Because I realized at the age of 20 that there were no easy answers to my own morbid obesity, I had to come up with ways to lose weight on my own. It was my willingness to experiment, to step off the beaten path, that led to my current system of weight loss. Change had to come from within. Each of us eats for different reasons. Therefore, as individuals, we need to start with one bad habit and slowly, consistently substitute a good habit. Moreover, we need to simultaneously ask ourselves why and how we developed this bad habit.
One of the most common bad habits among emotional eaters is night eating. Does that sound familiar? You’re busy all day long. You have a job, school, children or other responsibilities. You’re running here, carpooling there. You’re putting in late nights at the office just to hang on to your job and your health insurance. You’re under too much stress on a daily basis. You are exhausted.
By the time you get home, you need to relax and calm down, or you’ll never be able to sleep. You’re drained physically and emotionally. So, you sit down in your favorite chair or on the couch. You watch TV, or you read, listen to music, or you go over your notes for a meeting the next day. You just want to soothe yourself, reward yourself, nurture yourself after giving so much to everyone else. You deserve a treat. OK, you’ve just had dinner, but so what? Maybe you’d like a little ice cream. After the first few bites your mouth is frozen, and you can’t really taste it, but you eat it all anyway. Then, you sit back and relax. Soon, before you even realize it or think about it, you’ve ripped open a bag of chips. You reach into the bag during a commercial, and you’re shocked that it’s nearly empty. Wasn’t that a full bag when you started?
Or, you take the healthy approach to night eating. You put together a large bowl of various cereals topped with wheat germ and layers of banana and sliced strawberries. You add some low-fat milk and gobble down the whole thing. It’s cereal and fresh fruit with low-fat milk, so isn’t that healthy food? Maybe you cut slice after slice of cheddar cheese and eat it on whole grain crackers. Aren’t those great choices? You’re eating protein and complex carbs, so what could be bad?
Well, maybe the foods are healthy, but it’s late at night. Those calories are not going to get burned off by exercise or daily activities. It isn’t exactly aerobic to brush your teeth, change in your pajamas and go to sleep. Therefore, all of those excess calories turn into stored fat. When this pattern of night eating repeats itself on a near-daily basis, the pounds keep adding up. People do not realize that a mere extra 100 calories per day will eventually translate into about 10 pounds of additional weight over the course of a year. The margin for error is very slim, indeed.
Most people who are night eaters find this a very difficult habit to break. Over the years, our brains become hard-wired to eat away the stresses of the day. Without even giving it a second thought, we start to eat after dinner, and we eat until we go to bed. I spoke to one woman who admitted that she ate so much at night that she often woke up surrounded by a half-empty bag of chips, a stack of crackers and crumbs in her bed. Sometimes, she whispered sadly, she had no idea she’d even taken these foods into her bedroom. She was on automatic pilot. Yes, it frightened her, but she had no idea how to fix the problem.
I asked her if she’d talked to her doctor or a therapist about her night eating. Apparently her doctor had confronted her when she went in for her last physical. He’d lectured her about her weight year after year, which had only caused her to get upset and eat more. His solution? “Just stop doing it!” he’d barked.
Well, that’s easier said than done. If you have an addiction to food, you can’t just stop. It doesn’t work that way. It’s an addiction. For example, the person who reaches for a cigarette with their coffee each morning is addicted to nicotine and habituated to certain daily rituals. There is the cigarette on the drive to work. The cigarette break outside, even when it’s freezing. The first puff after work. Beer and cigarettes with friends on the weekends. People who want to quit smoking not only need help withdrawing from nicotine, but they need to often change their daily habits because those habits trigger the hard-wiring in their brains that commands them to reach for a cigarette.
Although people can learn to live without nicotine, people cannot live without food. We must eat to live. The substance to which we are addicted cannot be kept out of our lives. So, how do we change those bad habits? How do we rewire our brains?
With night eating, I made a decision to start very slowly. What I’d learned was that doing anything cold turkey did not work for me. Quitting night eating cold, which I’d tried to do dozens of times, only led me to get nervous, frustrated and depressed. I’d feel deprived and miserable. My brain would keep telling me to eat. I deserved it. I’d worked hard all day. It was like a little devil whispering in my right ear, “Eat, you know you want to.” The angel who whispered in my left ear pleaded, “Please don’t do it,” would eventually get drowned out. I simply could not control the impulse.
Realizing that my brain needed to be retrained truly helped me to understand why, even though I’m not a weak-willed person, I gave in to the ice cream or toast with jam or the reheated leftovers time after time.
My first step was to ask myself some questions? What foods were trigger foods? By that I mean, what foods will cause me to eat more and more and more until I’m in a food coma. Those foods comprised two elements. High fat foods and high sugar foods were my two worst problems. I know that if I start to eat ice cream, for example, I simply cannot stop until I’ve eaten it all. Ice cream is both high fat and high sugar. Sour cream is another example. I always used to joke, “Give me a pint of sour cream and a long handled spoon and go away, please.” I could easily sit down and eat the whole thing. I realized that these foods soothed me, calmed me, relaxed me. They were like tranquilizers to me. I didn’t need a Valium. I needed a hot fudge sundae!
So, I decided that the first step was to keep the high fat foods out of the house. I named my house my “food fortress.” This is the exact same technique I use today. Only good foods can safely enter my food fortress. The trigger foods must be kept out in order for me to stay safe. If I am secure inside of my food fortress, then I cannot be tempted to eat myself into a food coma.
