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.

Progress Report

I am on day 23 of my diet! Wow..time is going by quickly. I still haven't weighed and don't plan on it any time soon. I just don't want that distraction. Other then a few additions when I make my Cambridge Oats pancakes or gingerbread cake, or my Chocolate Lava Cake (recipes in previous post) I have been for the most part sole source. Now and then I will grab a slice of turkey breast sandwich meat, but that was mostly in the first week.

My husband is on day 18 and is doing great too. I'm watching his tummy melt away. He has his 3 servings of Cambridge a day along with a big salad for dinner. It consists of half a head of lettuce, some cucumber, green onions, tomato and 2 grilled chicken tenders. He uses a Zesty diet Italian dressing on it. He has been weighing and so far has lost 14.5 pounds.

 I am in that weird phase where my clothes are getting loose and even longer. I know I'm losing, and everyone tells me I am, but I don't see the changes in the mirror. I suppose a life time of dieting and a past of extreme obesity has left me with some body dysmorphic issues. No worries. I am just going to keep plugging along and I will judge my progress by when I can get back in to my skinny pants.

Day 3.5 and "Recalculating"

I'm excited to be back on track. I already feel so much better then I did a week ago. Cambridge never fails me! As long as I keep my mind focused on what I want to accomplish, I will certainly be able to achieve it.

While I have for the most part maintained my weight loss of 16 years ago, I find that as I get older I have to work a little harder to feel my best and not let the pounds creep back on. This gall bladder surgery I had in Feb took me on a detour that I am now "recalculating" as the GPS lady would say.

For some reason I was incredibly hungry for about a month after surgery. It had been years since I experienced hunger so this was unexpected. The zombie gall bladder that I had been living with had completely killed my appetite for a long time and eating had become just something required, but not enjoyed. Well...that changed! lol! I have to admit I embraced feeling alive again and found that having an appetite can be a wonderful thing, but of course it also must be controlled. I did gain some weight, but enjoyed it greatly! Now I am feeling more normal appetite wise and this was a good time to get back to mindful living.

Maintaining a healthy body and weight is a job. One that you can take a vacation from periodically, but eventually you have to go back to work. The paycheck is feeling great and fully engaged in life. Being addicted to food or compulsive eating behaviors separates you from your best life. It becomes the thing before all other things that you think about. That's not living!

What Is Your Normal?

Being a person who has struggled with being overweight since toddler-hood, my sense of self was that I was an obese person, like I was made this way. Obese was my "normal". My identity. My destiny. My attempts at weight loss were frequent and varied, but the results were always temporary. The times I spent close to my healthy weight never changed my personal identity. I always knew that all those pounds of fat were waiting in the wings, ready to slam back on me. I was never safe from it, like I was being stalked.

The emotional chaos of never feeling at peace with my body took it's toll in many ways. Every choice and decision I made in life, somehow pivoted from my low self esteem and my knowledge that I would never be good enough.

I could never figure out how other people maneuvered through their lives, seemingly free from the constant anxiety I had with food and body image. Did other people go to school with a burning empty stomach in their attempt to be normal? I would watch my thin friends and try to figure out how they ate so much, so freely, without any guilt or shame. Why weren't my siblings fat? What was wrong with me? Why was I different? Oh..right...obesity is me.. my normal.

I lost my weight on Cambridge 14 years ago. The amount of effort to lose the weight, was nothing compared to the mental work I had to do to change everything I believed about myself and who I was. Instead of seeing my obesity as normal and moments of thinness as temporary, I had to flip that and force myself to believe that my obesity was what had been the deviation from normal. My body had spent 42 years trying to deal with my physical and emotional demands. It hadn't failed me, I had failed it. I may or may not be more prone to weight gain then someone else with different DNA, but that is my reality to accept and to be responsible for.

We all come in to this world with different challenges. There is no standard "normal". Just your own personal story. My story is that for most of my life, I believed a lie. A lie I convinced myself was true. Obesity is not my identity, my destiny, or my curse. I spent my life justifying my poor health and not ever really taking responsibility for it.  I am not that person anymore.

That Old "Nature vs Nurture" Thing.

In all my years (most of my life) of living  as an overweight to obese person, I often tried to solve the mystery of why I was burdened with whatever it was that had made me that way. I know most believe it is just a matter of eating too much and not moving enough, but I know for a fact this is not true.

