Total Weight Makeover

"This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson


I barely greeted Mary in the waiting room as she brushed her large framed body past me, marching to my office out of breath fretting, while mumbling she was ten minutes late.  Mary contacted my office a few months ago desperate to lose weight and get a grip on her obsessive volume eating. Mary is most focused on losing weight and less interested in the spiritual and emotional piece of her recovery journey. More than once she (and most of my eating disordered patients) requested to see my heavy pictures to confirm I truly once experienced the caged in desperation she did—that like her, nothing mattered to me except being thin. Reluctantly,  I pulled out two.


In the photo below I was 29 years old and on the upswing again with my weight. I recall gritting my teeth and saying to my best friend Yvonne, who was taking the photo, "Do you have to take a picture of a beached whale?" I rarely got roped into taking pictures because they represented my truth. I was fat. And with that truth I bought into the idea fat meant dumb—a total loser. What I didn't get during that photo shoot was that I was a sad young woman distracted with obsessions of food and weight to avoid living in the present life at hand. 

When I was twelve I began to notice I  spent the largest part of every day thinking about what I wanted to eat that I shouldn't and what I should eat that I didn't. The weight piled on and the diet sagas began. My obsession with weight was more sensational than anything that happened between me and boys, money, or girlfriends. I was totally absorbed in me so I could not be hurt by another person.


When I looked deeply into Mary's sad eyes I saw my own reflection of a once desperate me. I so wanted to save her, to pull her out of the misery she's swallowed up in—to convince her there is a better way than jumping on one diet after another.  Mary, like many compulsive eaters, believes if she loses weight she'll attract a desirable man and that all of her "issues" will miraculously disappear. But truth be told, what she's really doing is numbing out with food to avoid the chance of being rejected by someone, hence blaming the problem on the weight. A true vicious cycle. Mary claims she wants to experience blissful love but blames her excess weight from making her dreams come true.


Is this truly what's going on? Mary's rejected by men because of her body? Or is Mary blocking her emotions to men with food. Mary doesn't know how to engage herself with a person, only with food. Oh sure Mary had sexual encounters and short stint relationships but she avoided intimacy—surrendering totally to another with deliberateness to face, rather than run from, the worst of herself. She didn't dare allow herself to be vulnerable to another, instead she blamed food and her obsession with her body to take over present living. As long as Mary eats compulsively, her life is about what she eats, how much she eats, how much she weighs, and what she will look like, dress like, when she stops addictive eating. A scenario I was once quite familiar with.


Yes, it's true Mary grieves her unhappy childhood and will never be able to re-write the script. She missed it: a mother's love, a father's acceptance, sleep overs with girlfriends, the feeling that she mattered—that she was important to someone—anyone.  No, she will never get the childhood do-over she's been screaming about for fifty five years. Screaming and flailing fists is not emotional, spiritual, or physical healing.  Emotional, spiritual, and physical healing is another story—a different journey.


The first step in Mary's healing is to own the truth of her childhood story and acknowledge her losses—grieve about them. And to  know she is not her story. She doesn't have to define her existence as the little girl who was abused and never got the love she so yearned for, hence making it the same adult story.  To no longer identity with the lost child and begin living in the present instead of living in reaction to the past.

My second photo, I reluctantly showed Mary, was of me sitting under an orange tree on a breezy spring afternoon in South Florida trying to hide my body behind the baby—so ashamed to once again get caught in a picture. 


My focus today is on living my best healthy life not my weight or what I ate or failed to eat. I now recognize that my obsession with diets and weight was a game—it wasn't being thin I wanted, it was getting thin. It was a game of diet-binge-diet, only to once again binge.  I  would rush out to purchase a pile of junk food shoveling it into my mouth as fast as I could while simultaneously reading the newest diet book on the market. Mary does the same thing.


I want for Mary what I now know—and that is, diets don't work nor does diet mentality. When Mary lets go of the focus on her weight and the newest diet offered and instead puts her attention on spiritual and emotional recovery her gift is physical recovery. It works every time, all the time.


The last photo, which again I reluctantly bring to you the reader, is how I look today. Although I am not my body, that I'm much more than a frame, people want to see and know that it's possible to reach a "normal" weight (whatever that might be for you) without putting the attention on the weight.


This is the miracle.


Put your attention on your spiritual recovery; daily eat three meals and a half-meal consisting of foods that are whole and balanced; run, dance, walk, or do jumping jacks (whatever moves you); and connect to the Divine Source—and watch—watch for the miracle.










http://weightcontroltherapy.com/

Nope, I Didn’t Eat the Chocolate Bunny Ears...

On April 11, in 1998, Holy Saturday the eve before Easter, my Mom had a massive stroke. My life has never been the same. She lived on four more years paralyzed until she passed away on February 7, 2002.

Time does go on, I’ve learned.

