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Permanent Weight Loss: My StoryHow I recovered from emotional eating and binge eating disorder. I was a very quiet kid: a daydreamer who loved books, dancing, and making art. I was always happiest off by myself with my nose buried in a book. In the second grade I was found to be gifted. I suffered from terrible anxiety as far back as I can remember. When I had to transition from kindergarten to the first grade I pulled out all my eyelashes. I would also pick at my skin till it oozed. I was filled with performance anxiety. I was terrified that I couldn’t handle the work that was expected of me. I was painfully shy, skinny, and wore glasses. The kids at school were really cruel to me. I’ll never forget their taunts. They called me “the 4-eyed toothpick.” Bullies were always picking on me. The bright spot in my childhood was to go spend summers and weekends with my Nana and Grandpa. My Nana, who was my father’s mother, was Italian and very warm, loving, and nurturing. My grandparents shared my love of books and learning. My Nana was an excellent cook. She was also a food addict and pusher. She would never take no for an answer. I learned to please her by eating everything she would push on me. I was able to eat enormous amounts of food and not gain weight. It was with her that I began to equate food with love. All my happiest memories involve her and food. I remember summer mornings where she would take me outside and pluck figs off the tree and pop them, plump and juicy sweet, into my eager, waiting mouth. I was addicted to sugar as far back as I can remember. At around 5 years old, when I was left alone in my parent’s house, I would climb up into the cupboards and open the boxes of brown and white powdered sugar and eat them with a spoon. I couldn’t get enough! The secrecy of my addiction was already in place. I would also eat a big bag of candy every day. One day I got a hold of a box of chocolate exlax at my nana’s house. I ate the whole box thinking it was chocolate. I was on the toilet for days! Life got worse when I went to junior high school. My appearance changed drastically overnight. I ditched the glasses for some contact lenses, and a face of make-up, and transformed into a lovely swan. I became obsessed with my appearance, body and boys. People told me every day that I was beautiful, yet it never seemed to fill me with any confidence or self esteem. In fact, I believed I was fooling people. I felt it was the make-up that made me pretty. If they only could see the real me they would know it wasn’t true! I would look at the pretty popular girls, who seemed so outgoing and think, I could never be like them. I always felt like an outsider looking in. In reality - I was just as pretty as they were - but inside I felt like an alien! I was overwhelmed by all the attention I was getting. I had mixed feelings about it. On one hand I liked the attention but it soon felt oppressive. I was an extremely private person, and now I was being scrutinized by all the girls and leered at by boys and men. I kept people at a distance. I was terrified of people getting to know the real me. I was certain if they got to know me they wouldn’t like me. I did have one girlfriend. Our ritual was to go to the doughnut shop after school and eat a couple of éclairs and wash them down with huge cokes. Then I would go home and eat a full dinner! Eating before meals never stopped me from eating more. A critical voice in my head would constantly tell me it hated me. This voice just never seemed to let up. I became really depressed. It quickly began to spiral out of control. I never told anyone what was happening. I didn’t think anyone would do anything to help me anyway. I cried every day. Life became a constant struggle. At 16, the depression seemed to lift a little. I decided I wanted to be a model. I went to a local modeling agency and was told to lose 10 1bs. off my already slender frame. I became obsessed with weight loss and dieting. I would spend my lunch hours in the library reading fashion magazines. I would study all the diets in the magazines. One day I read about fasting. I decided to fast on nothing but water for 5 days! On about day 3, I started to feel deliriously high and agitated. I managed to do it for the full 5 days. On the sixth day, I started bingeing like there was no tomorrow! This was the beginning of my binge eating disorder. For the next 15 years I was either on a binge or a diet. I began to spend hours obsessing on the way my body looked. My butt was too big, my breasts too small, and my legs too skinny. I needed constant reassurance from others that I was pretty. I would look for the reflection of who I was in their eyes. If I couldn't find it, I felt I ceased to exist. When I was on a binge I would drive all around town making my rounds. I would stop in at See’s and get a big bag of chocolates. After that, I would make stops at different fast food joints, going to the drive thru's and bingeing in the car. Finally, I’d stop in at the grocery store and get a Sara lee cheesecake to finish the binge off good! After I'd eaten most of it, I’d throw the remains outside into the garbage and tell myself I wouldn’t eat anymore. I would dump garbage over it so I wouldn't want it. I would wind up going out and eating it right out of the garbage can! These episodes would fill me with great shame and self-loathing but I couldn’t stop. When the weight began to show (about 10-20 lbs. overweight) I would begin to starve myself, and exercise like a mad woman. Sometimes I would become seriously underweight and my periods would stop. At one point I didn’t have a period for a year and a half because I was so thin. Once I got started gaining weight, the binge cycle would start up again. Sometimes I would use laxatives or vomit, but my main weight loss strategy was starvation diets and over exercising. I became a human yo-yo, gaining and losing the same 10-20 lbs. over and over again for the next 14 years. I went to college at 17 and absolutely loved it. I was an honor
student
and I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect in every way that I
wound up
bingeing every day. Even though I loved school, I was still an
emotional wreck. I would eat all day on the weekends to help relieve
the stress and
anxiety I felt. At 21 years old, I sold my condominium and moved from Sacramento to Hollywood. I got a job as a make-up artist on Rodeo Drive, in Beverly Hills. I quickly became lost in the Hollywood party scene. It was 1978, the height of the disco era. I went out on a dinner date just about every night. I began to eat
my way
through the city's best restaurants. I was in heaven. I was now hooked
on the gourmet stuff. I was 20 pounds overweight and I didn't care! I began to practice mindfulness around food. I learned to key into my feelings to discern if I was hungry for food or if what I really wanted was emotional nourishment. I began to trust my body and I only ate until I felt my body signal's that it was full. With this practice, I started to truly savor food and found that I ate much less. My weight came off and began to stabilize; my bingeing stopped completely. I
decided I would have to stop cooking for a living.
It was too easy to binge being around that much food. It was just too
tempting. The universe supported that decision. I hurt my back while
cooking, and was forced to look for other employment. I think that illness is ultimately a spiritual dilemma. It makes us
ask the big questions. Why me? Why now? What is my purpose in this
life? Healing and recovery became my passion and calling. I became certified in everything that I learned. I was trained by a major health maintenance organization (HMO) in a Stanford based mind-body health program and taught workshops in coping with chronic illness. I learned to let go and go with the flow - to just be - and live mindfully. I learned the power of optimism and how to be resilient in the face of adversity. I became a creative problem solver. The illness stripped away the inessentials in my world and helped me find what my true values were and to live them. Ultimately, it taught me I had worth just because I was alive and not because of what I did, or what I looked like. A big turning point in my recovery was forgiving myself and learning
to have compassion and love for myself. I had spent a lifetime hating
myself. What was my terrible crime? Simply being human. I had expected
such perfection from myself! I had spent a lifetime denying who I was. I realized all I ever
really wanted was to be my true self, the self that God had always
intended for me. I was what I was seeking all along! As it is said in
the bible, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” Meditation helped me to be with myself - to become still. Underneath the reverberant chatter of my mind, I discovered the vast, calm, clear center of my being. I began to realize that I could always live from this center. This was the source of my Being, and no matter what was happening in my outer world, I could always return to the calm, inner sanctuary of my soul. Peace, love, and happiness were states that lived within me, not outside of me.
Meditation gave birth to a part of me that could witness the antics of
my mind. The stronger this witness became, the more I could detach and
not react to the dramatics of my mind. I began to see my mind was like
a nonstop projection machine that just churned out thoughts - good,
bad, and indifferent. I’m in the business of shining stars. Today my own star is shining
brightly!
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