The "WHY" Of Weight

I know it is a normal thing for people to try and figure out why they have allowed themselves to become overweight or obese. You could spend a lot of time theorizing and even allow yourself to be influenced by whatever the popular thoughts are on the subject, but I came to realize that you really don't get to the root of it until the weight is in the process of being lost. When you are forced to face the reality of self imposed limitations and you no longer have that crutch to lean on, it is time to deal.

One thing I realized over the coarse of my weight loss was that my obesity had lessened others expectations of me. This had not been the conscious reason behind my weight problem, but it certainly did play a part in the path my life had taken all those years. I'm not sure when my sense of feeling incapable compared to others took root, but being obese sure did give me a good excuse not to excel in anything.  I convinced myself that survival was all I could hope for and that I had a perfectly good excuse not to try for more.

I was quite shocked at how that all shifted when I lost the weight. Suddenly people had expectations of me! I was very intimidated by that and it took time for me to adjust, but my sense of achievement and interest in seeing what else I could do eventually got me through it.

Along the same line, as a single mom I was often overwhelmed with the 24/7 never ending demands of my 3 kids, plus running a home based day care 12 hours a day. I realized that the action of eating tended to make people leave me alone for a while. Even a few minutes of no demands kept me sane, so eating was a good shield to tell everyone, "Later, I'm busy eating right now".

These insights gradually became apparent to me over the months of changing. There were others, but these were a couple of the ones that took me by surprise as I discovered them and worked at dealing with the emotions as they were emerging.

If you are in the process of losing weight, take advantage of the insights you will be presented with as you progress. Don't be afraid to accept the fears or to take ownership. None of us get obese because we are hungry. There is ALWAYS an emotional root that needs pulling.

Diary Of A Chubby Kid

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 01/16/14:
From about 13 years old on I starved myself. I had been a chubby kid all my life and once I got in Jr High the teasing was relentless. 7th and 8th grade were horrible, but that summer I started restricting calories and lost weight. My family was happy to see me losing and didn't seem to care how I was doing it. I got through 9th grade very hungry, but I was able to fit in and wear those hip huggers and tight clothing and yes, my beloved Dittos, a brand of pants very popular in the 70's. I still felt very fat compared to all my super lean friends. Being so tall, (5'9" ) I already felt like some kind of amazon.

I grew up in Southern California in the San Fernando Valley so it was very much an appearance consciousness culture and the beach was the place to be. I needed to be able to feel ok in a bikini to fit in with my friends. The summer before beginning high school I went on 800 calories or less a day. I didn't care what I ate, as long as it was under 800 for the day. A whole can of Franco American spaghetti has about 270 calories. I loved it. I would have a piece of white bread with it and call it dinner. That summer I dropped down to the size 6/7 and grew boobs and everything was looking GOOD! People were shocked when I showed up in High school. The problem was that I was starving every single day. I don't remember one day of high school that I wasn't faint with hunger. I left home in the morning starving, spent the day starving, and then picked at my dinner and went to bed starving. This was before anorexia was a thing, but I don't think I was anorexic. I just knew that the only way I could not be fat was to not eat. I had been on a diet my entire life so this was not far from normal for me.

I started getting sick a lot, then bruising and hair loss started. It worried my mom and dad enough to take me in to our old family doc to see what was wrong. He was forever testing me for diabetes as a kid and he thought for sure this time it would come back positive. It didn't and I didn't say anything about my diet. He congratulated me on my weight loss though! Oddly enough, I did eventually end up becoming diabetic.

It will always remain a mystery how in a family of 4 kids, 3 girls and one boy, that I was the only fat one. All of my siblings were stick thin. As children, we all ate the exact things in the same amount. My mom served us our meals and that was all she wrote. No seconds or in between snacking, nothing. We rarely had sweets or sugary drinks or chips and never ate out. I was the only active one too. I was a total tom boy and they all were couch potatoes. Honestly, I don't think I have a single memory of my brother ever being upright! lol!

I came to the earth this way. I was a chubby baby, (9lbs 3oz!) a chubby toddler, a chubby pre-teen, a starving teenager, and an obese adult. I never felt "normal". It took about 5 years after my weight loss with Cambridge to finally experience life without constantly thinking about my weight. It's not completely gone of course, but it's no longer in the forefront of my brain at all times. I know I will never be out of control again and that as long as I have Cambridge I can relax and live life, but that chubby kid is still in there. I should have a talk with her and let her know we are going to be ok.

The World We Live In

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 09/29/13:
It's just a sad fact that for us here in the country, food is an obsession. More so now then ever before with social media recipe sharing, cable food channels on tv, even network cooking competitions are pretty much taking over programming. It's impossible to avoid all the food stimuli and we are no better then Pavlov's dogs. We see, hear, or smell food and we want to eat it. It doesn't matter if our body does not need calories or nutrition at that moment. We've been conditioned to eat pretty much whenever and whatever we want.