This past Sunday Easter morning I walked my dog Sage, and of course without fail my mind wandered, as I recalled the night I got the call from dad that mom had a stroke, but quickly I was distracted by loud commotion. A small child bellowed, “It’s mine!”  Looking his way, evidence of melted chocolate oozed down his lower lip dribbling to his chin. His frantic Mom seized the chocolate earless bunny, which brought on the rage, in her attempt to salvage his Easter outfit.

This scene was all too familiar, with the exception it was this little boy rather than me, a grown woman stuffing chocolate into my mouth as fast as I could—and don’t anybody dare try and take it away from me. Back in my eating frenzy days I was like a wild animal gnarling and hissing to protect my goods. As I marched on past the little teary eyed boy, personal memories continued to flood my thoughts as I replayed chocolate binge eating often brought on Easter morning with baskets of available goodies.  

Today, for me, times have changed. Easter this year fell on April 8 and I moved through it like it was any other day with food—I honored it as a holy day filled with grace and serenity. Before mom’s stroke, we spent every Easter together on the west coast at our family-owned beach home, with my then young son Benjamin, where I feasted on anything and everything I could get my hands on to eat.

Yes, I recall all the good times and the not so good times as I walked on.

I fought excessive weight and binge eating most of my life from adolescence to well into my thirties. At times I was a hundred pounds over my "normal" weight. Up and down I went. I think it was my Mom's weight that prompted me to focus on my own health and weight. I believe her obesity shortened her life. I believe today I understand weight and eating disorders as a result of my Mom's life and my genetic line. I also understand we don't have to take our gene pool as the written law.
We can change it!

As a result of my compulsive eating, it was inevitable I’d be at risk of severe obesity, which put me at a greater risk of obesity-related problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, and possible colon cancer—with the enormous amounts of foods passing through my digestive tract, not intended to process at such a drastic rate. As I neared 235 pounds on my five-foot, six-inch frame, I knew I was in deep trouble in every respect.

I learned for me I could make choices and live my life in a healthier manner, or...I could struggle forever. I decided to change my thinking. I believe in the power of the mind. I believe we can be anything we want to be. I decided to put my energy into learning about the subconscious mind and made a shift. I found hypnosis and my connection to a Higher Energy great tools to assist with the changing of the mind and ultimate change with my relationship with food; hence the weight corrected.

I began my self-healing through changing my thought pattern stating, “I am thin” as opposed to “I’m fat” and began to visualize and imagine a thin me—to "be" thin and ultimately act thin which opened and connected me to my Divine Source with miraculous results. My food choices slowly changed and sugar, flour, and wheat were eliminated. It was a slow process of progress not perfection. In time, slowly and steadily, my weight corrected, cravings disappeared, and I became quite happy living my best life.

Today, my weight ranges between 136 and 140 pounds. I went from dire obesity to a weight considered normal for my height. My motivation for earning a master’s in mental health and a PhD in addictions was to work with the eating disordered–to bring help and hope through hypnosis and psychotherapy to the many who fight this insidious disease every breathing moment of their lives.

While I worked on the initial gathering and digestion of information for my dissertation—and ultimately, In God’s Hand: Release the Obsession with Food, I took several long weekend retreats in the little sleepy town of Madeira Beach, Florida and stayed at my family beach house—the very same house I shared many Easters with mom—filled with childhood memories of losses and new beginnings, tears and laughter, binges and diets. I took long walks along the seashore, steeped in self-reflection over what I’d discovered from my research and from re-reading personal accounts of the various stages of my eating disorder, both in full bloom and in recovery.

On this anniversary week of my Mom's massive stroke, I think about what if Mom would have caught the blessing I did, and she ate clean and healthy. Would she be here today? Who knows! I know I can't go back and do the “what ifs,” but I can live in the now and learn from her mistakes and spread the news there is recovery for all.

My own spirituality and recovery from addictive eating has enhanced new ways of accepting my life of living in my world and of understanding that this is my life—living vigilant, ever awake and alert, abstaining from trigger foods, in constant search of spiritual growth.



http://weightcontroltherapy.com/

Photos taken by: Lisa Ortigara Crego

Why Are You Writing This Book?

A few years ago I attempted to retain the services of an editor to assist me with the mechanics of my book on spiritual recovery from food addiction. The first question she asked me was, “Why are you writing this book?” Why? Hmmm. Well, I stammered through a sentence or two saying something to the fact that I wanted to help people. Silence on the other end, not even the sound of her breath was heard.

After hanging up from a difficult call, I thought hard and deep on why I invested so much time writing my book. From that moment forward I wrote and rewrote and wrote again to the point of where my book, In God’s Hand: Release the Obsession with Food, morphed into work I’m quite proud of.  I learned from that call, and a failed attempt, to string my efforts into the right pattern on exactly how to answer that very question to anyone who cared to ask.

Why am I writing this book?  Why was I taking a dissertation that was stale and breathing life into a book for a wide audience of therapists, eating disordered persons, and those struggling with weight issues in general? I knew for a fact I didn’t write this book for notoriety, fame, money, or to see my name in print.

I wrote In God’s Hand: Release the Obsession with Food for us, who are alone with the monster (Food) every single day and trying to control it and not let it control us.

