CHAPTER 1
Weight and Health
The Weight of It All
The road map for self-healing is within you. As a weight management coach, my job is simple: to guide you in accessing your natural ability to heal from the inside out. I show you how to be happy and healthy with and within yourself. Erase the old self-sabotage programs placed in your mind by individuals in your childhood. Who placed those bad programs there? They are seeds that were planted in your head and are keeping you from being healthy, happy, and successful today. By recognizing what and where they are, you can begin to accept them and start the healing process.
There are seven chapters in this book, and this one is by far the most important to my personal survival. This is the one subject that has been eluding me for the past several years. I do know that I turn to food to avoid pain. At the start of writing this chapter, I still did not understand why I chose food. There are so many other ways to avoid feeling hurt, so why was I insisting on sticking to that which I knew did not have my best interests at heart? Why did I continue to eat foods that were dangerous to my health?
What is health? What contributes to poor health? What are the key components for optimal health? What are the effects of weight on health? What's the best health plan for me? In this chapter we will explore these and many other questions, ensuring we all have a clear understanding of how being overweight affects our overall health. I believe that in order to make a healthy permanent change, we must first understand our behaviours.
As mentioned in my first book, Weight Loss for Life, I have been concerned about my weight since the age of 13. As a result I have tried most fad diets on the market today, and yes, they all worked for me. The problem is that I was not able to maintain the permanent weight loss we all want—until now. Today, managing my weight is not an issue because I no longer go on diets. I finally realized that staying on that weight-loss roller coaster would lead me to an early grave. This is the opposite of why I first got into the health field: to save my own life.
It all started on September 2, 1997, when my healthy mom went to bed and did not wake up. She was only 51 years old and was in reasonably good health. After the funeral I was obsessed with living a long and healthy life. I then left my well-paying job to go back to school and study nutrition. After completing the program, I realized that part of the puzzle was still missing. After much research I realized that the reason I was still struggling with my weight was because of my hidden, unexpressed emotions. These are the thoughts and feelings that I have been hiding from for years, though they were hidden in plain sight. I disguised them as something else. For example, after 3:00 p.m. I would turn to processed food instead of taking a nap because my body craved rest. At work when I was angry, I would ingest high-calorie coffee drinks instead of acknowledging my feelings of being stuck. I was in retail, a profession that I knew was not right for me, and I was having difficulty transitioning into the health field, which was where I desperately wanted to be. Health was a field where I could help women on a deeper level, guiding them to live happy, strong, lean, healthy, and balanced lives.
Over the years I've learned that my food cravings were always telling me what my body needed in order to live a long, lean, and healthy life free of pain, aches, and diseases. We are overweight because we use food as medication to cover up and suppress our past hurts and feelings, as well as what direction we should take. As humans we are hard-wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure. This chapter focuses on health and not weight loss, because I believe when we experience optimal health, our weight will not be an issue.
Many times I've been asked what the secret to weight loss is, and I say it's very simple: there is no secret to losing weight. Things have not changed over the years; it's the same today as it was centuries ago in that all we have to do is burn off more calories than we take in. There are no new ways, only recycled concepts with a new spin. The only thing that has changed for this millennium is making sure we eat less packaged foods and more natural ones if possible.
What has changed is how to keep the weight off. Instead of focusing on weight loss, we must instead focus on what we should do to maintain our weight on a daily basis. We must look at and determine which life centre is out of balance. We should determine personal wants, needs, and desire and then act on them. It's about identifying the root causes of our unhappiness. If we focus on what we need to be healthy in mind, body, and spirit, the weight will normalize itself.
Congratulations—you've lost the weight! You are finally at your goal weight, and you look and feel amazing. Now, how are you going to keep the weight off? Writing away my weight, along with studying and teaching weight management, is what works for me. This is how I will continue maintaining my strong, lean, and healthy body for the rest of my life. The other part of my plan is to travel to spiritual retreats and spas throughout the world, learning and experiencing the different healing modalities. I'm starting here in Vancouver and am working my way outword and upword. To be happy you must have a goal, something to work toward.
How did I come to this conclusion? Keep reading and find out. To start, I've lost and regained much too much weight over the years. Three times I lost more than 65 pounds each time. After years of searching for my reason for this weight gain, I've come up with this hypothesis: Living on purpose inspires us. When we are feeling inspired, we eat nutrient-rich food that nourishes our mind, body, and spirit. It's about living the life we are here to live. So what does this mean?
Let's look at what you are passionate about. What is the one thing you want more than anything else in the world? What is the one thing at which others have been saying you would excel! This has to be something that you are good at, that you enjoy doing, and that comes naturally to you. It may also be the one thing in this world that scares you the most.
