For 40 years, I wandered alone in the harsh and unforgiving wilderness of diets and tried desperately to lose weight. I tried every popular fad diet in an effort to return my body to its youthful shape so that one morning I could look down and see a number on the bathroom scale that wouldn’t send me into despair.
The most memorable diet was the “three-meals-of-cabbage-soup-a-day” diet—if only because my kids hated the smell of cooked cabbage.
I thought if I found the right diet, however bizarre or unhealthy, the surplus pounds would disappear and I could be happy again. I would rise each morning determined to follow my strict regimen. By the time I went to bed, I had engaged in unplanned eating (the name I gave to eating everything I planned and lots more). The “Just Say No” campaign didn’t work.
In retrospect, I can see that I was like the man who, when trying to unlock his car parked on a dark street, drops his car keys. Crawling around on his hands and knees in the blackness of the night, he searches unsuccessfully for his keys. After several minutes, the man realizes that finding his keys would be easier if it weren’t so dark. Spotting a lamppost 50 feet away, he walks to the lighted area. Once again, the man begins crawling around on the ground and searching for his keys.
A passerby finds the behavior odd and stops to ask the man what he is looking for.
When the searcher explains that he is looking for keys that he dropped near his car up the street, the passerby looks perplexed. “If you dropped the keys over there, why are you looking for them here?” he asks. “Because,” the man replies, “I need light. I can’t find my keys in the dark.”
This story explains much of my frustrating effort to lose weight. For years, I tried and failed. Then I tried again and failed again. I failed because I searched for the key to weight loss inside the pantry and refrigerator—where there were lights—rather than inside me. I was looking for comfort, reassurance and love in all the wrong places.
When I stepped on the scale shortly before my 60th birthday and the scale broke, my history with failed searches became irrelevant. In a single moment, I experienced a breakthrough: I adopted a different point of view. For years, I saw my problem of obesity as one of simply eating too much. The solution would be to eat less. I was wrong.
Overeating was not the problem—it was the solution. Overeating was an effective (albeit fattening) solution to problems that were hidden from view. The overeating—which I brutally criticized myself for—was my creative way of coping with difficulties.
To succeed long term, I would have to pinpoint the problems that ultimately led to consuming more food than my body needed. Identifying these problems and finding healthier solutions were new and exciting tasks that required observational skills.
By paying attention, I discovered that two conditions—physical and emotional—triggered overeating. If I became ravenously hungry or overly fatigued, I misused food as a solution to my physical discomfort. If I became sad, depressed, angry or anxious, I turned to food for love and comfort.
When I looked back at the occasions when I overate, I could see the wisdom embedded in the acronym HALT, which advises those of us who want to make behavior changes to be vigilant when we are in one of four dangerous states: Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. This acronym is used to counsel individuals seeking relief from excessive stress and individuals overcoming drug and alcohol addition or other dysfunctional habits including overeating. Food was simply my drug of choice and the solution to my problems.
Armed with this insight, my first strategy was to manage myself. I paid attention to my eating schedule so I didn’t get ravenously hungry. I noticed if I was angry or anxious. I began reaching out to family and friends to counter my sense of loneliness. And finally, I decided to stay more rested.
But life happens. It isn’t always possible to avoid these conditions. Despite my best intentions, I can end the day starving, anxious, isolated or fatigued. But now I am more willing to recognize these feelings, and I know that they need to be honored with a solution that nourishes my spirit rather than adds unneeded fuel to my body. When I am in any one of the four states (God forbid I am in all four at once), after acknowledging my feelings, I have to figure out how I can comfort myself in a healthful way.
Sometimes, I simply need a reassuring conversation with myself, a hug from my husband or a “walk and talk” with a friend. Other times, I need to telephone one of my sisters. And when I become overly tired, I give in to my body and go to bed early because I know that my optimistic outlook will return in the morning. With this awareness, I can manage myself through the crisis. And when I do succumb to temptation and revert to my old ways, I simply pick myself up the following day and begin anew.
One of my favorite expressions is “You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.” I could never eat enough food because food wasn’t what I needed. Instead of stuffing my feelings, I needed to face them and find healthier ways to comfort myself. I stopped looking for love in the refrigerator and cupboard—in all the wrong places. Instead, I found my personal keys to fitness and weight loss in the only place they could ever be found—within me.
I achieved this insight late in life. Hopefully, you can take advantage of my delayed learning curve to achieve your weight-loss goals.
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