Two weeks ago I went for my overdue annual physical. I only went because I needed a new referral for my chiropractor and my primary said they wouldn’t process it unless I got a physical. No big deal, I thought. I never imagined I’d end up sitting through a lengthy sales pitch for what amounts to diet pills. And I definitely didn’t think I’d actually leave with weight loss drug prescriptions in hand.

Obesity Prescribed with Weight Loss Drugs

I had never met with the physician before, but I cared more about convenient scheduling than who examined me. “How’s your diet and exercise,” the Dr. asked.

“I exercise more than it looks and I eat far healthier than it looks.” I then told her briefly about all the amazing work I have been doing with my psychotherapist to curb my emotional overeating and get my eating disorders in check. “Losing weight continues to be a struggle, though.”

“Okay, well,” she started… and then began a lengthy sales pitch for prescription appetite suppressants.

“So, diet pills?” I clarified.

“No,” she said, clearly annoyed, not appreciating the generalization. “Prescription weight loss drugs.”

She explained how different drugs work together and what the myriad of side-effects are. She stressed how rare the negative effects are and how beneficial the good ones are, FDA-approved, life-changing results, blah blah blah. I wondered if she’s on the pharmaceutical company’s payroll.

“So although one of the medications treats epilepsy, it’s side effect is loss of appetite. The other one does something similar but also increases energy. But since it’s a controlled substance it may not be covered by your healthcare provider.”

Words, red flags and confusion flooded my mind.

“And if you’re interested in these pills, which again, are truly life-changing, we would gradually increase your dosage over several weeks to morning and night—”

“Why would I take it at night?” I asked, interrupting her.

“So you’re not hungry in the morning.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be hungry in the morning? It’s called breakfast for a reason. Break. Fast. Are you suggesting I not eat breakfast?” Then an entirely new thought occurred to me. “You do want me to eat, right?”

She shifted in her chair, and sat a bit straighter, annoyed. Time was almost up, I could tell.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “But I don’t know you, or how or what you eat.”

I thought I detected a tinge of disgust in her voice. I realized I was just another obese person who she probably figured got artificial breakfast every day from whatever chain with a doughnut to go for a 10:00 am snack. As much as I wanted to shove off from the table and say, “No, thanks, I’m good,” I couldn’t help being curious. Could these pills give me the boost I needed to take my efforts to the next level like the Prozac had done?

“Fine,” I conceded. “I’ll give them a try.”

My First 7 Days on Prescription “Diet Pills”

By the time I picked up the pills, I was downright excited. Less than twelve hours earlier, the possibility of a shortcut to weight loss never even occurred to me. I am impervious to fad diets and whatever supplement Dr. Oz happens to be pushing that week. I know that it all boils down to diet and exercise. But here I was, looking forward to trying them out. As much as I was turned off by the words “controlled substance,” I had to admit I was intrigued. This could be good…

The following morning I took the pills for the first time. The effects were practically immediate. I went into taking them with a promise to myself to stay aware, but also an understanding not to judge them by the first days. I had spoken to Mike about them and we agreed to keep an eye on things. That very first day my energy levels were similar to those after several shots of espresso, but I was also intensely focused. My heart beat a little too quickly, which I didn’t like, but I will not sit here and deny that I didn’t love my energy and focus. I have never taken Adderall before, but I imagine this wasn’t too unlike that feeling. Productivity was my middle name!

That night Mike and I met my parents for dinner at a restaurant. Already, declining a second piece of bread was easy. Making a better menu decision was easy. I only ate half my meal. I was completely satisfied. My God, I thought, Is my fuel gauge finally fixed!? There were times in the past when I planned to take home left-overs only to eat the remainder by the time the waiter returned with a container. This time, I allowed my food to sit, a gold badge on a plate, having no power over me whatsoever. It was glorious.

After one day I was elated.

That night, I had insomnia. I was wide awake from 2:00 am – 5:00 am. I figured it was a small price to pay and dealt with it.

The next several days went similarly. It took far less food to satiate me. I had no cravings, so I made all my food choices based on what the best fuel was. Food no longer spoke to me, whispering my name every waking moment. I didn’t experience the hunger pains that previously burned holes in my belly. Food had ruled my existence for so long that I often said I could set an alarm to my stomach. Suddenly, I was working straight past noon, blissfully unaware of the time.

But I still wasn’t sleeping. I read or watched TV and just dealt with it. Things were still moving quickly, and my heart beat quicker. The best way to describe it is I felt like I was on a ride that was going a little too fast.

That Friday night, four days into taking the pills, I woke up at 2:00 am. Since it was the weekend I figured I’d do some work. I worked until 5:00 am and then slept until 8:00 am. Then I cleaned. I cleaned like it was the first day of spring and I was hosting royalty. I had the energy and I had the focus. By that evening I finally felt tired and I thought perhaps I had finally succeeded in exhausting myself.

That night I slept straight through the night for the first time since I started the pills. I had less energy and motivation the following day, though. I accomplished a few small things between naps, but I figured I deserved a day off, so I also watched a lot of television. I never changed out of my pajamas. It was like I had been a speeding freight train that ran straight into a brick wall. Nevertheless, after the first five days I increased one of the dosages as instructed.

I didn’t experience insomnia again. I lost that amazing focus and energy. Things slowed down – I felt sluggish and my mind was foggy. I hit the message boards I found earlier when I wanted to compare my experiences. It was reassuring to know so many women (and men) were on the exact same prescriptions for the exact same reason and dealing with the exact same side effects. The general consensus after one week was “what happened?” The increased energy and focus was apparently not long for this world. Bummer.

But I was grateful to be sleeping again. I still didn’t experience hunger and I also still had a working fuel gauge. But I did notice that in addition to the general sluggishness, I experienced shortness of breath and my thoughts seemed to be darkening, the way they do as they start their slow march toward depression. After 7 days I was already down 5.1 lbs. I took the good with the bad…

Things Take a Turn

Eight days after starting the pills I went out for a few drinks with a girlfriend. I want to clarify that I did recall reading that I shouldn’t drink while on these pills, but felt like every medication says that and I never had a problem before, so I ignored it. We had a great time talking and catching up, as always. I had 3.5 drinks over the course of four hours. On the train home it became clear that something was horribly wrong.

