weigh-2-go.org

My posts lately have been newsy, I admit–a bit of a departure for Weigh-2-Go, as my 10 readers will attest. Where am I going with this?

There’s some magical mysterious factor(s) for weight loss that a gazillion people are trying to figure out.
Even people who have lost weight can’t usually articulate these factor(s) well enough to translate their success to others.
Psychologists, coaches, trainers, and nutritionists have systems–and it’s even possible that all of these systems work!–but the issue is not finding a system.
People don’t follow any system until they are ready.
Weight loss is, we must assume, a personal issue–something that happens inside the mind and the heart.

But it’s becoming a national issue. It has captured the nation’s attention that people are dying, and lifespans are shortening, because of weight.

I was talking to Mary Beth, a fitness trainer, about this phenomenon. We call it The Light Bulb.
If The Light Bulb turns on, weight gets lost. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

When I lost 82 pounds, it was because my Light Bulb went on.
Three years later, 25 pounds regained, my Light Bulb is off.
It was on and now it’s off, and I’m having a hard time turning it back on.
How can this be?

The nature of The Light Bulb runs counter to conventional wisdom. It isn’t about goal setting, willpower, accountability, or the right nutrition or exercise program.

It’s about seeing who you will become.
That’s the best I’ve got so far.
We don’t have good language for The Light Bulb.

Dr. Phil says:

Close your eyes and visualize yourself after you’ve reached those goals. Use this visualization to feel commitment and inner strength.

To which a few people say, “oooh, yeah, nice,” but most people say, “waaah?!?”
Better is Dr. Phil’s Life Law #1 is “You either get it or you don’t.” This Law validates the existence of The Light Bulb, but it doesn’t provide a switch.

Weight Watchers says:

Imagine yourself having already achieved your goals, and enjoying them.

Visualize the way your Winning Outcome will be experienced, when you achieve it. Use your senses so that you feel how it will feel. Add sounds, smells, movement.

Is that going to work for this woman and her family?
Has it worked for Oprah?
Is this a realistic goal for everybody?
Can a nation visualize itself healthy?

Now that obesity is having a measurable impact on our life spans and our health, understanding The Light Bulb is vitally important. That’s what I’m blogging about.

I caught back up with an old friend at a party last Saturday night. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years. He was just exactly the same–hadn’t changed a bit–and I had forgotten how much I used to enjoy his company.

It was all I could do not to take him home with me on Saturday, but I have seen him several times this week. But as much fun as we’re having with this little fling, I know it is too unhealthy for me. I can’t let this last.

That friend: My obsession with chocolate chip cookies.

On Saturday, you would have thought I was in love. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the cookies. Where are they now? How many are left? Shall I take another one now, or would that be too clingy, too possessive? How long can I hold out? How many more will I get before it’s time to go home? Shall I sit near them, or play hard-to-get?

And these were just ordinary grocery store cookies, in a clear plastic clam-shell package with a grocery store label. My passion is not about quality. These cookies and their surrogates are everywhere, never more than five minutes from my longing lips.

My toxic lover is not the cookies themselves. My toxic lover is the obsession. I am captivated by his charm–the charm of the obsession. He is delicious. He is dangerous. He is not good for me. He is not a friend I can indulge.

I move through the world moment by moment, one hour at a time, hoping for distractions, in suspense about my willpower. Occasionally, I feel relief when I notice I can live without this lover. But then I never know when my head will turn again, and I will give in to the seduction.

Our reunion on Saturday was ecstatic. Underbaked, crumbless, and doughy, bound by margarine and some mystery oils for that soft-cookie feeling. Textured by grains of brown and white sugar and the intermittent smoothness of a melty chocolate chip, balanced by the barely salty flavor of the batter. My teeth feel the sugars. My tongue tastes chocolate, then dough, then chocolate. Each ingredient melts in my mouth a different way: the cookie quickly back to dough, then batter; the sugars into nectar; all bathed by melted chocolate. I wish I could simply swallow and be satisfied, but every bite makes me crave the next.

He might be the most magnetic seducer I have known. We have gotten together several times this week, over coffee cake, chewy granola bars, and banana bread pudding at the OK Café. I can’t imagine saying goodbye. Is life really worth living without him?