I grew up in a home where we were not allowed to raid the fridge or dig around in the pantry for something to eat. We were raised to eat what my mother put in front of us, no more, no less. There was no fast food or restaurant meals in our lives. There was very little of what would be considered snack type junk foods. Just home cooking. I was one of 4 siblings, the baby. My 3 older sibs had no weight issues at all. They were thin and for the most part pretty sedentary. I was 100% tomboy. I rarely sat still and even TV watching was a short term activity for me. Besides, in the 60's and 70's there were only a few channels to choose from and cartoons were only on Saturday mornings. If we did not have our chores done in time, we missed the boat. With only one TV in the house, my parents had first priority for evening viewing choices.  I learned very early (around 4) to become an avid reader for my entertainment, or to just go outside and play.  I loved basketball, handball, riding my bike, working with my dad in the garage, anything that kept me moving. In spite of that, I was a pudgy kid from birth.

One of my earliest memories were of being in my stroller at a school carnival with my mom and brother and sisters. We had stopped at a booth with the most amazing aroma! They were selling little bags of fudge and boy I could hardly wait! My mom was actually buying some! I waited for my share, but I was told, "Not for you...you're too chubby". I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that for some reason, there was something wrong with me. From that point on, that was my number one identity in my mind.  I was different. I was "chubby".

Thus began my endless quest to be thin and normal, first through my mother's efforts, then through my own. As I said, although I ate exactly the same as my siblings, I was the only one in my family, other then my mother, who had a weight issue.  My mother had also been an extremely active child and teenager. Her sister had been completely sedentary...and thin. It was during the depression and her father had died when she was only 14. Needless to say, she and her sister and mother had struggled to get by so food was not abundant.  In spite of my mother's involvement with sports, even playing ball with the boys long before that was acceptable, she was never thin like her girlfriends all were. She eventually became an obese woman that lead to hypertension, then heart failure, then death at only 62. I evidently inherited my mothers health DNA. I inexplicably struggled with the weight, had elevated BP in my teens, became diabetic even though I kept my weight from exploding through very strict control, and had heart failure in my mid 20's. This was not a lifestyle issue. I came in to the world this way.

Over all these years, trying to understand why, in spite of my constant effort to remain healthy...well...except in my 30's when I just stopped fighting it up and ballooned to well over 300 pounds...why could I not figure out how to be "normal" like my friends? So much guilt is attached to obesity and like me, not everyone who struggles with this problem is 100% to blame.  Just like the color of your eyes or hair, or personality traits or interests, how our body processes nutrients will differ, sometimes well out of the norm. You can't change that.

My point is not to make excuses or cry "poor poor pitiful me" or blame my mother. This is and has always been my reality. My job has been to do what I can to manage it and not end up dying much too early from a weight related disease as she did. Keeping my weight under control it top priority to accomplish this. For me, Cambridge not only allowed me to lose the weight when no other diet would work for me, but it has also been my maintenance tool that has kept me on track for a long healthy life. I turn 56 next week. When I compare my health status at this age, to what I remember my mother's being, it is drastically different. I still have the same health issues and I always will, but I keep things controlled and I work hard at staying as healthy as I possibly can in spite of them.

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.

Diffusing Triggers

I tell my clients that none of us got fat because we were hungry. We overeat for emotional reasons and because of a lack of coping options. At some point, we decide that food is an acceptable method of dealing with our feelings. We self medicate with food. It is not unlike any other addict. We sacrifice our self respect, health, and happiness to be numb in the present.

Stress and anxiety are two if the common triggers for destructive eating. We can temporarily distract ourselves from the issues and even get a little boost from "feel good" hormones that sugar and other food chemicals can stimulate. Finding a way to handle stress and anxiety in a constructive way is challenging. When you are in the midst of it you are the least capable of making a good decision and more likely to turn to food for sedation. Stress and anxiety hormones need a release. Adrenaline can damage your health if it is not used so a better alternative to eating is physical activity. You will get the endorphins, those "feel good" hormones, released in to your system. It is the body's preferred way of managing stress. Find a way to move your body, sweat and get out of breath.