I’m going to spare you all the details about what happened later that night. It wasn’t pretty. I had trouble breathing, couldn’t cool down, faded in and out of some sort of weird blacked out state. I was scared, angry and irrational. To put it in the simplest terms, it felt like I had been drugged. It was entirely my fault and I learned my lesson the hard way.

But alas, the next morning I took my pills. It was a long, tough day. I had trouble focusing and was exhausted. I felt dizzy, fuzzy and generally hungover, but also emotional. This was more than a hangover.

I started thinking about my mood even before this incident. It had shifted as I grew increasingly irritable and less patient. It was evident the pills had affected my mood. I felt as if I were backsliding. I had gone off my Prozac mid-July because I finally felt so good I wanted to give life a go on my own. Here I was, a little over a month later feeling surrounded by darkness again, losing all motivation that only one week earlier radiated from me. This wasn’t natural. This was too extreme. I had worked too hard to have stability in my life and I was once again an emotional mess. It occurred to me that this might not work after all…

Desperate to Make it Work

I thought maybe I could stay on the pills if I went back on my Prozac to help me with my mood. The idea was a glimmer of hope. So I checked to see how they would all interact together and it was no good. This was a toxic cocktail that could lead to possible serotonin overdose, among other things. When reading how the diet pills interacted with other drugs, I noticed that the two I was on in the first place didn’t exactly play nicely together, either. I read about what was happening chemically in my body, while tears streamed down my face – so many emotions colliding, exacerbated by the drugs currently in my system.

I cried because I realized I couldn’t go long term without my Prozac and that made me sad. I cried because these diet pills were hurting me; I wasn’t loving my body – I was poisoning it. And I had actually allowed myself to hope, and I cried as that hope faded away. I daydreamed, literally, when the weight started coming off and I was no longer ruled by food. I daydreamed about getting rid of all my clothes and shopping for a capsule wardrobe. I cried at the realization this would not happen sooner than expected. I also cried for myself and everyone else who is so desperate to lose weight that they resort to these measures of hurting themselves in order to try to help themselves. These were some of the many things that collided in my mind as I cried.

The choice was obvious. I had to go off the pills and get back on my Prozac. There was only one way to lose weight and it had to be the hard way. Dedication, patience, and hard work.

Those last two days on the pills coupled with the incident with the alcohol had knocked me on my ass. On Friday morning I decided to go off the pills. I called out from work to rest and do what I could to expedite flushing them from my system. My hunger returned immediately and I was once again faced with craving the wrong things and an intense desire to comfort all I was feeling with food. Despite my physical and mental state, I found the willpower to make all the right choices. It took a few days, but I feel much better… physically, emotionally, mentally. I even managed to maintain the weight I lost so far, even over the course of the weekend, which is pretty impressive for me.

All in all, I was on prescription weight loss drugs exactly ten days.

What I Learned

My body is sensitive – it always has been. I have to take great care to keep my hormones and chemicals balanced and can’t be screwing around with anything that messes with it. These pills work well for some people, and hey, good for them. But I can’t afford to subject my mental and emotional well-being, as well as my mental clarity, to give me an edge to lose weight. I tried the pills against my better judgement. They worked, but there was a cost involved that I decided was too steep for me.

I now know what it’s like to not be ruled by food and I am extremely grateful for that experience. I know it’s possible, which means I can recreate it. It won’t be easy, but I tried easy, and easy didn’t work for me. As for the energy and motivation, I have a lot of that naturally. It’s what happens when I am inspired and happy. I have the tools to do this right. I just have to use them.

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Following is the continuation of last week’s post, From Hating to Appreciating: Attempting To Love Your Body.

I’ve written before about how much I love the start of a new year. I imagine it was the high energy and positivity a new year brings that contributed to my second attempt at appreciating my body. January 17 was a bitter cold, dreary Sunday more than two months after my first attempt at completing A Course in Weight Loss‘ Lesson 7. The promise of snow lingered in the air and calm permeated my home like the scent of simmering soup. The weekend had been healthy and productive, my favorite kind. I had no further obligations and the clean sanctuary of my home office beckoned. The timing was perfect for ending an abusive relationship with my body and beginning an honorable one.

Preparation

I started with a long, steamy shower and concentrated on becoming more aware of my body as I prepared for the ritual before me. I sloughed my body of the dry skin that seemed to cover every inch of me, then slowly shaved my legs. This wasn’t my usual five minute shower, but more like the kind I take when I anticipate intimacy; giving of my body to someone else to enjoy. This time I prepared my body for intimacy with myself.

I concentrated as I slowly dried my skin, paying attention to each limb and joint. The silky material of my favorite robe felt pleasant against my skin. My awareness of my body increased as I sought to repair my relationship with the container of my soul.

Inside my office, I lit candles and incense upon my altar and played meditative music. I laid a towel on the floor directly before my altar and bowed to the Buddha before slipping off my robe. Standing naked and exposed, I battled embarrassment, shame and the urge to reach for cover. I stood tall, my hands in a prayer position at my heart. Snow started its slow and sporadic fall just outside the windows directly in front of me. I strived to summon the grace, strength, power and beauty of ancient kings and queens who regularly performed similar rituals.

Acknowledgement of Abuse

I reached for the oil. As the book instructed, I started with my feet. My cracked and calloused heels felt rough in my hands and guzzled the oil like desert dirt gulps rainwater. I apologized to my heels for giving them so much weight to bear.

Next, I lovingly smoothed the oil into the skin of my ankles and legs. I examined the scars and beginnings of varicose veins bright against the paleness of my flesh. So many scars… from accidents, bug bites, a tomboyish youth, all coupled with a horrible habit of scab picking. And then the pencil thin scars on the insides of my thighs. Not the stretch marks that are plentiful I assure you, but the marks I made myself many years ago. My eyes filled as the sight of those scars brought me back to my teenage bedroom. The sadness, loneliness and anger I felt then coursed through me. I cried for that teenage girl who felt so scared, so hurt, so lonely that she dragged razor blades across her flesh in order to feel something, anything other than what she was feeling.