Yes, I have worked with clients who will throw on a jacket and head to the nearest convenience store to buy their favorite trigger foods at 2 AM, but that involves a whole other set of strategies for change. For now, we’ll stick to how I resolved night eating for myself.
On the first night inside my food fortress, as hard as I tried, I kept obsessing about high fat foods, sugar, cookies, even things I didn’t like or want. My brain was telling me to feed it. I began to shake and sweat. It was like going into a drug withdrawal. I knew that I could not go cold turkey. Doing that would involve deprivation. Deprivation = dieting. That never works. So, I cut up an apple, took a few crackers and cut a small cube of cheese. All of the foods were healthy, and the portions were small. Slowly, ever so slowly, I concentrated on eating, enjoying every taste sensation, every bite. If my attention or thoughts strayed, I brought them back to eating. I wanted to be conscious of my choices, conscious of eating. For far too long, night eating was simply an unconscious habit. That had to change. So, for a while, that is all I did at night. I ate healthy food, smaller portions and kept myself focused on what and why I was eating. Once I had that part of the process down pat, I started on the next phase.
What will soothe me other than food? I asked myself. I ran a bath for myself, climbed in with a book and started to read. I made myself soak and soak until my skin was puckered and beet red. Eventually, the panic and shakes went away. I felt drowsy. After rubbing in some refreshing body lotion, I climbed into bed and fell asleep. I actually went to sleep without eating at night for the first time in over a decade!
The next morning, I woke up really hungry. That was a new and different sensation. Usually, I’d eaten so much food the night before that I was never hungry in the morning. I was both surprised and delighted because I realized this was proof that I had made a change in my eating habits.
Proud of my accomplishment, I was sure it would be easier on night #2. No, it wasn’t. Remember, our brains get hard-wired over a period of years. I kept telling myself that if my brain was wired to eat at night, I could develop strategies that would help me to eventually cut that wire and reroute it. I was determined to keep to my new program. On the second night, I again started to shake and have cravings. Temptation was overwhelming me. I told myself, “This is a bad habit. It need not be a life-long habit.” Instead of giving in, I called a fellow classmate to ask some questions about a reading assignment. Honestly, I didn’t need help with my homework. I needed help with my night eating. My school friend and I discussed the assignment and then we got to gossiping about some of our classmates, especially the one who always arrived late and asked the most questions. We had a lot of fun on the phone and even made a date to get together for coffee after our class. What I realized, when I got off the phone, is that by totally shifting my focus, I had not only lost the urge to eat, but I had started to build a new friendship.
Each night, I worked on this challenge. Some nights, I failed and gave in to eating again. But, when I did, I told myself the following: I am human. I will make mistakes. I will search my heart and forgive myself. I will not punish or reward myself with food. I will nourish my body with food, but I will nourish my heart and mind and spirit with loving kindness toward myself and others. I will move forward. I will remain committed to my plan. Over time, I will succeed.
The process took several years. Yes, several years! It wasn’t easy. There were ups and downs. When my life took a very stressful turn, I reverted to eating to calm myself. I regained some weight I’d lost. But, instead of throwing in the towel, I reminded myself that I could do this. I had done this. I just had to return to my program and use the strategies that I had developed that I knew worked for me. Eventually, I learned to do other things at night. If I watched television, I made sure to get up and walk around the house while commercials were on because any food ads made me want to eat. That was an effective strategy for change. If I read, I used a squeeze ball to help strengthen my arthritic fingers. That kept my other hand busy so I wouldn’t be reaching for food. If I decided that I truly was hungry, I’d make a firm decision about what I could eat and how much, knowing that it was not an invitation to keep eating. I might have a slice of toast with no butter or an apple or a small yogurt. But, by that point, I could recognize true hunger as opposed to just eating to soothe myself or relieve stress or boredom. It was not emotional eating anymore.
All eating must be conscious eating. When we eat, we need to understand why we are doing it until we slowly rewire our brains. Now, when I’m stressed out, I actually can’t eat. That is proof to me that my system works. As I live each day, I have a chance to reinforce my hard-won good habits. It does take time, effort and consistency, but it can be done. I am living proof that you can conquer compulsive eating for life!
I would welcome your comments, your questions, your thoughts about your own bad eating habits. What kind of strategies have worked or failed for you? What eating habits are still challenging for you?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Step Three: Habits - No Free Lunch
As I wrote in my previous post, the good news is that we can change our eating habits. We can substitute good habits for bad ones. However, that takes time, experimentation and patience. Just as we build bad eating habits over many years, we have to slowly dismantle those habits one baby-step at a time. But, as we’re working toward breaking a bad habit, we have to keep substituting and reinforcing the good one. Consistency is the key. We are literally retraining our brains to think, act and react differently to food. We are simultaneously retraining our brains to find new ways to constructively deal with emotions without reaching for food. Because these changes are so difficult and time-consuming, we have to have patience with ourselves, learn from our mistakes and remain dedicated to the task at hand. Yes, we can do it, but it takes time and effort.
I’d like to share a story with you about what happens when someone who is struggling with emotional eating refuses to work on his bad habits. I used to swim with a man, we’ll call him Bob, who had a serious weight problem. After we got to know each other, I told him about the individual programs that I create for emotional eaters. Each time I explained my plan, he nodded in agreement. Yes, he was an emotional eater. Yes, he ate when he was stressed. Yes, he had terrible eating habits, and he knew it. He listened attentively, agreed with me and asked me a lot of questions. I got really excited about his interest because my passion is to help people to lose weight, especially people who’ve gotten to the point where they believe it’s impossible. They’ve tried the diets, the groups, the pills, but nothing has worked. That was exactly how Bob felt. He’d tried everything, but he’d only wound up fatter and more depressed than ever. He’d come to the conclusion that his situation was hopeless. I believed that I was offering him hope.