Depression and loneliness can be overwhelming and food can become your solace and comfort.  At least in the moment you are eating it. Once consumed, it becomes more fuel for your depression.  The hardest thing for someone to do while feeling down is to reach out for help and support. The immediate desire is the exact opposite. Retreating and trying to stuff the feelings down with junk food is normal for someone feeling hopeless. It's a self  perpetuating cycle. Depressed-eat-regret-gain weight-feel out of control-more depressed-eat...and on it goes.  Food will never make anything better. It isolates you even more. The best way to reject old behaviors is to make new ones. Write your feelings in a journal with ideas of positive ways to manage them productively.  Find some way to connect with others. Recovery groups like OA can  help and of course, I am just a phone call away.

Pay attention to your thoughts. Take note of how life events direct your actions and reactions. If you get disturbing news, is your first reaction to go to the fridge?  I have a magnet on my fridge that says, "The answer is not in here. It's inside of you". It's a good little reminder.  Start paying attention to your triggers and come up with alternative productive ways of diffusing them. It's not easy to change, but it's required for a lifelong success story.

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!

Temporary Weight Loss?

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 04/13/14:
It's interesting how we think about weight loss. We go on a diet. We lose weight. We reach our goal (hopefully). We return to regular eating. We gain the weight again. We blame the diet for only being a temporary fix. 

Because of this pattern we think it's the failing of the weight loss plan we choose. That would be like blaming the effect for the cause. It's not logical thinking and it's not how things work. The only way a person gains weight is by over eating and under moving. There is no mystery. If a person returns to the eating habits and lifestyle that put the original pounds on, it will again...of course!

Weight loss plans do not cure obesity. Even weight loss surgery does not cure obesity. Obesity is not a disease that needs curing. It is a physical symptom of an emotional malfunction. If the emotional component is ignored, no diet in the world will grant permanent weight loss. Rather then looking at obesity as a temporary condition of a body and mind out of sync as we should, we tend to think of restoring our body to a healthy weight as temporary and in peril of reversal at any moment! That is faulty thinking.

It's a true fact that most people that manage to lose weight will gain weight again. They won't gain "back" the same fat they lost before. It no longer exists. It's not out there floating around just waiting for an opportunity to jump back on! However, people are perfectly capable of accumulating new fat if they go back to living a lifestyle that supports it. We need to stop thinking of our obese selves as our normal selves. Our normal self is at a healthy weight and fitness level. Up until now, lifestyle has prevented this normal. Our bodies try every minute of every day to restore normal. It's how we're made. The excess fat on our bodies is the intruder and needs to be eliminated and denied reentry!

Weight loss is only permanent when we accept the fact that the reason we were fat was completely due to how we think and feel about food. Obesity happens because of us. It does not happen to us.

There are 2 absolute things I know and I can promise are true.

#1. If you stick to Cambridge 100% you have the iron clad ability to get to your normal healthy weight.

#2. If you go back to eating as you did before, you will once again gain weight and may end up right back where you started.

With these 2 simple facts we have all the information we need to make our post Cambridge weight our new permanent normal and the knowledge of what (not) to do to ensure we don't gain weight again.

It may take some time for your brain to catch up to your body. I know mine did. But the mind and body are very much connected and by rebooting your emotional connection to food, clearing out all the old thinking and programming, you can then welcome in your new and improved belief of self.

Recovery From Addiction, My Personal Experience

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 05/21/13:
Over the years I have had board members generously share their stories, their fears, their addictions and their successes. I appreciate their bravery and their courage to open up and put it here on the board so that they can begin the road to recovery. Honesty is one of the most important aspects of this challenge. As I've said before on here, you can be the most honest person in the world in all of your dealings, but when it comes to addictions and behaviors, lying, hiding and secrets are usually part of it. Coming here and not being afraid to tell your story is the first step to being free.

Food addictions and eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes, but it boils down to self abuse and deception, even if that deception is to no one else but yourself. At times I felt like I was beating myself to death with food. The more I ate uncontrollably, the more I hated myself...and the more I ate. I hid food. I lied about food. I thought about it constantly and manipulated others to participate in my problem so I didn't have to feel guilty. My kids suffered from my choices. It can be a vicious cycle that seems completely hopeless when you are in its grip. I 100% believed that death by obesity was my destiny and nothing could convince me otherwise. I had watched my mother die from it. It was my identity. It was what all things in my life revolved around. I had fought this beast my entire life since the age of two.