I rubbed my thumbs gently over those scars lovingly as a parent might rub a smudge of dirt off a toddlers pudgy cheek. “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed over and over as I allowed myself to grieve, not just for my body, but for myself and the young girl I used to be. “I’m trying. I swear to you I’m trying so hard.”

I wrapped my arms around myself and hung naked in a sort of forward fold as my body wracked with sobs. My skin absorbed oil mixed with tears. When I was ready, I once again summoned the power of those ancient queens and stood tall once more.

Coincidence is indeed God’s way of remaining anonymous. Just yesterday I read these words spoken by Chris Cleave’s character, Little Bee in the book Little Bee:

“I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

I ask you all now to join with me in Little Bee’s pact. Let us all see scars as beauty. Okay?

Gratitude

I continued my upward journey as I thanked my skin for its ability to expand and apologized for making it have to. My belly. My belly is something I hardly ever look at in a mirror except to ensure it’s properly covered. It’s the palest part of my body, as white as the snow that fell just outside my window. I rubbed oil into it with both hands in a circular motion and apologized for hating it so much. I had rejected and detested my stomach, my core, the very center of me. In order to heal myself I now understand that I must make peace with my core and allow love to permeate the center of me.

Emotions continued their flash flood as I massaged my breasts with oil. Each was heavy in my hand. I have always disliked my breasts. They don’t make me feel sexy; they make me feel fat. More often than not, they are a nuisance. I have resented being told I should be grateful for them because men love large breasts. Excuse me if I don’t think that is a valid enough reason to graciously accept the many drawbacks of having large breasts.

But as I cupped my breasts in my hands I thought of my mother as she laid in her hospital bed post-mastectomy and placed her hand where her breast used to be and grieved the loss of her womanhood. And so I apologized to my breasts for disliking them. I apologized for not keeping them sacred and sharing them with far too many people who didn’t deserve access to my body so freely. I thanked them for not being cancerous.

The oil felt good against my skin and my body relaxed, responding to my touch, opening up to me, welcoming me. I began to feel more comfortable in my own skin and no longer felt the urge to cover up.

As I rubbed the oil into my back as best as I could, I apologized to my back for not being able to scratch and lotion it properly because I’m so wide. I apologized for the weakness of my core and shoulders that result in my poor posture, straining my back. I apologized that I’m so insecure at times I tend to huddle into myself, adding further stress to my back. Despite all this, my back truly has “my back,” so I thanked it for doing its job so amazingly well and praised it for its strength.

New Beginning

I covered the remainder of my body – my face, my ears, my neck. The sheen on my skin glistened in the flickering candlelight. I ran my hands slowly over my slippery surface, satisfied I hadn’t missed a spot. I sat on my towel in order to meditate on what I was feeling. Sitting cross-legged naked was so unfamiliar that I laughed out loud. “Here I am,” I thought. This was me in my purest state, nothing to hide behind. I looked down at my thighs, breast and belly and the way they all rested on one another unsupported by clothing. I sat up straight and lowered my eyes.

It’s true. I’ve fed my body excessive food, but too little love and care. It’s time to reunite my inner and outer self. I thanked my body for the way it moves despite everything I’ve done to it; for the miraculous way it heals; for the physical pain it endures and the resilience it demonstrates. I thanked it for the endless ways it supports me and for its power. Our skin is our biggest organ and I apologized for everything I exposed it to, environmentally, chemically, physically, all undeservedly. I thanked my skin for containing every single part of me.

Although I didn’t protect my body, it has protected me. I took advantage of my body and was in an abusive relationship with it. It took performing this ritual to understand all that. I am so grateful to have marked the beginning of an honorable relationship with my body. That was the goal of Lesson 7: to repair and restore the relationship between me and my physical self.

Like the oil, I think it’s safe to say it was absorbed.

P.S. Although I completed this ritual nearly seven months ago, I hadn’t wanted to write about it until now. It took me all these months to integrate the process and formulate my thoughts surrounding it. Now that I have, I feel the full benefits of the Lesson. If you’re working through A Course in Weight Loss, a similar book, a process of your own or simply wondering why I have been working through the same book for well over a year, please remember that change takes time, patience and space. 

My legs are currently covered in scars, bug bites, scabs, and peeling skin. Aside from their size, they look like the legs of a rambunctious 8-year old boy. This sort of thing never really bothered me before. But it does now, so I purchased a high quality vitamin E oil. Every morning I lovingly rub it into my skin in order to help it heal. What changed? Not my sense of vanity. But my sense of appreciation for my body and the skin I’m in. And that’s thanks to Lesson 7 from Marianne Williamson’s A Course in Weight Loss.

It’s been over ten months since I’ve written about one of the lessons in this book. That’s not because I stopped reading it, but because I got stuck. Lesson 7 is titled “Love Your Body.” It took many months and two attempts to complete this lesson… I don’t love my body, but I’m trying to.

Hating Our Bodies

Lesson 7 attempts to get to the root of not just why we hate our bodies, but what we’re hating our bodies for. But the truth is that our bodies have done absolutely nothing to us but endure and adjust, and we’ve done everything to them. We fail to support our bodies and yet our bodies continue to do their very best to support us.

“Your body has not done anything to you; it has merely reflected the raging battlefield in your mind.” – Williamson

Is it our bodies we hate? Or their size or imperfections or scars or other ways in which they don’t live up to our expectations? Do we hate our bodies because we are afraid of something? Sexual trauma victims often gain weight or self mutilate in an attempt to be less desirable. Do we hate our bodies truly or did we learn to hate them as a result of ridicule?

In our lives there is an incredible time when we are young and innocent and know we are wonderful and perfect… and it lasts until someone tells us we aren’t.

Do you remember the first time someone made fun of your moles or freckles, said you were fat or teased you about your height? Do you remember the moment you looked at your body and made a quick decision to cover it up? I remember all of it and more. I was one of the first girls in my class to hit puberty. The boys called me daddy long legs and made jokes about my breasts. I never thought twice about the hair on my legs until my mom called me into the bathroom one day to show me how to shave. Seemingly overnight there was so much shame and confusion about my body.