There are likely lots of things you are good at, but you lack passion for the work. You are more likely to stick to it if you are extremely passionate while thinking about it, talking about it, and doing it. You lose track of time doing it, and it replenishes your depleted energy. When you are living on purpose in your life centres, then every decision you make is for your own good. Whatever you do, you must have love for it! If you are doing it out of guilt, obligation, or simply to pay the bills, then it won't work, and you will never be happy living that way. Most important, instead of maintaining a strong, lean, healthy body, you will instead gain more weight, leading to obesity and other life-threatening illnesses that could lead to death.
I believe that we experience specific challenges throughout our lives so that we can get to know our authentic selves—who we are, what we are, and what we do. We learn what's negotiable in our lives and what's not. It's like a baby starting out touching everything, and by the time she gets to be a certain age, she realizes what she likes and what hurts. It's the pleasure-versus-pain scenario.
My focus is on getting beyond weight loss. Once we lose the weight, how do we keep it off? We retain excess body fat because we are out of balance. Maintaining a strong, lean, healthy body involves continually asking ourselves the following three questions: "Where do I see myself? What do I see myself doing? With whom do I see myself doing it?" These questions work in all seven life centres and are even more relevant when it comes to our overall health.
Self First
One of the most important parts of any health plan is taking time out for yourself each and every day, even if it is only five minutes. It's doing what's best for you at all times without question. You must put yourself first on your daily agenda. When you don't, then you tend to get angry and frustrated, and then you turn to food for comfort.
Living life on your own terms is about putting yourself where you want to be, doing what you love, and spending time around people you enjoy. Putting the needs of others ahead of your own can result in feeling lost, isolated, and even resentful toward the people closest to you. Taking the time you need to nurture yourself will lead you to peace, happiness, stabilized weight, and optimal health.
Our excessive body weight is communicating this fact to us. But are we listening to what it's telling us? We are experiencing pain in our lives because we are resisting that which we are, that which we must do! We are the cause of our own pain. Pain is the result of attempting to protect ourselves when we don't need protection. We get hurt whether or not we try to protect ourselves. As a matter of fact, when we don't interfere with the learning process, we experience less pain and get to the learning much quicker.
To know the truth is to be open to happiness. The question then becomes, "What am I protecting myself from? Is it from love because my past has shown me that love hurts?" I am protecting my heart from being broken, which has never worked—in fact, all protection has done is caused me more pain. I therefore surrender to the need to protect myself and instead become wide open to love in all its forms and glory. When you take time out for you, then you can see and understand what's happening to you much clearer.
All challenges, be they mental, emotional, or physical, are opportunities to heal old wounds. Sometimes we get to the point where we believe we have finally understood a particular painful situation, only to have it raise its ugly head again. Why is that? Sometimes we have to go deeper to ensure the wound is completely clean; other times it's a test to see if we have truly let go of this pain attached to a specific event. Have we really learned the lesson, or are we simply saying so?
Your physical body frame always knows where you don't want to be, what you don't want to do, and who you don't want to be around. When you are not listening, then it brings about pain, forcing you to focus on a specific action. Here is one such example. On a Sunday and Monday, I finally pushed my body too far, and it reacted by shutting down. I'd worked 13 hours each day. On the Monday I was feeling extremely drained, so at 5:30 p.m. I went for an hour break. After the break I stood up and noticed I was limping. As I walked, I started to feel better. On my way home, I got off the bus and started to limp again, and the sharp pain in the back of my right leg intensified. As I walked, I started to feel better again.
That night I had trouble getting into bed, and I was unable to lie on my right side. It took me forever to turn over. I was uncomfortable on my left side, back, and front as well. The pain was excruciating, throbbing no matter what position I tried. Each time I fell asleep, I would wake up minutes later in tremendous pain.
I waited until the walk-in clinic opened six blocks away and hobbled there. With each step I regretted my decision to walk instead of taking a taxi. When I finally got there, the receptionist told me only two people were in front of me, so I should take a seat. I told her I could not sit down and hobbled over to the corner, where I could support my back by leaning on the wall and standing on my left foot. After about 20 minutes I got in to see the doctor. She asked me a few questions and examined my right upper thigh, and then she told me it was a muscle strain that was affecting the tendons.
I was given the names of two pain medications, a form for having X-rays within a week, and a doctor's note for time off work. I took a cab home, poured a bowl of cereal, sat on the coach, and took the pain medication with breakfast. I was in the same position all day, sleeping while sitting up.
