Emotional Work

Doing Cambridge has it's own set of special emotions. It challenges our food issues, our sense of self esteem, our learned behaviors, conditioning from our youth, and so many other parts of our personalities. It's a LOT! Plus, eating is enjoyable and social and comforting...usually. Sometimes, for those of us with compulsive eating disorders, it can become a weapon of self destruction and loneliness. I remember my lowest times of my eating disorder, almost feeling like I was beating myself up with food. Probably sounds overly dramatic to those with lessor or different issues then I was dealing with, but it's the best way to describe what I was doing. It was a violent act against myself.

What I realized, as I progressed through this emotional maze of weight loss, was that 99% of my  viewpoint and my internal dialog was negative. I grew up a chubby kid and weight had ALWAYS been the focal point of my life. I visualized it like a wagon wheel, obesity being the hub and all other aspects of life branched off from it. Every choice I made in life had my obesity at it's center. There were no goals or ambitions made from a desire to lead a full and rewarding life. So many lost opportunities.

It was a process that took time, my emotional recovery. It was like building myself a new house to live in, brick by brick. Eventually, momentum kicked in and the bricks started seating themselves.

I consider myself a fully recovered compulsive addictive eater. That person is so far buried in my past, I can not even comprehend that was me. I still struggle with some things. I never did reach my ultimate goal of my high school weight. Not even close! lol!. But I have managed to maintain well enough to have made up for some of all those lost opportunities. The past 17 years have been some of the best, and most heartbreaking, but my miracle is that I have been able to experience these normal life events without turning to food or any other substance to cope. I'm happy about that.

Losing Weight Can Be A Lonely Experience

When it seems like everyone else in the world is out enjoying reckless eating and drinking and mindlessly indulging while you are stuck in this isolated place of dieting, how do you make yourself feel ok about it? How do you not feel left out or just plain depressed about not being part of it all? Food tends to be the center of most gatherings, big or small. Being the only one not partaking can make you feel like you have a big ol' spotlight on your head saying, "Hey! Look at me! I'm not eating!". People notice and comment and question what you are doing, They give unsolicited (and uneducated) advice on the perils of what you're doing. They prod and push you to eat something because "it won't hurt you and you gotta eat".

We all experience this. Losing weight is hard. Being on a highly restrictive and very low calorie diet has it's own special challenges. The rewards are GREAT, but there is a price. You may have to watch people eating those doughnuts a co-worker brought in to the office, or smell the pizza your husband brought home for the kids, or bake the cookies for the sale at the school.....and on and on.

Food is everywhere and there's no avoiding it so.. if I had any advice to give.. it would simply be to remind yourself that this is temporary. The food will always be there. Anything you want so badly today will still be there when you are through losing your weight. Holidays will still come. Weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, or just Friday date nights will keep coming as long as you are alive so what's the big deal of temporarily bowing out for one round of them? What you are doing is important. Give this effort you are making the respect it deserves and demand that the people in your life do likewise. Yes, it can be lonely, but like the butterfly that spends its time alone in its cocoon, soon you will emerge and finally be able to fully enjoy what life has to offer you!

Persistence, Not Perfection. An Emotional Healing

While on Cambridge, we all hope for perfection. We strive to stick to our diet without any detours or derailments. Unfortunately, it's not realistic to think we can isolate ourselves throughout the entire process of losing our weight. Success with Cambridge is not about perfection. It's about persistence. "All or nothing" thinking gets many of us in to a never ending loop of starting and stopping our diets. It reinforces thoughts of failure which only makes us feel hopeless and we give up once again.

There's always going to be something that comes up that will involve food somehow. That's just life. For example, lets say you have friends or family come in to town unexpectedly and  the decision is made for everyone to go out to eat. You don't want to be "that" person that lessens everyone else's experience by staying home or just sitting there with a diet soda while the rest of the table eats uncomfortably around you. What do you do?  Do you just dive in and go for it, using this as the perfect excuse to eat yourself under the table? Or, do you practice some good eating choices? We only have a problem if we continue to use normal every day activities and events as an excuse to binge and indulge our food addictions. If you eat like a health minded person, then that is a success! It's progress of the best kind. You are reinforcing your new lifestyle choices and will be in the proper state of mind to resume your Cambridge without it triggering an emotionally charged binge.

Eating food is not the problem. The emotions we nurture when we eat food are! The bargaining and excuses and justifying...these are the problem. They stir the pot of compulsive behavior and pretty soon, it boils over.

When given the unavoidable opportunity to practice good eating choices, take it as part of your recovery and make a point of detaching emotions from the event. Use it to your benefit as a chance to prove to yourself that you can keep food in it's proper perspective. That's not easy in our food obsessed culture. What other time in our history has food played such a obsessive central roll in our every day lives? TV shows and entire networks are devoted to it. The once common job of cooking for a living has become celebrity status. Restaurants and even food trucks clamber for cult like followings. Even home cooks are now endlessly striving for show stopper meals they see displayed on Pinterest and other social media. It used to be we just had to try to compete with Martha Stewart. Now we're all supposed to BE Martha Stewart!

You want to be free. The goal should not only be about being a certain size, shape, or weight. It should not only be about looking better for an event or a deadline. We all want to be free from this thing that our lives currently revolve around...our eating disorders. We all need an emotional mental healing. Only then will our bodies be able to do the work to heal us physically. We can't observe this healing from viewing X-Rays or stitches or any other tangible evidence of recovery. We have to be tuned in to our thoughts at all times and be willing to abort those that do us harm. A peaceful co-existence between our mind and our body, one nurturing the other.