When I was fourteen or so I went to second base with a boy. After we “broke up,” I found out he called me P.N. behind my back. Finally a friend told me what it stood for. Pepperoni nipple. (I swear I can’t make this shit up.) I was devastated. At home I examined my nipples looking for any resemblance whatsoever to pepperoni. For years I was self conscious about my nipples. My nipples! Like we don’t have enough to be self conscious about. Anyway, after having seen many a topless woman in my life I have deduced that my nipples are no more irregular than any one else’s. Teenage boys can be mean and stupid.

Dumb shit like this combined with how women are portrayed in media combined with rejection, ridicule, and trauma is a recipe for body issues. We don’t start out hating our bodies. We are taught to hate our bodies. Sure my weight is my biggest issue, but I’m also too hairy, have too many scars, a big nose, etc. Everyone seems to hate something about their bodies. A beautiful woman I know recently lamented her sausage fingers. I swear to you her fingers are perfectly normal and pretty.

Appreciating Our Bodies

Lesson 7 called for buying an oil to rub into my skin while examining it, expressing gratitude for it, acknowledging what I’ve done to it, and most of all, forgiving it for what it did not do. The goal of the lesson is to repair and restore the relationship between us and our physical selves.

Naked, I was to begin by making an apology to myself for having mistreated such a magnificent gift as my physical body. From the bottoms of my feet to the tips of my fingers, I was to emotionally lean into my body, not recoil from it. I was to rub the oil into my body with acceptance, with love if I could, with grief if necessary. I was to take my time, paying attention to each limb, each curve, each scar, each joint. “Do not rush,” the book instructed. “Accept, affirm, apologize, and forgive.”

I bought the oil, an organic apricot kernel oil, soon after reading the lesson. But then it sat unopened as I waited for the appropriate time.

Last autumn I slipped off the plush robe provided to me in the spa-like bathroom of the gorgeous four star hotel where I was staying. I had packed the oil, thinking my surroundings would be ideal for such a ritual. Hands wet with oil, I began to massage it into my skin.

I felt nothing – no appreciation, no forgiveness, no love, no patience. My legs were pasty and purply and my skin was puckered and scarred. I poured more and more oil into my hands impatiently as my dry skin quickly absorbed it. “For fucks sake, you’re so fat you should have gotten two bottles,” I thought.  The lighting was wrong and it was too quiet. I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to hide inside my luxurious and bulky robe, eat cheese, drink wine and watch movies.

“Fuck this,” I said aloud as I wiped my hands on a dry washcloth. I slipped my robe back on, cinched it tight and turned my back on appreciating my body.

I wouldn’t try to do so again until a snowy day a few months later.

Please click here to read Part 2, Ending An Abusive Relationship With My Body

Earlier this week I wrote about overeating, forgiving myself and moving on after an indulgent weekend. I accepted the fact that I once again set myself back, but I used my cognitive therapy skills to put a stop to the destructive behavior and guilt and reset. I thought I’d need a week of perfect eating to get back to where I was before the holiday weekend. Well, it appears my next step in this weight loss process needs to be changing my perception. That’s because the day after I forgave myself and gave my body a break, my weight was right back to where I was before the weekend. I was stunned.

Perception

It’s funny. My perception of a “fuck up” is still the same despite my eating habits and activity levels being so vastly improved over the past two years. For example, two weeks ago I worked out hard at the gym in the morning, ate a well-balanced breakfast and then a light lunch. But then I ate one and a half soft pretzels (this Philly delicacy tests me to my absolute limits). I justified eating them because I had such a great workout that morning.

But those damn pretzels sat heavy in my belly anyway and even heavier in my mind. I couldn’t see the pretzels for what they were: a snack of roughly 250 calories of carbs, water and salt. I saw them as another failure; the reason I can’t succeed; a stain on what was a decent day. I struggled to concentrate since I was full with regret. I had happy hour plans that night, which made things worse. I was supposed to eat “perfectly” so I could have some wine. I drank and had some bar snacks anyway. Although I wanted to eat when I got home, I’ve learned that desire and slight hunger does not demand eating. It was bed time. So I drank some water and went to sleep. I woke up expecting to weigh three hundred pounds heavier at least.

The scale was exactly the same as the day before.

See my point?

This is why I weigh myself nearly every day. Not because I’m obsessive, but because I find the reality of a situation is often not nearly as bad as my perception of one.

This past weekend I berated myself for overdoing it, and I did overdo it, just to be clear. I smoked, which is unacceptable. I drank three days in a row, had a giant bag of kettle corn, and ate until I was uncomfortable on Sunday. My perception of this was that I was an out of control screw up. I was so afraid to get on the scale so I gave myself a one day reprieve. When I did face the scale after that one reset day, I saw the exact same weight as before my indulgent weekend. The fog cleared and more specific details came to light…

Reality

I recalled that on Friday I ate a kale and beet salad before I went to the brewery, and that I only drank two beers there. I remembered how good I felt when I went to the ice cream shop and walked away with ice cream only for my dog, Cooper. I remembered how I declined Mike’s offer to grab me a slice of pizza after he caught me staring at someone’s.

Saturday I went to Philly. I drank many beers and went out for a late lunch. I recalled that although I splurged on nachos, I took half my quesadilla home because I could tell I was getting full, something I’ve only recently learned how to be cognizant of. Later, I went to town on kettle corn as I watched movies. But I didn’t have dinner and I walked 13,000 steps that day… not bad.

Sunday I filled up on the rest of my kettle corn too close to eating dinner, which is why I felt so uncomfortably full. The meal was perfectly reasonable in and of itself. And yeah, I drank, but I drank 4 oz. pours, not pints.

My point in sharing all these details is that my perception was way off. I wasn’t a gluttonous eating machine who should be chained up and kept away from children. The reality is I’ve come a really long way, can’t eat nearly as much as I used to, am far more active, and make exponentially better choices. This is the reality. 

