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.

Learned Helplessness

When an athlete has an injury, lets say a runner breaks their leg, and they go through a time of recovery with a cast and crutches or whatever apparatus is required, they have to relearn how to get around and compensate for being off balance with whatever they are forced to drag around. Eventually they get the cast removed and even though they may have spent their entire life up until that injury being a runner, they will have to relearn how to walk normally again. They have learned not to trust that limb, the muscles have atrophied so it feels weak, they have gotten used to their lop sided gait and can't remember how to move smoothly and without thinking about it and it may feel like they will never be back to normal again. Running feels awkward and stilted. It is a learned behavior and the only way to get past it is to challenge it and push through, maybe by using visualization to reboot the mind and muscle memory to once again run freely. Physical therapy can assist the person in relearning to depend on that limb and eventually the recovery is complete.

My point is that we are all susceptible to false beliefs. This can be due to learned conditioning as in the broken limb, or in our self belief based on past experiences and input from others. It makes sense that if you fail at something, you have one of two options. Give up or try again. If you try again and fail it begins to alter your thinking and weakens your confidence until you lose hope in your ability to do any better. You may try again, only this time you go in expecting to fail. Like the broken leg, if every time you try to walk again you fell, how many times would you get back up before fearing failure, possibly not even trying so hard with each attempt. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Most of us have a history of dieting and disappointment. We flog ourselves emotionally with each failure and our self esteem gets chipped away with each attempt. Gradually we come to believe that obesity is our destiny and that the most we can hope for is to keep it under control with periodic efforts at weight loss. We no longer consider ourselves "normal" by the world's standards and our fear of failure is ever present, sometimes to the point of self sabotage without even being aware of it.

Cambridge is a good apparatus to support your body during it's healing from obesity. It can only address the physical need. The emotional mindset of what you believe about yourself and your ability to accomplish your goal is 100% on you. Cambridge can serve as your "physical therapist", but not as your emotional one. There is only so much support you can get from others, or that I can offer one on one to you individually. There is no escaping the fact that at some point, we much deal with ourselves and our issues and do the work to heal them. We can't blame anyone or anything for our situation, nor can we hold others responsible for our successes or failures. You have to force yourself to override the ingrained thinking that continually trips you up and causes you to accept less from yourself then you are truly capable of. It won't be comfortable or seem natural, but it has to happen. You have to believe in yourself and be willing to say "no" just as you would to a tantruming child. No bargaining or justifying. You have to understand that your thinking is the illness and the obesity is the symptom. You can't cure illness by treating symptoms.

Your mindset or concept of self is the core of your issues with food and weight. It is what will propel you forward or hold you back. I learned that if I changed my thinking, I could change my perception of my world and how I experienced it. Once I truly understood my potential to change what I didn't like about how I was living, it opened up doors I never understood I had barricaded. It was a revelation to say the least and I still marvel at it. Cambridge unlocked the door for me, but I had to be brave enough to go through it and see what was on the other side. Fortunately, the other side is wonderful!