The first month of my returning focus on diet and exercise has had mixed results. I know from past practice that I can lose 14 – 20 pounds in a month. Losing this large amount required starvation, brought on what seemed like catastrophic muscle cramps, required a great deal of sleep and regimented eating of 5 – 6 small meals a day. I was depressed for a week and angry/hungry for another. Then I learned to accept starvation, to live with the feeling of not eating and of feeling lighter. It was exciting and I lost 44 pounds in four months, but this weight loss was also supported medically, was very expensive, and perhaps contributed to a catastrophic sciatic attack from which I have not fully recovered, even after two years. I don’t think the attack was the diet’s fault in any way, but the shifting weight was along with my inability to do any exercise while dieting.
Without medical support, past experience shows that I can at least lose ten pounds in a month through moderate diet/exercise. “The ‘E’ Word” is not my friend; it’s actually worse than eating healthy food—much worse. It’s a shame, because I was quite athletic for about 15 years of my life. But as I aged, had a baby and a husband, and settled into domestic life, the weight settled in with me. Isn’t that the story of millions of women? Our struggle to maintain healthy eating habits and an exercise regime along with everything else in life?
It definitely is part of my struggle; this month, I lost a meager eight pounds. Of course I am cycling through all the reasons why I didn’t achieve the 14 pounds I planned on. Of the food lapses, alcohol and missed exercise days, none of those reasons are as profound as my emotional state, which fluctuates quite wildly at times, particularly at this menopausal stage of my life! What’s emotion got to do with weight loss? It’s a broadly documented phenomenon that our emotional lives are connected to our eating habits, especially in overweight and obese people, who tend to use food for comfort. Any contemporary diet that treats the whole human in its weight loss program will discuss the connection between emotional health and a person’s ability to ultimately lose weight.
I know this intellectually. I first learned it in my sophomore year in college when I read and successfully used MacLeod text Mind Over Weight (1981) to lose 14 pounds. At this time, I was a psychology major drawn to specialization in behavioral modification. I had learned of the work of Albert Ellis (1913 – 2007) and Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) along with other behavioral modification theorists and practices. I successfully used RET for my own anger management, and it truly balanced my emotions. Losing weight at this time was much easier, and I lost about 30 pounds, achieving my lowest adult weight. While my academic pursuits migrated from psychology to the study of literature, I continued studying psychology theories to manage my high passions. With decades of reading and periodic successful assimilation of what I was learning, why did I find it now so hard to apply those theories to emotional management in my weight loss journey? How could I answer that question without seeming like I’m making excuses for lack of will power and discipline?
I have not been engaging in the even harder psychological work necessary to control my urge to eat the holy trinity—sugar-salt-fat. I know that I am a comfort eater. Progressively as I have lost more weight, 101 pounds in total, I have become savvier at supporting my emotional eating. I have learned to not binge, but I still eat things I shouldn’t. I have learned to eat smaller burgers with no cheese for instance to satisfy my constant burger craving. When I’m being really good, I make the burgers at home without buns and plenty of veggies. During my no-complex-carbs period, I would satisfy the headache and cravings that ultimately came by eating a bag of Chex™ mix. While I might not be consuming 700 or more calories with my cheating, I am still doing two things with it: throwing off my body’s fat burning and satisfying my need for comfort. What could possibly be so painful that I must apply the salve of food?
Currently, it’s a deep sense of sorrow over my disrupted security due to job loss and all that came with it. I falsely believed that I had to do whatever necessary to keep my nerves together, be strong through it all. I would have been much better off and better able to cope with the stress by maintaining a plant-based, high quality protein diet and taking my vitamins that would support my mental health and mood. Throw some exercise into that mix, and I would have been much better off than I was over the last four months. I didn’t do that but ran to get faded on some McDonalds.
I have had conversations with others in the health and wellness field about this subject. They agree that managing the emotional pains that cause overeating is a difficult but critical component of weight loss, and it’s often well worth it to seek professional assistance. But if you don’t want to go that far, or are unable to do so financially, there are multiple resources to help you manage on your own with practice and support. Simpler solutions, like journaling, can be invaluable in helping you unearth and grasp emotional traumas. Therapies like by Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) by Dr Joseph Mercola is a guided method of working through and releasing stress and pain caused by past or present emotional trauma. A number of books have been written to support emotional healing during weight loss. A contemporary version of the MacLeod (1981) title is found in Mind Over Weight: The Miraculous, New, Easy Way to Lose Weight (2002) by Martyn Dawes. An extensive series of exercises and discussion can help any person work out their issues.
I have to avoid letting the sense of grief and failure I feel over losing a job through no fault of my own transfer into feelings of failure in my weight loss program. I know I can succeed at it—it’s a series of steps I must uniformly follow daily to watch the weight literally fall off. Though I have lost as much weight as I have, I often don’t see myself as 100 pounds lighter. I still see the same fat girl in the mirror. But I’m lying to myself—I’m not that same person. A part of my emotional healing has to also be accepting, inviting, welcoming that new me into my consciousness and believing that she deserves to be there, regardless of what other failures or failed attempts exist.
A part of this process is to recognize that as my body changes and excretes toxins, I will also experience shifts in mood and even physical discomfort. These should not, but sometimes do, become triggers for eating; they are not an unendurable pain, nor should they provoke a woeful response. ETF could be used here, but another helpful practice to deal with stress and emotions is yoga. Because I started practicing certain yoga poses in 2000, I was able to manage sciatica, so I know of the astounding health benefits of this practice. But there is much more to yoga than exercise. It’s focus on controlled breathing and aligning the body, greatly scaffold the detoxification and ultimately the weight loss process.
This is the start of a new month. On March 7, I hope to say I have lost at least another nine pounds. But if I follow my own advice, that could be double.
Weight and All 