I don’t give myself enough credit for all I’ve learned and all the destructive habits I’ve broken. It’s time I start. There is room for improvement, yes. But I see now just how much improvement there has been.

I haven’t mentioned my weight loss efforts in a while. Not because I haven’t been trying to lose weight — I don’t think there was a time in the past twenty years when I wasn’t trying to lose weight, at least in spirit — but because I haven’t had much to say. I’d be thin by now you’d think, but nope. I’m only ten or so pounds shy of the heaviest I’ve ever been. It’s so frustrating, too because I’m the most active I’ve been since I was tween, and I definitely eat the healthiest I ever have. But the weight is still reluctant to go away because I continue to struggle with emotional overeating and destructive behaviors.

Overeating

I overdid it this holiday weekend. I ate too much, drank too much and smoked cigarettes AGAIN. I congratulated myself just last week for going out for happy hour and not overdoing it; not smoking, not overeating when I got home. I worked my resistance muscle HARD and woke up the next morning feeling proud and accomplished. But I guess I pushed the muscle too hard and it was sore, so my giving in muscle picked up the slack.

Instead of feeling proud this morning, I felt disappointed, shameful, guilty, and frustrated.

One area where I now excel thanks to my cognitive therapy work is putting a stop to destructive behavior at the first possible opportunity, rather than riding things out until their logical and convenient end like I used to. Today is the last day of the three-day weekend. There’s still plenty of left-overs. I could easily rationalize overeating one more day and resetting tomorrow. But that’s the same destructive thinking that got me to where I am now.

Although my body was eager for a break and craved light foods, my emotions craved comfort and reprieve from the guilt and shame of what I had done to my body the past two days. I noticed my mood shift. I felt the urge to be healthy and productive today slip away as thoughts of TV-watching, napping, and eating danced across my mind enticingly.

Forgiving

I couldn’t let my intentions slip away. I recognized the destructive triangle I was caught in (thought leading to feeling, feeling leading to action, and action leading to thought and around and around I go) and knew I had to fight my way out. In a burst of energy and determination, I jumped up, silenced the internal pleas to stay on the couch, and took a shower. I created a new triangle because that positive action lead to the thought that perhaps I could forgive myself. So after my shower I meditated on forgiveness and moving on.

I quieted my mind enough that I heard the voice of my higher self. “It’s okay,” she said. The incense smelled sweeter and more inviting than the left-over homemade peach cobbler and I surrendered myself to the calm. I felt gratitude for my body, something I experienced for the first time when completing Lesson 7 from A Course in Weight Loss, which I will write about in another post. I also felt sorrow for what I had done to my body, but again the voice said, “It’s okay.”

I breathed in and out, letting go of this weekend’s weakness and allowing my mind to still. “You are determined,” came the voice of my higher self. “And you are forgiven.”

I haven’t been back on the couch since before my shower. I’m listening to my body instead of my mind, and only giving it what it wants, which is water and fruit. I’m grateful to be forgiven, especially because I’m only still learning that I have the right to ask for forgiveness. I no longer need to carry my guilt around like a bloated belly.

I feel lighter already.

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When losing weight is your number one goal, there isn’t much room for other priorities. The only time in recent years when this wasn’t my number one priority was when I was in school, and guess what, I gained a lot of weight during that time. Other than that, it’s been my focus. That’s a whole lot of energy, time and work that has gone into one thing with far too few results, other than preventing me from gaining even more weight.

Imagine if I had devoted all that space and energy to something else, something I was good at.  Who knows what I could have achieved by now!

When I finally figured out I couldn’t lose weight because I was focusing on the wrong things (diet and exercise instead of cognitive thinking), I redoubled my commitment to losing weight with a new approach. My counselor recommended The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to THINK Like a Thin Person, by Dr. Judith Beck. Her father, Aaron Beck is regarded as the Father of Cognitive Therapy, so I figured she knew a thing or two on the subject.

The book claimed it would help me change the way I think about diet, eating and weight loss “FOREVER.” I’d learn how to abolish my cravings, resist temptations, deal with emotional triggers, end emotional eating, and conquer excuses to overeat, according to the book’s description. I believe that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is, so I was skeptical. I’ve been trying to do these things for twenty years; no way was one book going to get the job done. But with an open mind and trust in my counselor, I loaded it onto my Kindle.

The book is broken into 42 lessons. My first task was to write an Automatic Response Card (ARC) listing all the reasons I want to be thin. The idea is that when you’re staring down chocolate cake or want nothing but to eat your weight in french fries after a hard day, you have something to whip out and read to remind yourself what’s more important and why the food isn’t really what you want.

I had never really thought before about why I want to be thin. We all want to be rich, right, but seldom think of the specific reasons why. We usually just have some broad sense of increased happiness and quality of life. That’s what I thought when it came to being thin. So I had been dedicating the bulk of my time and energy to a goal that I didn’t even know specifically why I wanted! How ridiculous is that!?

So I thought about why I want to be thin and twenty specific, damn good reasons tumbled out of my brain and onto a piece of paper as fast as my hand could write them.

#1 on my list; the very FIRST thing I thought:

Being thin will free up space in my life for other goals.

I didn’t think much of that being the first thing I thought until this month, when the space showed up.

Let me back up.

I dedicated the entire month of January to cooking and eating right, exercising daily, and practicing my newly learned cognitive thinking skills. I read The Beck Diet Solution and beyond these things and work, I had little time for anything else. I was excited and enthusiastic; happy to devote so much time and energy to my goal. But January turned into February and I began to lose steam. I got sick, too. On February 10, I wrote “The Part When We Quit” to process all that I was feeling, and ultimately acknowledged it was normal and to keep my eye on the prize.

But then everything got even harder… and darker.

Here’s the thing – there is no instant gratification in weight loss. It is a slow, grueling process. I am a spinning wheel, something my friend, Kathy affectionately called me recently, and detest being stagnant. My husband has accused me of having shark syndrome. “When you stop swimming, you die,” he’s said. For me to work so hard on something, and make such slow progress, is downright depressing.