This work you are doing now, retraining yourself to say "no" to things you want but know you don't need, is building mental muscle for the rest of your life. You always have had the power and the right to turn down any substance that you feel is harmful for your body. Addicts of all kinds have to learn this, that you can't justify harming yourself to spare the feelings of others. One thing I have seen happen a lot over the years is when one person in a relationship or in a group of friends begins to take control of their weight and their health, the other/s will feel threatened or left behind or angry that their eating buddy has abandoned them. I've seen marriages end over one member of the couple losing weight. It also tends to force the other/s to see their own bad habits...no one likes that!lol!

Once you lose your weight all these same events and people will still be there knocking at your door. If you lose your weight and then go back to the behaviors and habits that got you obese, you will be obese again. The people in your social circle no doubt have their own health and weight issues and misery loves company as they say. It's going to be a project to become a new and improved version of yourself that has no problem saying no to anything or anyone that is detrimental to your health and well being. You'll know you've beaten it when you can say no and not feel sad about it, but feel powerful and strong and healthy. Others in your life will learn that you have chosen a new lifestyle that they will have to respect. You won't worry about hurting feelings or disappointing someone who is not interested in your best interest. Ideally, you will set a good example to others who may also want to find their way out of a bad lifestyle. They will see your glowing good health and happiness and want it too!

Taking a moment

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 09/07/13:
As I sat here the past couple of hours responding to my daily morning emails for Cambridge I was harking back (that's a word I never get to use! lol!) to my previous life before losing my weight. It's been a while now, but because I had spend the majority of my life suffering from weight and food issues the memories are still clear. The one emotion that comes to the front when remembering that life is confusion. I was so completely incapable of managing my eating or understanding how to eat correctly. I had gone through a million different diets over the course of my life beginning in childhood, each one contradicted the last. By the time I reached my early 40's...and 340+ pounds...I was lost. Hopeless is the next emotion I remember. I had never lived a normal life. I had never put a single bite of food in my mouth without feeling guilty. I concluded that I could never be "normal", that obesity was my destiny and that like my mother, it would be what killed me.

When I look at my old before pictures I can see those emotions on my face. It's painful to see, but it reminds me of how grateful I am that I found my way free.

Take a moment today and think about all the pain and suffering your weight has caused you. What price have you paid for it? A house is built one nail at a time. Our weight is built one bite at a time. Never allow the thought to grow that "This one bad choice won't hurt or one more week of my life spent eating whatever I want won't matter". It does hurt and it does matter.

Today, I am remembering how grateful I am that my search is over. No more waiting for the next "miracle" diet or pill or surgery. I found my miracle and along the way I found the life I wanted. It took a lot of work and frustration and self analysis, but here I am, happy and healthy and experiencing the life I denied myself for so many years.

Headlights

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 08/23/13:
I remember when I was taking my driving lessons (Thank you Mr. MacCarthy from California Driving School!) that my instructor taught me to never stare in to oncoming headlights. It is something people do and don't realize that they are gradually steering towards them. Not a good thing when out at night on a two lane highway! It's normal for the body to follow the mind. If you are focused on something, you tend to gravitate towards it.

This applies to what we are doing here. If you are trying to lose weight, but you allow your mind to remain focused on thoughts of food, you WILL eventually cave in. Social media such as Facebook and Pinterest or recipe sights and the food channel all keep your mind focused on exactly what you don't want it to be focused on. It is button you keep pushing and then wonder why you can't stop feeling anxiety about being on your diet.

We all have to get in our cars and drive by fast food places that pump their frying oil smell out to entice hungry drivers. We have to grocery shop for the family and smell the deli counter with the fried chicken or the bakery with all those tempting smells. It's unavoidable for most of us to smell food throughout the entire day. You can't control that, but you can control what you expose yourself to when you are alone and that is when most of us do our worst damage.

I have a few customers that have "friended" me on Face Book. I am always surprised to see how many recipes they post daily with enticing pictures of sugary fatty foods. What good are they doing themselves or others by sharing that? They are pushing that button over and over and almost inviting failure. I confronted one and he told me that "just because he can't eat it, doesn't mean he doesn't want to look at it". Hmmm....If you had a drug addiction, would you go hang out with dealers?

Clean out your environment. Avoid food signals in your social media. Don't watch The Food Channel. Take a different route to work that doesn't pass your favorite fast food place. Wear a spot of perfume under your nose to the store so you don't smell the fryer or the bakery. Close your eye during food commercials. Hearing about it won't cause a craving, but seeing it will.

Don't steer towards the headlights and expect not to crash.

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.