Did Bob ever decide to become my weight loss client and work with me? No, he did not. Why? He did not want to do the hard work to truly change how he used food to help him cope with his emotions. Instead of heeding my words of encouragement and my free advice, he continued to eat. His weight continued to climb. It made me sad to see him at the gym because despite his vigorous workouts, he was heavier than ever. For me, as a weight loss coach, it’s like watching someone who is drowning. I’m throwing them a lifeline, but they keep refusing to grab on.
Eventually, he needed knee replacement surgery His doctor told him that his knee had worn out due to his obesity. Then, the cartilage in the other knee wore out. Finally, he required back surgery. His doctors told him that his weight was literally killing him. He had Type 2 Diabetes, high blood pressure and he’d already suffered a minor heart attack.
I did not want to give up on my gym buddy, so I talked to him again. At that point, after so many trips to the operating room, I was certain the last thing Bob would do is to elect to undergo bypass surgery for weight loss. Well, I was wrong. Bob did exactly that. I do realize that for many morbidly obese people, this surgery is a lifesaver. It does seem to cure Type 2 Diabetes almost overnight. For some, it is a medical necessity, but for Bob? Well, he thought it was not only necessary, but his only logical choice.
Prior to having bypass surgery for weight loss, all patients, including Bob, were required to have physicals, blood work and all of the medical tests necessary to prepare them for the surgery. In addition, all patients were required to undergo many months of counseling to learn about nutrition and how to control emotional eating. However, despite all of the counseling and group discussions, Bob continued to eat more and more and more. Why? Because he’d learned, through his counseling, that he’d never be able to eat the same way again. No more pizza nights with his extended family where he ate almost an entire pepperoni pie by himself. No more porterhouse steaks and beers with the guys on a Friday night after work. Everything was going to change. The closer his surgery date came, the more he stuffed himself. By the time he had his bypass surgery, he’d gone from 304 pounds up to 365 pounds. He was so focused on being deprived, that he was determined to eat everything he knew he’d have to give up after his surgery.
Like most bypass patients, that first year was a honeymoon. The weight just melted off. He lost about 85 pounds. He looked like a different person. But, he was still struggling. Some days, he’d subsist on crackers, popcorn and diet Jell-O. Other days, he couldn’t stop his urges to eat whatever he wanted simply because he wanted it, which resulted in severe diarrhea or vomiting. Although he continued to receive nutritional counseling and psychological support, his brain, his hard-wired brain, had not changed. He still saw food as a source of comfort, as a way to relieve boredom, as a way to cope with life’s ups and downs.
Once he returned to the gym, he attacked exercise with a vengeance. He was determined to keep losing weight. But, because he alternated between starving himself and stuffing himself, he got sick, so sick he wound up in the hospital. The doctors questioned him about his eating habits, but a friend of his said Bob lied to the doctors because he’d signed a contract at the clinic that he would stick to his eating plan. After that episode, he decided to simply starve himself. No more bingeing one day and then barely eating the next. He was a combat veteran. He was tough. He could survive on popcorn, diet soda and an apple a day. That would prove to the doctors as well as to himself that he was capable of losing weight once and for all. He was determined to get the weight off and turn himself into the buff guy he’d been in high school decades before.
What happened next was truly frightening. One day, after a hard workout at the gym and very little food, he had a seizure. He was taken, by ambulance, to the hospital. The doctors did not want him to drive, so he stayed at home unless one of his friends brought him along to the gym. The next time I saw Bob, he looked haggard, sick and depressed. Yes, he was much thinner, but not healthy-looking. His skin was pallid, his eyes sunken in.
Instead of facing himself and his emotional issues, Bob continued to focus on the exterior instead of the interior. A few months later, Bob had another seizure. He could not heed my words that, “Change starts from within.”
Eventually, as a result of starving himself, he lost so much weight that he had a lot of excess skin hanging around his midsection. After a trip to Vegas, where a young bikini-clad girl teased him about it, he decided to have a tummy tuck. His bypass doctors tried to discourage him, but Bob insisted that after all of his hard work, he’d earned this. He could not exercise away the loose, flabby skin around his midsection. The first doctor Bob saw refused to do the surgery because of Bob’s seizure history. He told Bob it was better to be alive and flabby rather than dead from what was essentially a cosmetic procedure. Instead of taking the doctor’s advice to heart, Bob continued to search until he found a doctor who would do a tummy tuck on him. After the surgery, Bob developed a severe infection and almost died.
Despite everything Bob had endured, he still felt he was making wise decisions. Wasn’t he down over 100 pounds? Didn’t he look great? Well, no, he looked as though he’d aged 10 years. He seemed exhausted. The sparkle was gone from his eyes.
After not seeing Bob at the gym for a while, I asked a friend of his how he was doing. He told me that Bob had had a stroke and was no longer able to come to the gym. He’d suffered extensive brain damage. I felt terrible and sad. Bob was a man of extremes who’d sought out what he thought was going to be an easy solution to his weight problem. What he found out was that he’d actually chosen the hardest path possible.
Obviously, there are many people who have bypass surgery and do well. Again, this is a very personal decision. But, why would someone choose this surgery when there truly are other, safer, non-surgical options? When it comes to weight loss, there is no free lunch. Either a person is going to acknowledge their problems with food, or they will keep trying to find the quick fix, the easy answer, the instant result.