Calling In Sick

I rarely ever get sick. Even when I was running a day care in my home and was surrounded by constantly sick kids, I seemed to be immune, or I would get a very mild version and be over it in a few hours. Well...for some reason I got slammed 2 days ago with a virus that seems to want to make up for all those times I didn't catch anything. I feel like my head is in a bucket of mud and my body is dragging hundred pound weights from every limb. I've had zero sleep for 2 nights and frankly, I'm not taking it too well. I much more prefer my previous superhero powers of immunity.

One interesting thing I wanted to share before going back to my sick bed, or in this case sick couch (my hubby is still sleeping and all my coughing and snuffling is probably pretty annoying), I hardly ever get food cravings anymore. Occasionally I'll get an urge for sushi, but sugar and all those things that used to rule my life just have no effect on me anymore. Last night was Halloween and we didn't participate in the candy craze. Being sick, we just put a note on the door and no one egged our house. In my dark sugar addicted past I would have already consumed POUNDS of candy by the morning after and I wouldn't have stopped until it was all gone...and the stores were cleared out of their 50% discounted leftovers. I'm completely free from that, but  for some reason, 2 sleepless nights have made me crave bread like my life depends on it! I hardly ever eat bread! Honestly, if my arm was made of bread, I'd eat it off.

I know there is a connection to insomnia and carbohydrate cravings. I've just never experienced it before. Probably because I was already eating a pretty carb loaded lifestyle. I struggled with chronic insomnia and day time sleepiness all the time back in my garbage eating days.  Now, I am healthy and usually sleep like a baby. Being made aware that sleep deprivation can have such a dramatic affect on resurrecting food cravings is quit alarming! The urge to self medicate my fatigue with an insulin stimulating bread binge is natural, but like most things we use food for improperly, it is a temporary fix at best with long term consequences. Resist!

Most Embarrassing Moments In a Big Girls Life

I bet we all have stories. I can't be the only one that has had embarrassing moments related to being obese. We may want keep them to ourselves and that is understandable. The embarrassment and shame can be too painful to ever want anyone else to know. However, I have found over the years that by telling these stories, it not only lessens their power over me, but it allows others to realize they are not alone and that there is compassion and understanding out there in the world. Yes, there is also judgment and cruelty, but those people don't matter. Only a miserably unhappy self loathing person can take pleasure in hurting someone. Feel sorry for them, but never let them influence your self worth. So, on with the stories:

1. Car binging. Now I KNOW I am not alone in this! Eating in the privacy of your own car. No limits. No witnesses. I'd go to more then one drive through and pretend I have a "list" of all the people I was picking up food for. I'd find an empty part of the parking lot and eat 'till I could eat no more. I'd get rid of the evidence in the nearest open dumpster and go home. That in its self is embarrassing to admit to, but it's not the embarrassing part. That happened in a mall parking lot. I had gone inside to my favorite bakery and loaded up on cookies, doughnuts and little pies. I went to my car and found my empty hiding place in the parking lot. I dug in with gusto, It was ugly. I had finished up the bag of cookies, 3 doughnuts, and I was half way through one of the pies when I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head and saw an entire family in a van, parked next to me, mouths hanging open in stunned amazement at what they had been witnessing.

2. I was on a road trip along the Ca coastline with my lifelong best friend and our kids. We were somewhere near Monterrey and decided to stop for lunch. It was a warm sunny day so the kids all wanted to go eat on the rooftop deck. It was very crowded up there and the view was amazing.  We sat in the plastic patio chairs they had at the tables. I was happy that I fit within the chair arms, but that wasn't the problem. As we sat there in the sun, I became aware of the legs of my chair gradually bending out. I was sinking! I was horrified and didn't know what to say. I used all my leg strength to try and hold me and the chair up, but it was hopeless. In utter humiliation, I excused myself to the bathroom and went in and asked a waitress if they had any wooden chairs. The process of one waiter retrieving my bent plastic chair and another waiter bringing out a sturdy wooden one was not lost on the other diners.

3. I was at a friends house and needed to use the restroom. It was during a birthday party so all her family and friends were there. I went in and sat down, only to hear a lot "crack" and a tremendous pinch on my bottom. I broke the seat. Now, most people do not have a spare toilet seat laying around so I had no choice but to go out and tell her what happened. The only other bathroom was upstairs in the Master bedroom so for the rest of the party, everyone had to use that one.

4. This one harks all the way back to childhood. I was in Elementary School and it was the end of the school year party day. We were all encouraged to bring in games from home.  There was checkers and Monopoly and Life and all the popular board games of that time. One of the kids brought in "Twister". My favorite game! Now I had been a chubby kid my whole life, but I was also a tom-boy and was never one to sit and play quiet games. I got in on the Twister game and was having a great time until I bent and twisted to reach a colored dot and the loudest sound of ripping cloth you ever did hear filled the room. I had worn my favorite long sleeved velveteen dress for our party day (girls didn't wear pants to school back then) and like most of my clothes, it was too tight. The sleeve seam ripped from the elbow, straight to the armpit, and down the side seam to my hip. The entire side of my dress was open. The kids laughed hysterically and I went to the nurses office.

There are many more stories of moments like these. Any one of them should have been enough of a wake up call to get me to stop my self destructive behavior and get control of my life, but they weren't. A person in the midst of their addictive behaviors will endure all sorts of humiliation and shame. I have a clear memory of how I felt at those moments and if I had to find a reason to be grateful for these experiences, no matter how painful they were, it would be a acquiring a deep understanding of how someone else feels when they are trapped in an eating disorder.  Your stories may be different, but I've found over the years of being a Cambridge Distributor...we all have them. I would love to hear yours. Telling them can diffuse the negative emotions they cause. In time, you can even see the humor in them...well...some of them!