By the second half of February I was in a dark place. There was something else at work, too. When you eat to process and/or mask your emotions and then you stop, you need to replace it with something. We as people love to tell people to stop doing things; stop drinking, stop smoking, but we don’t tell people what to do instead. We drink, smoke, and eat for a reason! Take those things away and we have no choice but to feel really uncomfortable emotions we’ve tried so hard to hide from.

That’s what happened to me. I didn’t replace my eating with a healthy alternative and I was left feeling rundown, raw, and really fucking sad. I desperately needed something else to work on, but was too depressed and tired from working so hard. I was also afraid that if I shifted my focus, I’d lose any progress I made.

“What you’re doing is really, really hard,” my counselor said sympathetically as I sat across from her quiet and crying.

We agreed I could use some help from my Prozac, so I decided to take it every day, at least for a little while, instead of only the two weeks before my period to ease my PMDD.

Within a week, I felt better. And then March was upon us and the urge to create this new website overcame me like a virus. I was sick with excitement and desire and motivation. And so for two solid weeks I spent every spare moment working on this site. I was overjoyed. My need to NOT be stagnant was being met. I was moving forward, making progress, and it was happening quickly.

Once I finished the site, I realized that after two solid months, weight loss was no longer my primary focus. I had shifted my priority to the website and the most incredible thing happened. I didn’t gain weight. The weight loss efforts went on auto pilot and ran in the background. I had created space for something else.

I was able to do this because I spent two months creating habits and for once, they took! I cooked, I meal planned, I exercised. But since those things were habit, they didn’t require so much thought and energy anymore! I almost gave up that second month, but I stuck with it. Now, I am beginning to reap the benefits, and it’s glorious.

Near the end of 2015, I sat on my counselor’s couch and broke down about my weight. The topic had never come up before; it’s not why I had been seeing her. Weight was an issue exclusively addressed by proper diet and exercise, so I thought. It had never occurred to me before that very morning to ever discuss it with her. But the night before, I binged and purged and the taste of shame and regret lingered in my mouth. I felt desperate and frightened by my destructive and unhealthy behavior. So finally, after years of dieting and exercising, and successes and failures as erratic as toddlers with too much sugar, I finally sat across from her, crying, and asked if she could help me.

“I know how to meal plan, count calories, and eat right. I know how to exercise. Please trust me on this.”

She did trust me. After nineteen months, she had gotten to know me quite intimately. She was also excited – I sensed her enthusiasm. She knew how to help me, and I’d soon learn it wouldn’t involve any talk of diet or exercise.

It would involve my mind; the sabotaging thoughts and destructive habits that plagued me. She drew a triangle on a piece of paper, and labeled each of the three corners. Thoughts. Feelings. Actions.

“What do you think when you overeat?” she asked.

“I think I’m a fat fuck.”

She drew a line connecting thought to feeling. “And what do you feel?”

“Hopeless.”

She drew a line from feeling to action. “And then what do you do?”

“I eat more.”

“And then what do you think?”

“That I’ll never lose weight.”

She drew faster.

“Then I feel angry and disgusted. Then I do something destructive.”

And around and around the triangle we went.

“This is the cognitive triangle. This,” she said, tapping pen against paper, “is the destructive cycle you get stuck in. It’s not easy to get out of. But when you do, it works just as well. What do you think when you eat well?”

“That I’m a rockstar,” I answered truthfully, laughing.

“And what do you feel?”

“Empowered.”

“And then how do you act?”

“I make smart choices and take care of myself.”

“Exactly.”

Such a simple concept so clearly illustrated. I left her office that day with my triangle, a book recommendation, and a sense of profound hope and excitement. I knew we were on to something. Not only have I been battling my weight my entire adult life, I have been battling myself; my own sabotaging and destructive thoughts, that voice inside my head that told me I’d never succeed.

Yes, I’m overweight because I have a tendency to eat too much, but I know my problem is not food. I admitted I am an emotional over-eater. I eat my emotions, rather than feel and process them. I comfort myself the only way I have ever known how to comfort myself – with food- and then I berate and abuse myself for it, which only results in my eating more to comfort myself. It is a horribly destructive cycle. It’s why I’m overweight.

I have been taking this new approach to my weight loss since the new year and I am seeing successful results. It’s really hard work! No, not the exercise and meal planning and cooking. I love that part! I’ve always enjoyed that part – those habits aren’t new to me. It’s the rewiring my brain part that’s so hard. Quieting the sabotaging voices, remaining mindful, feeling terribly uncomfortable emotions, rather than stuffing them down into my belly with potato chips and cheese popcorn.

January and February were two long months of learning for me. But this approach is working! And I believe our minds are what most of our major problems are when it comes to weight loss, especially if, like me, you already eat right a lot of the time and exercise often.

I’ll be sharing more about this approach. It can be applied to anything we struggle with in our lives, which makes it so beneficial to everyone. I’m definitely on to something… it’s changing my life.

Do you have any experience with cognitive therapy?

By her early twenties, Andie Mitchell weighed 268 pounds. 135 pounds later, she wrote It Was Me All Along, a memoir about her relationship with food. But this is not your typical weight loss success story… and that is why I find it so inspiring.

Throughout Andie’s entire life, food served as her best friend, babysitter, and comforter. She ate voraciously and obsessively with little to no regard for her health or appearance. The crunch of bowl after bowl of sugary cereal drowned out her father’s yells, a dozen cupcakes rising in the oven gave her something to watch and look forward to in a lonely apartment with no one to watch and enjoy her. Food was the only constant growing up in a tumultuous home and Andie clutched to it like a life preserver in the storm that her childhood often was.

An emotional eater myself, I related to Andie’s childhood relationship with food. Food is also my comforter. I’m only beginning to understand the extent of my ENDOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified) with the help of psycho and cognitive therapy. Andie’s testimony is an honest one and I appreciate her courage in writing it.

I imagine it’s extremely difficult for anyone who has not had an unhealthy relationship with food to understand or feel sympathetic toward someone who can eat with reckless abandon such extreme quantities of food. But addiction is addiction. And if you’re not interested in a story of overcoming addiction and odds, and your relationship with food is a healthy one, then this book is not for you.