I’d like to share a story with you about what happens when someone who is struggling with emotional eating refuses to work on his bad habits. I used to swim with a man, we’ll call him Bob, who had a serious weight problem. After we got to know each other, I told him about the individual programs that I create for emotional eaters. Each time I explained my plan, he nodded in agreement. Yes, he was an emotional eater. Yes, he ate when he was stressed. Yes, he had terrible eating habits, and he knew it. He listened attentively, agreed with me and asked me a lot of questions. I got really excited about his interest because my passion is to help people to lose weight, especially people who’ve gotten to the point where they believe it’s impossible. They’ve tried the diets, the groups, the pills, but nothing has worked. That was exactly how Bob felt. He’d tried everything, but he’d only wound up fatter and more depressed than ever. He’d come to the conclusion that his situation was hopeless. I believed that I was offering him hope.
Did Bob ever decide to become my weight loss client and work with me? No, he did not. Why? He did not want to do the hard work to truly change how he used food to help him cope with his emotions. Instead of heeding my words of encouragement and my free advice, he continued to eat. His weight continued to climb. It made me sad to see him at the gym because despite his vigorous workouts, he was heavier than ever. For me, as a weight loss coach, it’s like watching someone who is drowning. I’m throwing them a lifeline, but they keep refusing to grab on.
Eventually, he needed knee replacement surgery His doctor told him that his knee had worn out due to his obesity. Then, the cartilage in the other knee wore out. Finally, he required back surgery. His doctors told him that his weight was literally killing him. He had Type 2 Diabetes, high blood pressure and he’d already suffered a minor heart attack.
I did not want to give up on my gym buddy, so I talked to him again. At that point, after so many trips to the operating room, I was certain the last thing Bob would do is to elect to undergo bypass surgery for weight loss. Well, I was wrong. Bob did exactly that. I do realize that for many morbidly obese people, this surgery is a lifesaver. It does seem to cure Type 2 Diabetes almost overnight. For some, it is a medical necessity, but for Bob? Well, he thought it was not only necessary, but his only logical choice.
Prior to having bypass surgery for weight loss, all patients, including Bob, were required to have physicals, blood work and all of the medical tests necessary to prepare them for the surgery. In addition, all patients were required to undergo many months of counseling to learn about nutrition and how to control emotional eating. However, despite all of the counseling and group discussions, Bob continued to eat more and more and more. Why? Because he’d learned, through his counseling, that he’d never be able to eat the same way again. No more pizza nights with his extended family where he ate almost an entire pepperoni pie by himself. No more porterhouse steaks and beers with the guys on a Friday night after work. Everything was going to change. The closer his surgery date came, the more he stuffed himself. By the time he had his bypass surgery, he’d gone from 304 pounds up to 365 pounds. He was so focused on being deprived, that he was determined to eat everything he knew he’d have to give up after his surgery.
Like most bypass patients, that first year was a honeymoon. The weight just melted off. He lost about 85 pounds. He looked like a different person. But, he was still struggling. Some days, he’d subsist on crackers, popcorn and diet Jell-O. Other days, he couldn’t stop his urges to eat whatever he wanted simply because he wanted it, which resulted in severe diarrhea or vomiting. Although he continued to receive nutritional counseling and psychological support, his brain, his hard-wired brain, had not changed. He still saw food as a source of comfort, as a way to relieve boredom, as a way to cope with life’s ups and downs.
Once he returned to the gym, he attacked exercise with a vengeance. He was determined to keep losing weight. But, because he alternated between starving himself and stuffing himself, he got sick, so sick he wound up in the hospital. The doctors questioned him about his eating habits, but a friend of his said Bob lied to the doctors because he’d signed a contract at the clinic that he would stick to his eating plan. After that episode, he decided to simply starve himself. No more bingeing one day and then barely eating the next. He was a combat veteran. He was tough. He could survive on popcorn, diet soda and an apple a day. That would prove to the doctors as well as to himself that he was capable of losing weight once and for all. He was determined to get the weight off and turn himself into the buff guy he’d been in high school decades before.
What happened next was truly frightening. One day, after a hard workout at the gym and very little food, he had a seizure. He was taken, by ambulance, to the hospital. The doctors did not want him to drive, so he stayed at home unless one of his friends brought him along to the gym. The next time I saw Bob, he looked haggard, sick and depressed. Yes, he was much thinner, but not healthy-looking. His skin was pallid, his eyes sunken in.
Instead of facing himself and his emotional issues, Bob continued to focus on the exterior instead of the interior. A few months later, Bob had another seizure. He could not heed my words that, “Change starts from within.”
Eventually, as a result of starving himself, he lost so much weight that he had a lot of excess skin hanging around his midsection. After a trip to Vegas, where a young bikini-clad girl teased him about it, he decided to have a tummy tuck. His bypass doctors tried to discourage him, but Bob insisted that after all of his hard work, he’d earned this. He could not exercise away the loose, flabby skin around his midsection. The first doctor Bob saw refused to do the surgery because of Bob’s seizure history. He told Bob it was better to be alive and flabby rather than dead from what was essentially a cosmetic procedure. Instead of taking the doctor’s advice to heart, Bob continued to search until he found a doctor who would do a tummy tuck on him. After the surgery, Bob developed a severe infection and almost died.
Despite everything Bob had endured, he still felt he was making wise decisions. Wasn’t he down over 100 pounds? Didn’t he look great? Well, no, he looked as though he’d aged 10 years. He seemed exhausted. The sparkle was gone from his eyes.