In my heart, I know I have to be the strong one. I have to say “No, this just isn’t right for me. It’s not what I want. It’s not healthy. I don’t see a long-term relationship here.”

And here’s the kicker: “When I’m around you, I become a different person–a person I don’t like.” Come to think of it, I know he’s just using me. He’s just having fun. He doesn’t want anything serious. Why am I wasting my time?

I know why–it’s my favorite mistake, so I keep going back (watch this and think about obsessing for chocolate chip cookies; lyrics here).

Be alerted, gentle readers. This post contains an inconvenient and painful truth.  (It’s painful to me too.)

As my posts under the category of “philosophy of weight loss” will attest, I am interested in the personal philosophies and psychological aspects of weight loss. But I have been dancing around a fundamental point. I found a blog post from a motivational speaker in Australia, Craig Harper, who put it right out there.

One of Craig’s readers, Mandi, writes [condensed here]:

Please, please, please, please help me….I currently weigh 104 kilos and often cry when I look in the mirror. As you always say “I know what to do but I don’t do what I know.” I am so sick of myself and the way I constantly shoot myself in the foot that I don’t know what to do any more….Why do I continue to self-sabotage when I hate the way I look and feel?…

Mandi’s lament sounds familiar to me–painfully familiar. She describes a vulnerable, stuck place that makes me ache.

Craig gives a long and thoughtful response. The full post is here. But this excerpt cuts to the painful truth:

…you need to want it enough. You might think you want it enough now but I can tell you, you don’t. When you associate more pain with staying in your current condition than you do with throwing that chocolate in the bin (or feeding it to the dog), then you’ll get the job done and find your way to your best body. As with any change process, you will always be the problem and the solution. [emphasis mine]

Wow. Craig’s reply sums up the answer to my question, “Why?” It’s about priorities: wanting it enough.

Perhaps you have read The Secret. The “energy frequency” premise is, for me, too far-fetched to be useful (for the short version, skip to 5:50 in this video), but an inversion of The Secret makes sense to me:

When I want to reach a goal, and I make it a priority over other goals, then my real-life actions and decisions automatically take me there.

The angst, like Mandi’s, simply vanishes. My behavior leads me in the right direction. Things fall into place.

This truth applies to all my goals. As an unmarried middle-aged suburb dweller* who is 15 pounds above goal weight, I wrestle with painful truths. But if I want to make progress on all my goals, I am only dancing around until I ask myself honestly, “Do I want it enough?”

When the answer is “no,” I always have strong arguments to defend the reasons–sometimes outdated and laced with shame, but strong nonetheless. So then, the real work of weight loss, or achieving any goal, is not to collect healthy recipes, join a gym, or join Weight Watchers. All that will come in its time and place. We know that stuff already. As Craig says, we are the problem and the solution.

Instead, the real work is breaking down the arguments that defend that vulnerable, stuck place.

Ouch.

*David Byrne sings, “How did I get here?” The whole song is so awesome.

My weight loss began with an epiphany that boiled down to this: my personality changed in a positive way that no longer fit my body, so I was driven to change my body.  And since the change in my personality was permanent, my drive was constant, and I was able to see the process through.  Now my body fits me, and I will never go back to the old body.

Those three sentences have taken almost three years to write.  I wasn’t conscious of this process while it was happening, and I am still figuring out how and why it happened the way it did–because if I can figure that out, I would unravel the mystery of the ages…the mystery behind Oprah’s Acai Berry Diet, the Abdominizer, Kirstie Alley’s/Valerie Bertinelli’s/Princess Fergie’s Weight Loss Miracles, and the key to a gazillion dollar media industry.

I was listening to a podcast interview with a philosopher named Eckhart Tolle who has written some popular books.  He talked about an epiphany he had that started with the thought: “I can no longer live with myself.”  I think we all feel this way sometimes–it was a statement that I think his readers relate to.  But by examining that statement he realized that he was thinking of himself as two people: (1) myself, and (2) the one I (myself) can’t live with.