My relationship with food is not healthy. Nor was Andie’s before her incredible 135 pound weight loss, nor was it after. And this is what makes her story so powerful in my opinion. With the same honesty and emotion, Andie wrote about breaking down in a restaurant after feeling pressured to order meatloaf instead of a salad, and her obsessive calorie counting and running despite despising the activity. She wrote about becoming withdrawn and feeling alienated when the entire world felt they had the right to comment on what and when and how she ate.

When eating is a coping mechanism, removing that mechanism often leaves you feeling anxious, depressed, and exposed. Without a healthy substitute, we often latch on to another negative behavior, or crumble under the weight of the emotions we masked for so long.

I think all of us who struggle with our weight have the same fantasy that once we lose the weight everything will be right in the world. We make statements starting with, “If only I could lose this weight, then… (insert any success story and fulfilled dream here.) But the truth is that without therapy, instead of being a screwed up fat person, you’ll just be a screwed up thin person. And after Andie lost all her weight, she was a screwed up thin person: depressed, anxious, and still obsessive.

But then she got help.

And now she’s living the dream, the dream being BALANCE (and being a successful writer and blogger [okay, fine, that’s MY dream]). Andie still eats decadent, rich chocolate cake – she just savors one slice, rather than polish off the whole thing. She still orders a burger and fries. The difference being she eats a salad first, takes half the burger home and shares the fries with her boyfriend. She works out doing things she enjoys. She cooks and bakes every day because she LOVES food and it excites her and she enjoys eating so she keeps doing it – she just makes the right choices and practices restraint and control. Control without being controlling. It’s a beautiful thing.

Andie and her story has inspired and energized me. She is living proof that weight can be lost, there still can be cake, and balance is achievable.

Author & Blogger Andie Mitchell then and now. Photo via girlsgonewodpodcast.com

I’ve been sick for an entire week… achey, tired, coughy, sneezy. On top of not feeling well physically, I feel dejected and unmotivated. The excitement of the new year has worn off. I’m uninspired and stagnant.

I’ve spent all of January focusing on my weight loss efforts. I’ve exercised at least once  for every day of 2016, including while sick. I continue meal planning and cooking, and reading what I call my “diet books” and meeting with my counselor. I knew weight loss would be my primary focus in the new year, but then why did I feel badly after a phone conversation with my brother last week when I realized I had nothing new to share?

Is there really nothing else going on? Am I up to nothing but trying to lose weight?

I only worked one full day of work last week, but I struggled to lay in bed. Every day or afternoon I was home felt like an opportunity to get ahead. I have a website to build that I have been paying for for over a year. There are blog posts to write and an essay about an experience I had so long ago that the details are starting to get hazy, 50,000 words of a novel I haven’t touched since November 30… I should have worked on these things – I was home.

But I was sick and worn out and unmotivated and needed to REST. My body was talking to me and I have learned to listen to it. So I napped, watched television, read, and cross stitched. I didn’t pressure myself to perform or produce. I know deep down it was the right choice, yet here I sit feeling… guilty? Disappointed?

What is this malaise?

Last week I sat in my counselor’s office feeling this same way. Unenergized. She noted the contrast between my attitude then and our previous session when I was excited over all my efforts. “I don’t know what it is,” I said. “It’s not fun or exciting anymore.”

“You know this is precisely the point when most people quit, right?” she said.

I sat with that for a moment. Five weeks in boredom has begun to breath its heavy sighs. Skepticism that any of this is working seeps around corners. Distractions threaten to derail my focus. I’m settling in to this new routine, which is no longer that new and my behaviors are on the cusp of becoming habit, but the energy I have invested is waning. It made perfect sense that I felt disheartened.

“I can’t quit. I won’t.”

I haven’t quit on my weight loss efforts and I don’t intend to. Until today I still felt unmotivated and disinterested, though. Thankfully, I have friends to point out the obvious things I can’t see like the fact I’m physically drained and still fighting something off, that work has been challenging, I have two big events the next two weekends, and I’m “not getting to focus as much on the things that feed [my] soul.” Also, that it’s February. It’s cold and dark and there’s little to look forward to.

Basically, I realize now that there are variables in play that I hadn’t planned for.

Steve Hickman wrote in the December, 2015 issue of Mindful in his essay titled “Take Your Mind for A Walk”:

“We are often like [a] young child, clutching the levers and pressing the buttons of our own lives with all our might, carefully trying to coax a desired course out of the chaos of life, but who are we kidding? How much control do we really have, and how much energy do we invest in trying to control and contrive outcomes that we are convinced are right, or good, or imperative? And while we can chart our course and connect with an intention to move in desired directions, there are often circumstances beyond our control and all we can do is navigate them like whitewater rapids, clinging tenuously to our intentions and keeping our eyes on the prize.” 

I’m navigating my own rapids. It’s winter, I’ve been cooped up indoors, I’m not feeling well, I’m adjusting to a new routine and entering the point when it’s no longer new and exciting, I’m not writing enough or doing other things that feed my soul. But I must weather the storm and keep my eye on the prize.

These aren’t excuses, because I haven’t done anything that requires excusing. These are facts. The bottom line is, I need to keep trucking. This is the doldrums. This is when the going gets tough and that’s why this is when people quit. But I won’t be one of them.

I weighed in today. I’m down another 4.4 pounds. Lent starts tomorrow and I’ve decided to commit to spending a minimum of seven hours per week on my novel. I’m also going to the ocean on Sunday to feed my soul.

I’m keeping my eye on the prize, clinging tenuously to my intentions. But in the meantime, I’ll do what I can to help navigate the course.

The last time I wrote about A Course in Weight Loss, it was on lesson #3. I had described my altar as my safe place and what creating your safe place entails. Since then, my altar has become crowded, but in a good way. Over the weekend I completed lesson #6, so as part of my commitment to doing all the work entailed in the book and reporting back to you here, I will use this post to recap lessons #4-6. Before I do so, however, I want to report that somewhere around lesson #5, a shift finally occurred in my relationship with food. For the first time in a very long time, I feel that I have a modicum of control over food and not the other way around. This is in thanks to the tools I am learning and the work I am doing.