After not seeing Bob at the gym for a while, I asked a friend of his how he was doing. He told me that Bob had had a stroke and was no longer able to come to the gym. He’d suffered extensive brain damage. I felt terrible and sad. Bob was a man of extremes who’d sought out what he thought was going to be an easy solution to his weight problem. What he found out was that he’d actually chosen the hardest path possible.
Obviously, there are many people who have bypass surgery and do well. Again, this is a very personal decision. But, why would someone choose this surgery when there truly are other, safer, non-surgical options? When it comes to weight loss, there is no free lunch. Either a person is going to acknowledge their problems with food, or they will keep trying to find the quick fix, the easy answer, the instant result.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Step Three: Habits
We all have habits, both good and bad. But, when it comes to eating, we often don’t give our habits a second thought. If I had asked myself back then how I had gotten so fat and why I could never stick to a diet from the ages of 10 to 20, I would have been stymied by those questions. That might sound strange, but like a lot of overweight people, I had no idea that I ate vastly larger portions than I needed. That extra food turned into stored fat. I didn’t understand anything about nutrition or exercise or how calories really worked. It was all a muddle to me. Honestly, I preferred not to think about it. I was fat. I was miserable. I had tried diet after diet. I had failed to lose weight. In fact, each year, I was fatter and more miserable than ever. It seemed like a hopeless cycle of desperation and defeat.
It was only when I turned 20 and really started asking myself some hard questions that I realized several things about myself. Because I was in a hurry to get to the bus stop to catch the 7:30 AM bus into New York City, I was in the habit of skipping breakfast. I had a 9 AM class and a 1 ½ hour commute each way on a daily basis. I preferred to sleep a little later rather than eat. Of course, by the time I got into Manhattan, I was starving. So, I’d stop at the local eatery near NYU and grab a hot dog and a coffee with extra cream and 3 packs of sugar, then wolf it all down while taking notes in class.
By the time I got home, I had a sick, widower father who needed my care. I had housecleaning, laundry, errands. I also had reading assignments, papers to write, tests and exams. I was on constant overload both physically and emotionally. Each day was so draining that I ate and ate to keep myself going. Each day was about fulfilling the demands and expectations of others.
I had been brought up to be a caretaker and a nurturer. That was all I knew. My life was devoted to meeting the needs of others. I took my pleasure from being helpful and compassionate and kind. I asked nothing in return. I was selfless.
Selfless? Yes, selfless. I had no clue who I was, what I wanted or needed. I was there to serve others, love others, protect others, but what about me? While most children think the world centers around them, I never thought that. The message I got was utterly different. When I was little more than 5 years old, I started to slowly help my dad take care of my sick mother. My Daddy needed me to help while he was at work, and I would not fail him. Although I had an older sister, she was not the helpful sort. My father recognized that, so he placed the burden of our mother’s care on me. No one thanked me. No one praised me. I was expected to be a dutiful child, and so I was. This was normal to me.
When I was 10 years old and my sister was 12, our mother died. Not that long afterward, our father suffered a massive heart attack. My sister and I lived in fear that one day, sooner or later, we’d be orphans. Then what? My sister coped by going into denial and turning herself into the perfect young lady. She was smart, pretty, sociable and above all, thin. I turned myself into the workhorse who ate for comfort, for security, for companionship. I was all alone with my worries, my fears, my insecurities. I could not tell my father. What if I upset him, and he had a heart attack? I did not want to kill my father. I wanted to save him. During the next decade, he wound up in the ICU about every 2-3 years. At that time, the only treatment available to him was prayer. This was before lifesaving surgeries and stents and statins. Our father’s life was in God’s hands.
Food became my only escape from constant anxiety and stress, my one true nurturer, my only comfort in my darkest hours, my only friend in time of need. Food was always there. It was the one constant in my life. Yes, I understand that now, but I didn’t understand it then. If I ate, I felt soothed. If I ate, I felt nurtured. If I ate, I felt less afraid. But, then, inevitably, I’d feel guilty. I’d berate myself and promise to stop eating, but I had to eat to live, didn’t I? It was a vicious cycle.
To add to my confusion, my sister never gained weight. In fact, my parents had always encouraged her to eat because she was a picky eater and didn’t like a lot of foods. As a child, she was skinny, bone-thin. So, if my sister wanted to heat up a frozen pizza at 9 PM, that was a good thing. If she wanted to go to the local place that served super-sized strawberry malteds, off we went. If you were thin, I learned early, you were a good girl, a nice girl, an adored girl. If you were fat, you were undesirable, period. If you were thin, you got positive attention. If you were fat, you got picked on, so better to stay in the shadows and hope no one even noticed you were there.
Like most overweight adults, my bad habits had started in my childhood. What I learned from my mother was that being fat was bad. Denying oneself food was good. Unfortunately, her constant attempts to deny me food only made me crave it all that much more. Despite the risk of punishment, I learned to steal food, hide in a closet in the basement and eat all alone, gobbling bread or slices of cheese or a few crackers I was sure would not be missed. The more my mother deprived me, the more my life focused on getting food. Desperation drove me forward. By the time I entered kindergarten, which was the same year my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was already obsessed with food.
After my mother died, I ate and I ate and I ate. The person who had controlled my eating was not there to say no, to grab my plate, to scream at me and tell me I was fat. While my mother was alive, I really was not fat. But, after she died, I became her worst nightmare. What I wanted was comfort and love. What I wanted, above all else, was someone to protect me. I had no one to protect me. Instead, I became the “little mother” to my family. I had to protect them. So, I turned to food.