Recovery is a process. It doesn't happen when the weight is gone. For years I was still an obese woman in a small body. The anxiety and fears of failure were there all the time. I knew I could gain it all back in a heartbeat. When I would go in to a store, bypassing the large size department and go in to the "regular" sizes, I felt like any minute someone would come to me and say, "There is nothing here for you. You don't belong here"...kind of like that scene from "Pretty Woman". It didn't help any that I felt like there was a constant spotlight on my head. Everywhere I went, people that knew me would freak out when they saw me. Others that had never given me the time of day would come to me like I was their long lost best friend and fawn all over me about my weight loss. Even weirder were the people who I'd known for years that didn't recognize me at all until I spoke to them. It's a strange place to be. I had a lot of emotions to sort through...a whole new life to build. I had not expected to live much past my 40's. I hadn't made any plans! Suddenly I was evidently going to have a future and I had no idea what to do with it. All this going on inside a person who only a few months previously had been the invisible fat woman in the room. Husbands flirted with me, wives glared at me, strangers talked to me, I had to learn how to be a whole person, present in my body and function in the world which for most of my adult life I had been on the outside peering in. People had expectation of me! I was very used to sliding by under the radar using my weight and my disabilities as my excuse to not function.

That picture seems bleak and I'm sorry for that, but it was my experience. Of course, there were just as many extraordinarily amazing things that happened. The first time my 9 year old son wrapped his arms around my waist and said "Look mom! I can grab my wrists!". Going out in to a world that I could now be a part of was like being out of prison. Not fearing abusive comments or stares or broken chairs or fitting in a booth or theater seat. Buying clothes because I liked them, not just because they fit... and then buying it in every color in case I couldn't find it again. Wearing colors, not just black or navy or brown. Feeling feminine again and no longer feeling like the "3rd sex". For years I had felt like there were men, women, and then there was me.

So back to the subject of recovery. I get asked all the time if there really is such as thing as recovery from obesity and all that goes with it. It's been 11 years since I lost my weight. it took about 3 years for me to get my brain caught up to my body. Things happened along the way. My beloved Aunt died not too long after I moved her in with me to care for her. It was devastating and I felt lost for about 6 months. Unknowingly I gained about 60 pounds. I woke up from my grieving and got things back under control, but it scared me to think I was still not free from this thing. All I wanted was to feel peace. I wanted my life to focus on seeking a peaceful and undramatic connection with food, to become almost indifferent to it. My life long cravings and behaviors that had enslaved me were still there, simmering under the surface.

Like any addiction, you have to work at your recovery. You have to know what you want first. You also have to believe in your ability to accomplish it. You have to replace old behaviors and thoughts with new ones. What do you want? What will you do to take yourself there? What is the ultimate goal? Short term, mid term, long term, don't be afraid to visualize all of them whether physical, emotional or spiritual. All the energy we have dedicated to negative and damaging thoughts and actions can now be devoted to positive changes that will free you and over time you will heal, you will recover. Never underestimate your ability to change. You have strength and power in your own life that you are probably not aware of. If you could open your head and scoop out all the negative messages there from others or yourself, what would that feel like? Poof! It's gone! What are you left with? That is your truth. Start from there and move forward. If you fall, pick yourself up and keep moving forward. Recovery is there. Freedom is there. Peace is there.



I can say with complete confidence that I am free from my past. I no longer crave food or hear it calling and taunting me. I can look at pretty much anything and feel complete ambivalence towards it. I don't feel deprived or sadness or anxiety when I am around foods that in the past would have driven me crazy. I have so much more in my life now that is real. The physical benefits of weight loss are obvious, but the emotional reward of overcoming addiction and all that goes with it is the most surprising and life changing.

Binge eating, emotional triggers and other thoughts

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 01/14/13:
People get obese for a variety of reasons and rarely does it have anything to do with hunger. We become obese for emotional reasons and over time we learn to attach food and feelings. Binge eating is emotionally driven and once triggered, it can seem impossible to stop. Have you already identified what your triggers are to binge eat or to eat the wrong foods? Is it stress? Loneliness? Boredom? Habit? Anger? Self abuse?  Perfectionism? We all have triggers that set the binge ball rolling. Pay attention to the thoughts you have before you open the fridge or grab your keys to hit the fast food drive-up. By listening to your internal dialog you can begin to change the behavior.