What does all this have to do with weight management? Everything! I worked 26 hours in two days on almost no sleep, and I drank a lot of coffee and did not work out. I was stressing my body with a lack of proper nutrition, exercise, sleep, and rest. Instead, I was feeding it pills to suppress the pain I was in so that I could continue to burn the candle at both ends. I was putting my body into starvation mode.
All this forced me to look at my work ethic. As mentioned earlier, I learned an unrealistic work ethic from two amazingly strong women, my mom and grandmother. These chains of events reminded me that both these women worked their way to an early grave—and if I was not careful, I would do the same. As a result I made the decision to pay close attention to how much time I spent on the job. I also decided that working as hard as I was for only money was counterproductive. It was taking time away from my true passion of studying, writing, and teaching weight management. In that instant I made the decision that I would only work an extra two hours on store merchandising days, which was approximately every three weeks. I would then donate more time to writing. I am sticking to writing for a minimum of 15 minutes daily, and at least once per week for 5 hours straight; that time can include research.
With that said, I wondered what old wounds were attached to my unhealthy eating habits, resulting in weight gain. I paid close attention to what I was doing and to how I was using my energy. I had to take the time to focus on my passion. What I'd been doing did not feed my soul—in fact, it was really draining my energy. It was telling me to listen to the voice within!
Food is nourishment that provides fuel, energy, and stamina. When my mind is being flooded with thoughts of food, it means I'm in need of nourishment. What part of me needs to be nourished, fueled, energized, and strengthened? What kind of nourishment is needed? My overweight body is screaming at me, "I'm in pain. Can't you see I need help? Why can't you help me? Why can't you help me save my life today?" Take care of yourself first; make yourself a priority in your own life. You need to be your own parent in this moment and nurture yourself.
Look at how the people in your life are affecting your health. Each person entering into your life does so for a reason: to introduce parts of yourself to you. They are a mirror of your thoughts, actions, and behaviours. When someone is irritating you, mentally ask him or her, "What message or lesson do you have for me today?" or, "How am I acting like you at this moment?" I believe that they are pushing your buttons so that you can get better acquainted with yourself, prompting you to take better care of yourself. They force you to face thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that you are exhibiting as a result of what you are avoiding. Face the music, and the cravings will go away. What comes to the surface is what's been waiting to come out. When it surfaces, you then have a choice to examine the issue or ignore it. In my case, I'd always chosen to suppress these feelings with food; that's how I had been sabotaging my health for several years. Instead of learning what my emotions were attempting to teach me, I squashed them with food. Our food cravings are a metaphor for the reason behind the stuff we must look at so that we can grow, develop, evolve, and move on in life. It's also what we must teach and pass on to others. Some of us pass on info through writing, speaking, painting, and more. My refusal to hear, see, face, and accept this truth is what brought me back to this point in my life, where I had to let go of an additional 50 pounds that I had been holding on to for the past three years. These 50 pounds showed up in my life over and over again. Why? In numerology 50 is 5, and that translates to major life change.
To me, the most logical question is, "What change must I see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and accept as my truth? What change am I afraid of making today?" The answer is simple: It does not mean that I must go looking for something to change. It's that I must be open and receptive to the change coming my way. Letting go of excess fat means that I'm ready to change, that I no longer need to protect myself from that person, place, or thing that is deep within me and wants to get out. I must let go of my fear of feeling hurt, rejected, and abandoned for doing what is in my best interest. There is no need for guilt when I put myself first. This is the time to let myself loose on this big, beautiful world.
People are always going to come and go in our lives. When they teach us what we need to learn, they will either evolve around us or leave. My fear has always been about losing them. That's what happened as a child: they all eventually left me. Over the years I learned to leave them before they had a chance to leave me, as a way of putting myself first. That's from where my fear of commitment came. I no longer try to protect myself from pain—in fact, I welcome it when it happens, because sometimes getting hurt is part of the learning process. Let me make it abundantly clear that I don't want to be hurt. The point I am making is that when it happens, I don't run away from it; instead I stay and face it head-on. When needed I do take the time to look at how I'm feeling as events are unfolding around me, and then I address it in that moment. Earlier I talked about the fact that I used food as a tool to cover up and suppress my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Why is that? Despite knowing how dangerous it is, I still did it. What was I afraid of consciously being aware of? It was partly out of habit as well as a fear of facing my truth and protecting myself from being hurt. My binging was more of a crutch than anything else. Early in my life I'd learned that if I wanted the pain and loneliness to go away, all I had to do was eat. I started with chewing gum and then switched to potato chips and other sweet and crunchy foods. I needed to protect myself from getting hurt, and I used food.