My brain became hard-wired to reach for food in any and all situations. My bad eating habits became ingrained. Whenever I felt a powerful emotion, whether it was happy or sad, exhausted or stimulated, anxious or competent, whatever I felt was directly wired to food. It was no longer a conscious decision, a choice, an act of volition. Instead, it was like Pavlov’s dogs. I was trained, over time, to reach for food as the solution to every problem, to every mood, to every hurt. I had no other source of comfort or solace in my life. Did I understand any of this? No. By the time I was only 10 years old, I weighed over 100 pounds. The cycle was fixed. The bad habits were entrenched.
For the next decade of my life, I used food as my salvation. It was all I had. My father was in and out of the hospital. He suffered heart attacks and angina attacks. I lived in fear. Would I come home from school and find him dead at the kitchen table? Since my father was also a compulsive eater, this was our bond. We ate. We talked. We read books. We shared cultural interests. But, food was our strongest link. It was how we showed our love for each other and for family and friends. If we had company, they had to leave with full bellies, or we were disappointed and feared we had been inhospitable. Food was love. If food were truly love, I should have been the most loved teenager on the planet. Instead, I was growing increasingly fatter, more depressed than ever, more hopeless as my clothing size soared into the stratosphere.
When our dad had his last heart attack, I was a 20-year-old junior in college and my sister was long since married. Within a few months of our father’s recovery, he proposed to his long-time lady friend. That marriage set me free for the first time since I was only 5. I actually had someone to help me care for the household and my dad. My stepmother hired a housekeeper. My stepmother and I shared the shopping, the cooking, the chores. I could finally step back and think about myself for the first time in my life.
What I realized was that I had a long list of bad habits. I ate in response to everything in my life. For example, prior to my dad’s remarriage, I was so nervous about having a new stepmother that I gained 10 pounds in 3 months. I could barely find anything to wear to the wedding ceremony. After the marriage, with a lessening of my responsibilities and with my stepmother’s support, I started to take a hard look at my eating habits. Since I didn’t have to stay up until all hours finishing the laundry or dusting or cleaning the bathroom, I had time to get up and eat breakfast before leaving for my commute. That was the first habit I changed. Yet, when I arrived at Washington Square, my initial impulse, despite having had a full breakfast, was to hit the Chock Full O’Nuts for a hot dog and coffee. Why? I wasn’t hungry, but a powerful message in my brain triggered off the need to eat anyway. For several weeks, I walked into the bustling restaurant and ordered my usual. Since I’d paid for it, I ate it. I did not waste food. I did not want to waste my money. But, one day, after buying my meal, I saw a man who looked hungry. I asked him if he wanted something to eat. He nodded. I handed him the bag. He was hungry; I was not. I raced upstairs to a study hall for commuters on the second floor. I found an isolated desk in the back, put my head down and cried silently. I understood in that moment that I was not in control of my life. I was like an automaton, a robot, who had dark forces propelling her toward a complete lack of control over her impulses. Did I want to keep living like this forever? No, I did not. It was too painful.
That was the first time in my life that I truly recognized and understood that I had a pathway in my brain, long-used, that led to unconscious eating. If it truly was a bad habit, then there was hope that I could change it into a good habit. I decided that each day, I would buy something to eat and give it away to someone in need whether it was a person on the street or a fellow student. I would turn my bad habit into something positive, life-affirming and good.
But, despite my daily good deed, I knew that the urge to eat was still there. That puzzled me. I had had a healthy breakfast with an emphasis on high-protein as my stepmother had recommended. So, I started to keep a journal where I could pour out my thoughts on this subject. “Why do I want to eat even though I’m not hungry?” The bottom line was that I always ate without thinking. I simply kept right on eating until I was in a food coma. Then, I would stop, exhausted and dazed, bloated and miserable. I was not loving myself with food. I was punishing myself with food. I was not soothing myself by eating. I was only increasing both my anxiety and my weight. I had no concept of who I was except a “Fat Girl.” Did I want to remain a fat girl, or did I want to change?
I made a list of all of my bad food habits. Each time I thought I’d finished the list, I had something else to add. I was getting overwhelmed. And, what did I want to do when I felt overwhelmed, I wanted to eat, of course. So, I had to add that to the list. I shoved the list in a drawer. That was not working.
After giving it a lot of thought, I decided to step back and think about how I had gotten so fat. I had gained the weight over a long period of years. If I took 100 pounds as my starting weight at the age of 10, I had added an additional 130 pounds over a decade. That was equal to 13 pounds a year. Well, no, that wasn’t accurate. Over those years, I’d gone on quite a few diets. I’d lost at least 60 pounds give or take a few. So, in essence, I’d really gained a whopping 190 pounds! My heart started to race. 190 pounds.
I decided that if I hoped to lose the weight once and for all, I had to start slowly, make one change at a time. I had to keep eating my healthy breakfast each morning. That was my first good habit, the first positive change. However, when I got to school, I had to resist the well-worn pathway in my brain that still urged me to eat again. That meant stopping my “good deed” of buying a meal, but I could do something else for someone. I had to distract myself from food altogether. Therefore, I went straight to class. Since another student was struggling with our course, which was Chinese Politics, I offered to help tutor her for free. By shifting my focus to a strength, my intellect, instead of my weakness, the constant craving for food, I slowly built a new habit. By the end of the semester, once I arrived at school, I was hungry for knowledge, not food. I was proud of my hard work, and I made sure to celebrate, without food, to note my accomplishment. That was something new in my life. Praising myself had never been my strong suit. I was determined to change that.
