; “I look terrible in this outfit”; or simply, “Ugh!” These phrases seem to come naturally, unfortunately, to most people.

During these times, I try to be kind to myself or I tell my negative thoughts to go away. I also like to check in with myself and figure out why it is I feel like this. Sometimes, we simply feel bloated, but, other times, there’s something a bit deeper. Maybe we haven’t been taking care of ourselves, maybe we’re overwhelmed or anxious, maybe we need more sleep. Maybe we’re just in a crappy mood. So I think it’s important to ask yourself, “why?” This is also good to do if you have a tendency to eat when you’re bored, upset, anxious or stressed out. Before you eat something, just check in and ask yourself, “Why do I want to eat?”

Basically, I don’t think we’ll be deliriously happy with our bodies always. The key is to know what to do when a negative thought does pop in. And to challenge it. Negative thoughts might still fly around your head, but if you’re challenging them, then you’re already making progress. If you say to yourself, “wait a minute, I’m just tired, but I do look nice,” or “I feel crappy, that’s why I don’t like anything on me,” or “I am pretty,” or some version of these, you’re already building a better body image.

So you might ask yourself if a negative thought is really accurate, or replace it with a positive thought, saying you accept yourself as you are. Just like you might overeat sometimes, or you’ll likely feel upset sometime in the future, you may feel bad about your body once in awhile. The important things are to recognize that you’re starting to berate your body and to work toward having a more positive body image, without trying to be perfect about it. All the while, remember to be kind to yourself and to take good care of yourself.

I also regularly give tips and tidbits on improving body image that might help. Readers can check them out here.

Thanks so much, Golda, for interviewing me! It was a great experience!