In conversation with someone this week they said losing weight was a simple formula. “Eat less, move more.” Maybe for some. But not for those who carry emotional weight, it isn’t lost by eating less.
My life long struggle with weight (and my body) began at the age of nine years old. I was an average sized kid. Maybe a little bigger than the shorter, smaller boned girls, but I was nowhere close to being overweight or having a struggle with food.
This one day, just before fifth grade, my mother was driving us somewhere but, didn’t say why or where. I was feeling nervous and uncomfortable. Signs on the wall said “hypnosis”. Now feeling confused too, a creepy old man led us into a small office. There were two green, puffy recliners on the left facing a huge blank white wall. It was a narrow, tight room – like a walk in closet. At least it felt that way.
I walked by him to my designated recliner. As I passed by him I had no idea what to do with the creepy energy I felt from him. He looked me up and down and said to this spunky pig-tailed girl “she’d be cute if she lost a few pounds.”
Bam. There it was. It’s like this automatic processing system his words went through in my mind. Through my heart. Through my soul. Out the other side came “there is something wrong with you”.
This began the cycle of a buried belief I wanted no one to ever find out about me. I stuffed it down with food. I tried to release it through fad diets (including pills with who-knows-what in them), starvation, and extreme exercise. Binge eating, drinking, dieting, and exercise was my cycle. All to numb that painful belief. Something is wrong with me. My cycle of survival worked. I’d lose weight. But, I’d soon find it again. Sometimes I’d find more weight than I lost.
It was an emotional and physical roller coaster I was on for the many years that followed that one day. The damage to my body wasn’t to the depths of what it did to my emotional well-being. On the journey to finally releasing and keeping off 100 pounds it was healing the emotions, that buried belief, and giving space to the feelings I’d stuffed for so long. That is what sustained the release of all that weight. Not because I ate less or exercised more.
So, I know, I really know losing weight is not a simple formula. It’s quite complicated with a painful buried belief about yourself. It’s complicated when you’ve learned food is a source of comfort. It’s complicated when you don’t have a model for self-love or self-acceptance.
In these few days I’ve spent in LA I’ve been really observant of the level of self-acceptance of my physical being. My body isn’t perfect. It holds scars of my weight loss and weight gain journey. But, it certainly feels much lighter on my emotional well being. I accept exactly where I am right now and grateful to be healthier than I’ve ever been – on all levels. In 33 years, I’ve come a long way, baby.
Here’s my formula – Radical Self-Love + Radical Self-Acceptance = Happiness, Health, and a Bad Ass Beautiful Life.