I’d like you to think about one and only one bad eating habit you have acquired over the years. Write it down in your journal or a piece of paper. Put it away and allow yourself to think of a strategy that will work for you. How can you challenge that well-worn pathway in your brain that triggers overeating? What can you do to turn a negative behavior into a positive one? Don’t worry if you don’t succeed at first. No one does. Just remind yourself that if you believe in yourself and keep to your plan, you will succeed. Remember, you are carving out a new life for yourself. That means taking it one step at a time. It might take a few months to change that bad habit into a good one, but that will be time and effort well spent.
In my next post, I’m going to continue the discussion of eating habits.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to use the comments link below. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
It was only when I turned 20 and really started asking myself some hard questions that I realized several things about myself. Because I was in a hurry to get to the bus stop to catch the 7:30 AM bus into New York City, I was in the habit of skipping breakfast. I had a 9 AM class and a 1 ½ hour commute each way on a daily basis. I preferred to sleep a little later rather than eat. Of course, by the time I got into Manhattan, I was starving. So, I’d stop at the local eatery near NYU and grab a hot dog and a coffee with extra cream and 3 packs of sugar, then wolf it all down while taking notes in class.
By the time I got home, I had a sick, widower father who needed my care. I had housecleaning, laundry, errands. I also had reading assignments, papers to write, tests and exams. I was on constant overload both physically and emotionally. Each day was so draining that I ate and ate to keep myself going. Each day was about fulfilling the demands and expectations of others.
I had been brought up to be a caretaker and a nurturer. That was all I knew. My life was devoted to meeting the needs of others. I took my pleasure from being helpful and compassionate and kind. I asked nothing in return. I was selfless.
Selfless? Yes, selfless. I had no clue who I was, what I wanted or needed. I was there to serve others, love others, protect others, but what about me? While most children think the world centers around them, I never thought that. The message I got was utterly different. When I was little more than 5 years old, I started to slowly help my dad take care of my sick mother. My Daddy needed me to help while he was at work, and I would not fail him. Although I had an older sister, she was not the helpful sort. My father recognized that, so he placed the burden of our mother’s care on me. No one thanked me. No one praised me. I was expected to be a dutiful child, and so I was. This was normal to me.
When I was 10 years old and my sister was 12, our mother died. Not that long afterward, our father suffered a massive heart attack. My sister and I lived in fear that one day, sooner or later, we’d be orphans. Then what? My sister coped by going into denial and turning herself into the perfect young lady. She was smart, pretty, sociable and above all, thin. I turned myself into the workhorse who ate for comfort, for security, for companionship. I was all alone with my worries, my fears, my insecurities. I could not tell my father. What if I upset him, and he had a heart attack? I did not want to kill my father. I wanted to save him. During the next decade, he wound up in the ICU about every 2-3 years. At that time, the only treatment available to him was prayer. This was before lifesaving surgeries and stents and statins. Our father’s life was in God’s hands.
Food became my only escape from constant anxiety and stress, my one true nurturer, my only comfort in my darkest hours, my only friend in time of need. Food was always there. It was the one constant in my life. Yes, I understand that now, but I didn’t understand it then. If I ate, I felt soothed. If I ate, I felt nurtured. If I ate, I felt less afraid. But, then, inevitably, I’d feel guilty. I’d berate myself and promise to stop eating, but I had to eat to live, didn’t I? It was a vicious cycle.
To add to my confusion, my sister never gained weight. In fact, my parents had always encouraged her to eat because she was a picky eater and didn’t like a lot of foods. As a child, she was skinny, bone-thin. So, if my sister wanted to heat up a frozen pizza at 9 PM, that was a good thing. If she wanted to go to the local place that served super-sized strawberry malteds, off we went. If you were thin, I learned early, you were a good girl, a nice girl, an adored girl. If you were fat, you were undesirable, period. If you were thin, you got positive attention. If you were fat, you got picked on, so better to stay in the shadows and hope no one even noticed you were there.
Like most overweight adults, my bad habits had started in my childhood. What I learned from my mother was that being fat was bad. Denying oneself food was good. Unfortunately, her constant attempts to deny me food only made me crave it all that much more. Despite the risk of punishment, I learned to steal food, hide in a closet in the basement and eat all alone, gobbling bread or slices of cheese or a few crackers I was sure would not be missed. The more my mother deprived me, the more my life focused on getting food. Desperation drove me forward. By the time I entered kindergarten, which was the same year my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was already obsessed with food.
After my mother died, I ate and I ate and I ate. The person who had controlled my eating was not there to say no, to grab my plate, to scream at me and tell me I was fat. While my mother was alive, I really was not fat. But, after she died, I became her worst nightmare. What I wanted was comfort and love. What I wanted, above all else, was someone to protect me. I had no one to protect me. Instead, I became the “little mother” to my family. I had to protect them. So, I turned to food.
My brain became hard-wired to reach for food in any and all situations. My bad eating habits became ingrained. Whenever I felt a powerful emotion, whether it was happy or sad, exhausted or stimulated, anxious or competent, whatever I felt was directly wired to food. It was no longer a conscious decision, a choice, an act of volition. Instead, it was like Pavlov’s dogs. I was trained, over time, to reach for food as the solution to every problem, to every mood, to every hurt. I had no other source of comfort or solace in my life. Did I understand any of this? No. By the time I was only 10 years old, I weighed over 100 pounds. The cycle was fixed. The bad habits were entrenched.