I wrote because living with an addiction to specific foods that result in compulsive overeating is an unsolicited and difficult path to venture alone. I know when I was struggling with obsessing and bingeing on food I had no idea where to turn. I was lost and scared and didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop eating to the point my weight was nearly 100 pounds over the suggested healthy weight.  I thought something was wrong with me. First I thought I was crazy, and then wondered if I had a physical problem—or perhaps God was angry with me. Or, I was weak and had no control.

Compulsive eaters most often don’t recognize that they have sensitivities to certain foods but rather believe something is wrong with them when they can’t manage their food intake in “normal” amounts—especially in regard to carbohydrates. Often, for this group of individuals, excess weight, mood swings, extreme fatigue, and irritability are everyday occurrences. Seeking answers to what is actually a disease may not be the obvious road for the sufferer to travel, so blaming self for lack of willpower becomes the daily, inner rant.

Compulsive eaters at nearly every stage of their misery pick up self-help books, try fad diets, join diet clubs, and sometimes even enter treatment centers for eating disorders—all of which are structured to help inform and “cure” them of their debilitation. But the books, diet centers, counselors, and eating disorder treatment facilities generally do not address the actual food sensitivity or the sufferer’s ultimate spiritual depletion. Instead, these turn the afflicted addict loose clutching a Band-Aid solution (diet) without looking more deeply into the food sensitivity and spiritual bankruptcy plaguing the food disordered person’s very soul.

In God’s Hand: Release the Obsession with Food addresses those who seek recovery from binge eating and/or food addiction and who define themselves as “spiritual.” My book illuminates the experience of living with food addiction, recovery, and movement in the direction of spiritual revitalization. This is not a ten-step formula for losing weight and/or being “cured” of a compulsive eating disorder—because losing weight is not the focus of the book, and food addiction is a lifelong disease that can only be dealt with one day at a time. But what this book does promise is an increased connection to a self-defined spiritual sense, allowing readers to release a previously unbreakable obsession with what they eat. The book will not be one among many commonplace offerings, but will provide rather an exclusive, in-depth account as to what it is like to live with a compulsive eating disorder—versus confronting one’s inner demons, moving into spiritual awareness, and handling various situations for genuine recovery

I didn't have the experience or the know-how to understand what was wrong with me before studying eating disorders and weight related topics at length.  Now I know.  I would like my book to reach out to the teenager suffering perhaps with weight, acne, and loneliness, filled with remorse and shame because she doesn’t know how to stop eating. I would like to say it’s going to be okay—it isn't your fault, let me show you the way out.

I wish when I was a pimpled, fat, lonly13 year old, standing in front of the fridge shoveling food in not fast enough, someone would have said let me explain to you what's going on with your body, mind, and emotions. Would I have listened? I’m not sure, but I wish I had at least the option.

I'm writing this book for the young adult who is obese and can’t play with her/his children because the food obsession will not let up and they feel there is no way out. Clothes are tight and moods are up and down. There is no energy to play with the children, besides the mind won’t let go of the obsession of getting food or burning the calories already consumed.

I write to tell the moms and dads how sad I was in my young years and how alone I felt and my parents didn’t know. I want to tell them I was scared and wished I could tell someone but feared rejection or lack of understanding. I wanted to know why I was eating out of control and my siblings were not. I was so bleeping scared and had nobody to tell. I know this struggle all to well. I want to tell every mom and dad to pay attention to your little girl or boy and notice if they are isolating and rarely laugh. Reach out to the child and show them the way to peace and freedom from cravings and to a strong and healthy physical body. And if you can’t do this then find someone who can. I don’t want one more child alone with this disease. And if we can save a child then they won’t grow into a lonely, isolating adult and pass this down to their children. I want to break the chain.

I'm writing this book for doctors and therapists to let them know this obsession is real and to treat it with the right foods, exercise, and spiritual connection. That cutting patients stomachs to reroute their food and/or cutting and filling their stomachs with fill is a wasted effort if they aren't educated about trigger foods.

I write for my sons, husband, father, and sibling to tell them about my struggles and triumphs. I am writing this book for my mom who no longer is here because her obsessions and cravings led to a massive stroke and took her life before her time. I'm writing this book for my best friend Yvonne (who died before her time) who always tried to help and to understand me and believed I could eat trigger foods in moderation—not understanding one bite of certain foods sent me down the road of bingeing and not returning. I am reaching out to cousins who have the same problem as I do to know it's genetic and not their fault.

And most of all, I am writing this book for me to work through and understand all my struggles. To understand why I made some of the poor choices I made. To reflect on how lonely and scared I was most of my life.

I am writing this book to stare down the doubters, the scoffers, the misunderstood, the authorities, the government. Our children are in trouble. We need to rise up and face this situation now.

I am writing this book to save my patients from a disease that kills. I am writing this book because God wants me to write and He will guide me throughout the process no matter how long it takes, no matter how high my mountain will be.

Photos by: Dr. Lisa Ortigara Crego
http://weightcontroltherapy.com/