I’m reading a book called The Happiness Hypothesis (buy it on my Amazon page–thanks!) that also talks about this duality of the human psyche.  The author, Jonathan Haidt, uses the metaphor of a human riding an elephant to describe the ways our minds work: like a rational, logical human, trying to give direction to an untrained elephant on which we ride.  The “rider” part of our brain is perfectly attuned to reason, but the “elephant” might or might not obey the rider’s guidance.

So in other words, my rider knows that the brownie is completely inconsistent with my personal goals for health and fitness.  My elephant really, really, really likes brownies.  Will I eat the brownie?

My studies continue.

In the “Dare to be Fabulous” department, here’s a link to the online press release about my 3-Day Campaign:

http://atlanta.daybooknetwork.com/story/2008/08/05/11165weight-loss-breast-cancer-walk.shtml

Self-publicity is a scary and surreal thing.

A while back I announced the fundraising concert on October 11 that will help me raise funds for the Breast Cancer 3-Day.

I will be singing at this thing. I’m a good singer. There, I’ve said it.

Although I had been working with a singing group until several months ago, it’s been a long time since I did anything solo.

What does this have to do with losing weight? I think the weight was holding me back.  For me, the thoughts standing up in front of a crowd and declaring some talent was just too scary as long as I was not proud of how I look.

Just a quick observation about how being healthy opens doors.

This quote kept coming to mind today, so even though everyone has probably seen it a thousand times and might be sick of it, I’m gonna post it in a blog for about the 1,546,244th time. It’s by Marianne Williamson (here’s a Wikipedia entry about it). There’s a “God” angle to it, and if you’re not into that, please bear with me for the commentary below. The emphasis below (bold) is mine.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

This quote was on my mind because yesterday I did a pretty “shiny” thing: I put out a press release about myself. (More on the details later.) The act of publicizing my weight loss sometimes makes me feel so absurd that I laugh out loud, and sometimes just makes me think, “Hm!  Actually, who am I not to put out a press release?” Not that I’m on a particular crusade to liberate anybody, but on the other hand, my playing small–or being afraid to play big–would not serve the world. So I’m feeling a lot less self-conscious about the prospect of publicity than I would have thought.

I would never presume to speak for everyone who has struggled with weight, but speaking only for myself: I do think that when I was overweight, I was afraid to be fabulous. And now, truth be told, I don’t claim any strong inner sense of “fabulousness.” I have had butterflies in my stomach a lot since, oh, I got down to around Size 12. I wonder if this is a common experience. Yet I would rather feel my fear of fabulousness than bury it. So when I feel the butterflies, I want to remember to ask myself, “Who am I not to be fabulous?”

I’m enjoying reading Lisa Earle McLeod’s blog posts and columns around the web, and although she doesn’t write specifically about weight loss on a regular basis, her overall approach to living sure does apply.

Here’s one of Lisa’s columns about weight loss and maintenance–I wasn’t expecting to find material for this blog on her site, but it’s an inspiring post about turning things around with serious, but not monumental effort.

You’re never too far gone to get thin
http://www.forgetperfect.com/columns/07_may_8.htm

This column aside, Lisa’s essays are humorous and insightful about everyday living. Her latest book is Finding Grace When You Can’t Even Find Clean Underwear, and her web site is at www.ForgetPerfect.com.

So I’m about 10 pounds over the lowest weight I achieved last year, and tired of having my “skinny” clothes fit tight.  So I started counting my Weight Watchers points again on Sunday.

It’s tedious, and a little disappointing when I talked myself out of that granola bar this afternoon…but as with many seemingly arduous undertakings, it is not nearly as difficult (so far) as I thought it would be.

Am I hungry?  Yeah, a little.  Is it worth it?  Yes.  There’s nothing like that sense of power and confidence I feel when I’m comfortable in my body.  Woo hoo, I’m going to lose this 10 pounds!

Maybe it was the TV show “The Biggest Loser” that brought this ironic double entendre to my attention…or maybe this phrase was in common parlance long before I lost weight…but I’m just getting used to calling myself a “loser.” Maybe I’m too politically correct or just plain sensitive, but at first I felt bad about calling myself–or anybody else–a “loser.” But now I am getting used to it.

Does anyone else bristle at this term? And if so, what do we call ourselves?

I think I like the way that the National Weight Control Registry calls us “successful losers.”