For the next decade of my life, I used food as my salvation. It was all I had. My father was in and out of the hospital. He suffered heart attacks and angina attacks. I lived in fear. Would I come home from school and find him dead at the kitchen table? Since my father was also a compulsive eater, this was our bond. We ate. We talked. We read books. We shared cultural interests. But, food was our strongest link. It was how we showed our love for each other and for family and friends. If we had company, they had to leave with full bellies, or we were disappointed and feared we had been inhospitable. Food was love. If food were truly love, I should have been the most loved teenager on the planet. Instead, I was growing increasingly fatter, more depressed than ever, more hopeless as my clothing size soared into the stratosphere.
When our dad had his last heart attack, I was a 20-year-old junior in college and my sister was long since married. Within a few months of our father’s recovery, he proposed to his long-time lady friend. That marriage set me free for the first time since I was only 5. I actually had someone to help me care for the household and my dad. My stepmother hired a housekeeper. My stepmother and I shared the shopping, the cooking, the chores. I could finally step back and think about myself for the first time in my life.
What I realized was that I had a long list of bad habits. I ate in response to everything in my life. For example, prior to my dad’s remarriage, I was so nervous about having a new stepmother that I gained 10 pounds in 3 months. I could barely find anything to wear to the wedding ceremony. After the marriage, with a lessening of my responsibilities and with my stepmother’s support, I started to take a hard look at my eating habits. Since I didn’t have to stay up until all hours finishing the laundry or dusting or cleaning the bathroom, I had time to get up and eat breakfast before leaving for my commute. That was the first habit I changed. Yet, when I arrived at Washington Square, my initial impulse, despite having had a full breakfast, was to hit the Chock Full O’Nuts for a hot dog and coffee. Why? I wasn’t hungry, but a powerful message in my brain triggered off the need to eat anyway. For several weeks, I walked into the bustling restaurant and ordered my usual. Since I’d paid for it, I ate it. I did not waste food. I did not want to waste my money. But, one day, after buying my meal, I saw a man who looked hungry. I asked him if he wanted something to eat. He nodded. I handed him the bag. He was hungry; I was not. I raced upstairs to a study hall for commuters on the second floor. I found an isolated desk in the back, put my head down and cried silently. I understood in that moment that I was not in control of my life. I was like an automaton, a robot, who had dark forces propelling her toward a complete lack of control over her impulses. Did I want to keep living like this forever? No, I did not. It was too painful.
That was the first time in my life that I truly recognized and understood that I had a pathway in my brain, long-used, that led to unconscious eating. If it truly was a bad habit, then there was hope that I could change it into a good habit. I decided that each day, I would buy something to eat and give it away to someone in need whether it was a person on the street or a fellow student. I would turn my bad habit into something positive, life-affirming and good.
But, despite my daily good deed, I knew that the urge to eat was still there. That puzzled me. I had had a healthy breakfast with an emphasis on high-protein as my stepmother had recommended. So, I started to keep a journal where I could pour out my thoughts on this subject. “Why do I want to eat even though I’m not hungry?” The bottom line was that I always ate without thinking. I simply kept right on eating until I was in a food coma. Then, I would stop, exhausted and dazed, bloated and miserable. I was not loving myself with food. I was punishing myself with food. I was not soothing myself by eating. I was only increasing both my anxiety and my weight. I had no concept of who I was except a “Fat Girl.” Did I want to remain a fat girl, or did I want to change?
I made a list of all of my bad food habits. Each time I thought I’d finished the list, I had something else to add. I was getting overwhelmed. And, what did I want to do when I felt overwhelmed, I wanted to eat, of course. So, I had to add that to the list. I shoved the list in a drawer. That was not working.
After giving it a lot of thought, I decided to step back and think about how I had gotten so fat. I had gained the weight over a long period of years. If I took 100 pounds as my starting weight at the age of 10, I had added an additional 130 pounds over a decade. That was equal to 13 pounds a year. Well, no, that wasn’t accurate. Over those years, I’d gone on quite a few diets. I’d lost at least 60 pounds give or take a few. So, in essence, I’d really gained a whopping 190 pounds! My heart started to race. 190 pounds.
I decided that if I hoped to lose the weight once and for all, I had to start slowly, make one change at a time. I had to keep eating my healthy breakfast each morning. That was my first good habit, the first positive change. However, when I got to school, I had to resist the well-worn pathway in my brain that still urged me to eat again. That meant stopping my “good deed” of buying a meal, but I could do something else for someone. I had to distract myself from food altogether. Therefore, I went straight to class. Since another student was struggling with our course, which was Chinese Politics, I offered to help tutor her for free. By shifting my focus to a strength, my intellect, instead of my weakness, the constant craving for food, I slowly built a new habit. By the end of the semester, once I arrived at school, I was hungry for knowledge, not food. I was proud of my hard work, and I made sure to celebrate, without food, to note my accomplishment. That was something new in my life. Praising myself had never been my strong suit. I was determined to change that.
I’d like you to think about one and only one bad eating habit you have acquired over the years. Write it down in your journal or a piece of paper. Put it away and allow yourself to think of a strategy that will work for you. How can you challenge that well-worn pathway in your brain that triggers overeating? What can you do to turn a negative behavior into a positive one? Don’t worry if you don’t succeed at first. No one does. Just remind yourself that if you believe in yourself and keep to your plan, you will succeed. Remember, you are carving out a new life for yourself. That means taking it one step at a time. It might take a few months to change that bad habit into a good one, but that will be time and effort well spent.
In my next post, I’m going to continue the discussion of eating habits.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to use the comments link below. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
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