Again, I remind you that these lessons do not only apply to weight loss, but to all unwanted areas of life: addiction, unhappiness, etc. Also, these are only recaps. If you want to do the work in this wonderful book, please do pick it up and read it for yourself so you get all the information.

Lesson #4 is titled, “Invoke the Real You” and is about facing down the fears that feed our compulsions, and realizing that our bodies at their healthiest, happiest, and most creative already exist and dwell in divine possibility. Marianne Williamson writes that our healthier figures are not just vague hopes dangling out in the universe somewhere– rather, they are divine imprints gestating within us. “The same God who created roses created you,” she writes. “Nothing you have ever done and nothing that anyone has ever done to you could make imperfect what God created perfect.” 

Through spiritual practice we can find our way back to our real selves: through prayer, meditation, forgiveness, and compassion. So in lesson #4 we meditate on removing any fear we have of being who we really are. No one is holding us back except ourselves. “You are cruel to you,” Williamson writes. “You are withholding from you. You are harming you.”

Embracing the power of positive thought and the law of attraction, ideas I already believe in, lesson #4 teaches us that the more we embrace the image of a beautiful body and emotionally permit ourselves to desire one, the more our subconscious minds will make one manifest. Therefore, rather than comparing and contrasting our bodies with those in magazines, which usually leads to a seesaw of alternating motivation and despair, we will project our real selves into the world, creating a new image for ourselves rather than the ones that have always existed with our flabby stomachs and double chins.

I was with Williamson until she suggested self-imposing my head onto images of beautiful bodies. I thought this was pretty ridiculous, to be honest and I felt embarrassed. In fact, it took me a couple weeks to be convinced that I should. Since my beauty apparently already exists, the more I claim it as already existing, the more quickly it will materialize. Supposedly.

So I did it. I tore out four photos from my favorite catalog, Athleta, and cut my head off photos and taped them over the models, fully prepared to blame the book should anyone decide to have me committed for this strange act. I placed the four images on my altar. And you know what? I love looking at them. The very next morning when my alarm clock went off at the dreadful hour of 5:00 am, I hit the snooze button. Then I thought of those images of myself with the body I dream of, and I got my ass up and to the gym. Envisioning your face on the body you desire really is a helpful tool.

As an overweight person, you have given birth to the body of your suffering; it’s time now to give birth to the body of your joy. – M. Williamson

Lessons #4-6 all represented on my altar.

Lesson #5 is titled “Start a Love Affair with Food” but I prefer to call it, “Let’s Go Shopping!” First of all, Williamson acknowledges that many of us are at home thinking “Ummm, shouldn’t we be ending our love affair with food?” and I love her response.

What you’ve had up to this point has been an obsessive relationship. THERE IS NO LOVE THERE. Pain and compulsion and self-hate are not love.”

So to begin this love affair, in summary we need to learn to eat mindfully and appreciate our food for how it contributes to our health. “The eating patterns of an overeater are chaotic, fearful, furtive, and out of control.” This lesson is a plan for “dissolving your hysteria and filling your emptiness by replacing it with love.” We can attain healthy neutrality toward food by learning to love it, and the only food we can really love is food that loves us back. Sundaes may give us a momentary high, but so can crystal meth. Things full of sugar and processed chemicals bring us lots of things, but you will not find love amongst the higher cholesterol and increased cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and food allergy risks, not to mention the weight gain. Foods that love you contribute to your well-being.  

So in lesson #5, we learn to build a new ritual: the ritual of healthy, wise, non-secretive, and loving eating. And we get to go shopping! Because this ritual involves a new beautiful napkin, new beautiful plate, new beautiful placemat, new beautiful glass, and new beautiful knife, fork and spoon. (I threw in the new beautiful bowl by choice.) These things must be new because we can’t build new rituals using the tools that represent the old.

If that word “ritual” still brings up negative connotations for you, I suggest you read my post “Demystifying the Ritual” or remembering that secretive and excessive eating is also a form of ritual so please don’t try to argue that ritual isn’t for you.

These items must be beautiful because beauty is sacred. Also, nothing need be expensive. My entire place setting pictured below cost less than $20, but it is beautiful and I love it! I washed everything and set it up on my altar, as the book instructs, to beckon the real you… the healthy person who has not quite arrived yet. This place setting can be used whenever I feel like it. I guarantee you that I will not be loading my plate and bowl up with junk. Eating off of these items will be an act of love and mindfulness.

Lesson #5 and #6. A lotus flower is etched into the glass!

Lesson #6 is titled “Build a Relationship with Good Food.” In Lesson #5 we start the love affair, but lesson #6 will help us when that love affair begins to lose its excitement, like when a salad every day no longer does it for you. Contrary to what you may assume, I am a very healthy eater. I cook and eat “real” food. My issue is over-indulgence and emotional binge-eating.

So when lesson #6 instructed me to go buy a piece of fruit, any piece of fruit, I wanted something I have never had before because me and fruit are already in love. I wanted to meet fruit’s exotic cousin.

Is there anything man has created that can begin to compare with the majesty of a mountain? Is there anything man has created that can begin to compare with the beauty of a flower? Is there anything man has created that can begin to compare with the power of a river or the force of a rainstorm? Then why is it that when it comes to food, people have developed this ridiculous notion that we’ve somehow improved on God? That chemically processed food is somehow preferable to what nature has to offer?

– M. Williamson

Enter sexy, mysterious dragonfruit! Rawr!  I placed the dragonfruit on my altar for a day then the next morning (after googling how to cut it – it looks way more intimidating than it is), I cut it up and placed it in my beautiful new bowl on my altar and performed the meditation in the book. It was an exercise in mindful eating and an act of love. After a few bites, I decided it would be better as a smoothie so I blended it with banana and beet and almond milk, but I don’t think it minded.

Lesson #6. Dragonfruit whole, diced, smoothied.

A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever is changing my dysfunctional relationship with food. That relationship has been a source of my suffering so this weight loss journey is running parallel with my journey to be a more compassionate person. The work is going hand in hand, two lines that weave along together in the same direction toward the same destination: happiness.