I have lost over 140 pounds in 3 years, and many people asked how I did it----there have been a combination of many things for me, so instead of telling the whole sordid story, I thought I would share what I have learned along the way....hopefully that can help someone else out. I share these things not as a "know it all" or anything---just as a list of personal lessons I have learned. As always, take what you can use and leave the rest......

1) If you have battled your weight all of your life, and think your problem is with food, think again. I am not talking about someone who has struggled with getting off the last 10 pounds---I am talking about serious, life-long struggle. For me, it looked like this---I would gain 40 pounds, then lose 20, gain 60, lose 30, gain 50.... on and on, bouncing between dieting and bingeing---never knowing what "eating normally" was. When I got to my highest weight ever (350 pounds), my sister had died about a year before from breast cancer, and I was totally depressed. I went into therapy---and as I worked through my issues, I began to realize that I could let go of the death hold grip I had on food, and I started to lose weight.

Food has never been "just food" for me--it has been a friend, a lover, a mother, a tranquilizer, a "happy pill"----at times, food has been the end all be all in my life. I had a huge gaping hole inside of me--a hunger for love and acceptance that I felt was bottomless, and was trying to fill with food. It has taken a great deal of deep emotional work to learn how to fill that void with satisfying, need-meeting relationships and activities instead of filling it with food. Geneen Roth has some really great books about compulsive eating/chronic dieting that I think are awesome---she has several---just do an Amazon search or look thru your local library for books she has written.

Therapy also helped me learn to be "ok" with my body as I began to lose my "armor" over time. Fat served as protection for me, and I had to learn to feel safe in a smaller body.

2) You will not lose weight better or faster by hating yourself or your body. I spent endless nights, laying in bed thinking about how much I hated myself because I ate poorly, or how awful a person I was because I was so fat. This kind of thinking will never, ever help you to make better choices. A few books that I read really helped me with body hatred issues: When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies (Hirschmann & Munter), and Fat?So! by Marilyn Wann. An addendum to this is that you should not use exercise or food restriction as punishment- exercise should be something you see as doing to benefit your body---not to punish yourself for eating off plan. Also, food restriction just plays into the diet/binge cycle even further---and won't help you.

3) If you really want to lose weight, stop kidding yourself and get real. By this, I mean that you can't eat a dozen donuts and then take a stroll around the block and think you "undid" the eating. You can't eat off-plan 50% (or more) of the time and think you are going to see results. You can't do a few mild workouts a week where you don't even break a sweat and think you are gonna look like some hard body at the gym in a few months. You get out what you put in---there is no getting around it.

4) The process of losing weight is not necessarily easy or fun, and it is certainly not without a great deal of effort. Anyone who tells you losing weight and keeping it off is easy is trying to sell you something. Weight loss requires work and discipline. I have lost all of this weight because I don't eat junk and I work my butt off at the gym regularly. That's it--there is no pill, no quick fix, no magic notion, lotion or potion. I spend a lot of time walking away from foods I really love and doing workouts I would rather skip---all because I want to get to my goal. Sometimes I get really angry at what I see others eating that I can't eat. (Well, I guess I could eat it, but then I would still be fat, and I want to be thin more than I want to eat whatever it is I am salivating over).

5) Exercise, exercise, exercise. You have to do it. I don't care if you like it or not. You have to make regular exercise a part of your life if you are going to lose weight and keep it off.

6) You do not need to find the "perfect" plan in order to be successful. Any plan will do---if you stick with it. Weight Watchers', Atkins, South Beach, Body for Life---they are all good plans. The question you need to ask is which is the one you can live with? Every plan restricts something--pick one that restricts food/amounts you can learn to live with/without. For me, I had to learn to live without sugar. (Which is probably a good idea for me anyway, since I have been diagnosed as pre-diabetic.)

7) No matter how committed you are to your plan, you will have slips or even major food blow-outs. I have been working the plan I am on now for over a year and a half. I still have a day or two (usually once a month or so) when I binge. I am able to stay away for junk for so long, and then "kapow" I jump ship and eat everything I can get my hands on. You are probably saying to yourself "Well, this doesn't sound much like a success story to me"--but hold on a sec. See, I used to binge like this EVERY DAY, so once every 4-6 weeks is actually substantial progress. I have learned to rely on food LESS for my emotional needs, but I never said I was completely "cured" so to speak. I can feel a binge coming, and I fight it off for as long as I can, then eventually I give in. But bingeing isn't what is really the important thing--what matters is what I do AFTER the binge. I used to get all upset with myself and beat myself up, feel really rotten and eat more. NOW I see the binge for what it was---a choice I made to relieve stress--and I move on. I don't stay off plan for a whole week or two or three. I don't quit exercising and give up. I acknowledge what happened, make note of the circumstances that helped get me to the binge "breaking point", and make a few notes as to how I could avoid it happening in the future. I do it objectively---without judging myself or my level of commitment.

8) Weight loss is a PROCESS. It doesn't happen overnight. I have found that small changes over time have worked the best for me. When I have tried to do everything all at once, I have landed flat on my face.

9) Accountability helps. Keep a food diary and share it with someone. You need to find someone to whom you feel accountable---don't pick your dear sweet granny or someone who is a mush. You also don't want to pick your Aunt Rose who just retired from the Marine Corps as their toughest drill sergeant, either. You need someone who will read your food diary and will ask specific questions about how your workouts are REALLY going. You need someone who can be supportive, but who won't accept excuses no matter how good they are. :)

10) Weight loss is not for everyone. If you have been trying and trying to lose weight and can't seem to stick to a plan, give up. Yup--you read that right---give up. Exercise if you want, eat what you want when you like, and see what happens. There was a time in my life when I just needed to let go and give myself the chance to explore what happened when I stopped caring about dieting and weight and just observed my relationship to food. I gained weight, but more importantly, I gained tons of insight and information into the hows and whys of my dieting/eating/bingeing behavior---and without that information, I would not have been ready to take on the task of losing 140 pounds.

11) Losing weight does NOT make you a better person. Losing weight makes you lighter/thinner---that's it. During my weight loss process I really have changed as a person because of the inner work I have done on this journey, but the change came as the result of the emotional work I did--not because I lost weight. You are just as wonderful a person at 600 pounds as you are at 150 pounds. Losing weight does not bring instant fame, fortune or happiness--you have to create that for yourself. If you are a miserable fat person, you will be a miserable thin person, too. Following a diet only changes the outside--learning self love, learning about your relationship to food and toother people, learning how to like yourself at ANY weight/size----THAT is the stuff that will really bring change.

Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions or if there is anything further I can do to help you on your weight loss journey.

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