I was a stress eater. Unfortunately I was always under stress. I grew up with panic anxiety disorder. I had my first panic attack when I was 6 years old in a department store with my parents. I had no idea what was happening, only that the world suddenly was spinning, my heart was exploding and a rush of what I now know was adrenalin flooded my body. It was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced up until then and over time I had more and more attacks that ended up being attached to more and more surroundings and activities until I was almost paralyzed. I became agoraphobic by my teenage years. Because of that I missed out on a lot of the normal experiences a young person has. College? not possible. After I was married at the too young age of 19 and had my first baby 9 months later, it became nearly impossible for me to leave the house on my own, even to just get the mail. During that time food was an easy distraction to deal with my unhappiness

I had dealt with weight issues my whole life but had managed to keep it somewhat under control through Weight Watchers, the diet of the month or plain old starvation, but after another baby and a divorce, all bets were off. I went fully in to the worst years of compulsive binge eating that robbed me of my health and any chance at love or happiness. Anxiety, panic, depression, loneliness,self abuse and loathing...it was all there as I struggled with health crisis and single parenthood and poverty. The only thing that gave me any comfort or solace was food...I thought. In reality and hindsight it was the creator of my misery that pushed me in to a deep hole I did not know how to escape from.

One of my greatest challenges during my weight loss was dealing with the emotions that became raw and open without sedating with food. I had to force myself to face the lion's mouth and find other ways to cope. The first was to identify my triggers and the thoughts that immediately followed. I also had to experience the anxiety that would build and build as I resisted the compulsive urges to self medicate with food. I had no tools to work with so I learned as I went. I developing phrases and techniques to defuse the stress and get to the other side. When I faced temptation...the worst being pizza....I would tell myself, "The food will always be there. Anything I want so badly today will still be there tomorrow". It's kind of funny. I shared this phrase some 12 years ago on this board and now I read it all over the Internet. Hopefully it has helped others as it did me.

The goal is to calm the anxiety and find a peaceful place to operate from. Anything you can do to defuse the emotions and thoughts that lead to binging will eventually make you free from that negative cycle of stress/ obsess/ binge/ regret/ depression. Eating should never be emotionally driven. Never eat to pacify an emotion or to reward a craving. Just committing to those two things will stop most binges in their tracks.

Perfectionism was listed above as one of the possible triggers. You may question this, but most overweight people do suffer from it. We tend to be "all or nothing" thinkers. If we can't be perfect we degrade ourselves and use it as an excuse to quit or fail. How many diets have you started and not finished, assuming it was a proven weight loss method? What ended it? My guess is that you had a cookie or some little thing not on your plan and then the self flogging began and the food flood gates opened.

The ONLY reason Cambridge worked for me is because I didn't quit. No matter how many binges I had, no matter if it was just a soda cracker, (and frankly..the perfectionist in us sees a cracker the same as if we spent 2 hours at the buffet) I didn't quit. I pushed past all my old patterns and refused to find excuses to give up.

I have learned over the years that it doesn't matter where you come from, what your circumstances are or what your past contained... rich or poor, tall or short, male or female, loved or alone, young or old, famous or accomplished or just an average person getting through the day...obesity brings us all to the same place. We are equal in this. You can be dirt poor or have every opportunity at your fingertips, it levels the playing field because ultimately we are all the same. As human beings the internal struggle is.. as my country boy husband would say, "A one butt job". You are alone in your head. Only you can control your thoughts, your reactions, your perceptions and your behaviors. A victim thinks these things are controlled by outside influences. The truth is, we make our own destiny. Your past is not an indication of your future. The past is vapor. You can't change the direction of the road you already traveled, but you can change the direction of the road ahead.

Next time you feel the tension building and the urge to eat the feelings away comes over you, stop and listen to the dialog in your head. What are you telling yourself? Are you reacting to an outside stress and not acknowledging it? Are you bargaining or justifying something that you know ultimately will end in a binge or eating something that will make you feel out of control...even if it's just a cracker? Once you identify the emotion you can then change your course before you reinforce the behavior. It won't be comfortable at first, but this is not about being comfortable. It's about recovery and healing and learning. Replace the energy you would have devoted to food with something positive like walking, reading or call a friend.You can learn new ways to cope with life that actually bring you happiness and a sense of accomplishment and control.