October 5, 2006 7:58 PM
Dieting: it's about so much more than losing pounds
Okay, I know there are a lot of you who don't need to diet and I hope you're skipping all these posts - unless you have a friend or relative who needs help and understanding.
Then I know there are some of you who do need to diet but aren't ready to yet and I hope you're forgiving me as I come down hard on myself and anyone else who's ready for that stage of their lifetime journey. Lord knows, I'm not judging anyone. It took me a long time to see the light. Still, I'm sharing what's on my mind just in case it's helpful for anyone. Bottom line: I'm a thinker, so whatever I see in my own life or the lives around me is just grist for the mill.
So, here's what I've been thinking today. I watched The Biggest Loser last night and there was just so much raw emotion. So many tears! I thought about how fat people are usually considered so nice, so happy-go-lucky - and often great comedians. And I wondered how much stuffing your face is related to stuffing your feelings.
My first husband (in my pre-believer days) was overweight when we married. I met him when I was a senior in high school and admired him immensely because wherever we went he was the life of the party - in contrast to me, at the time completely socially inept. I'm not exaggerating. When we arrived anywhere, people were waiting for Zoomer (his nickname) to get there and within five minutes he would have them all in the palm of his hand.
My own background was desperate - a father's abandonment, a mother with a weakness for alcohol and abusive men, foster homes, poverty. In addition, for some strange reason I was very intelligent and managed despite living in a dozen places the first 11 years of my life to skip a grade and rack up phenomenal test scores. At a time when it just wasn't cool to be smart, this only added to my social awkwardness. Hence the great attraction - I wanted what Zoomer had. Hanging on his arm, I could bask in the limelight.
But this isn't about me and my feelings - it's about his. Because about a year after we were married - shortly after Samantha was born, my mother one day asked me how much he weighed. I didn't know and neither did he, but he gamely got on the scale and had to confront the reality of what he was unable to see in the mirror - and I had to confront the reality I'd been ignoring as well.
He needed to lose 90 pounds. I wasn't overweight really - although at 135 pounds I could stand to lose 10 pounds. We went on a diet together and began running every day. By our second anniversary, he looked terrific while I probably looked anorexic at 115 (though I wasn't anorexic in the classic sense - just running too much, I think).
The funny thing was that after losing weight, he began to hate that feeling of walking into a party and being expected to perform. In fact, it started to make him angry.
Anger was a feeling that was foreign to him. But then he'd been brushing off all his feelings with humor - skimming the surface of life and never digging too deeply. The truth was, there were issues he'd been running from all his life. Although his family was a comfortable middle class family with two homes (one at the shore) that looked fine from the outside, his growing up years had been all about denial as the family endured and covered up for the abusive behavior of a thoroughly but secretly alcoholic mother. We're talking kids hiding in the closet during her nightly screaming rages, trying not to hear the physical fights of the parents, yet getting up the next morning and pretending everything was okay, ignoring her bruises and shaking hands, the bottles hidden everywhere.
Every child reacts to the family issues differently. He was the third child and in many ways more vulnerable. When I think of him huddled in the closet, listening to the screaming and scuffling and falling down the stairs, I start to cry – just because little children are so precious and so vulnerable and so many endure so much hardship.
When I was young, I reacted to the pain of abandonment and sexual abuse (in a foster home) plus being shuffled around like an unwanted package by making a decision to cut off my feelings. A therapist later told me that in reality this is a good thing that children in difficult situations do – like a survival technique.
The problem is that when you’re in your twenties and out of the trauma and stress you don’t need the survival behaviors anymore. But it takes a while to realize that you are safe and can let them go. How I wish I had known this sooner!
So it was with Zoomer (btw, I didn’t really call him Zoomer – his friends did, and I’m just using that rather than his real name here). He had spent many years stuffing his feelings and stuffing his face. Once he stopped both, I guess he kind of realized he wanted to be accepted for who he really was, not the comedian persona he’d developed. He was still a funny person, but he became a more authentic human being.
My point here is that losing weight – because it involves cutting down on food and whatever anesthetic/escape/control benefits it’s been providing means that you are exposed and vulnerable to whatever issues you’ve been running from.
Hence the raw emotions on The Biggest Loser – and the way the blue team clings to each other like survivors from a shipwreck. Each of those contestants has a story to tell – though we may never hear them – and each knows that they’ve been saved from a dangerous/deadly/destructive situation.
Those are tears of relief and release and renewal. And I can’t see them without crying a few myself. Thank God I have finally lost this weight! Thank God I've discovered more joy! And if there's any way I can help others, I want to be there for them too!
Comments
Barbara, you are so right. I lost 90 lbs. in one year, and have kept most of it off for the past two years. For me it is as if before, my problems were one homogenized mass, with nothing standing out so I could identify it. But since I started taking back my life and assuming my responsibilities again, it is as a number of things now stand out, isolated, in full view. The worst of these is my ADD symptoms, which I never recognized in the past, but which dominate my life to the degree that I try to fulfill my duties as wife and mother. It has been a rough ride -- and still is -- but I think I am getting there.
A HUGE congrats on your weight loss so far!!! Keep up the great work!!
I started off on the same path as you last spring, bombed over the summer, and got back on track again about a month ago. I don't know how much I have lost this time, but I have lost a full dress size. :-)
Posted by: Willena | October 6, 2006 3:24 AM
Hi Barbara, I've appreciated you sharing your weight loss journey. It has been a great encouragement for me. The Lord has revealed to me, over the summer, why I have battled depression all my life. The reason for the anger and frustration that characterized my childhood and into my adulthood. I have begun my own weight loss journey and am feeling SO much better. I was thinking recently and getting excited at the thought of the fruit that would begin to grow in my life (and the lives of my family) as the depression leaves and Joy is entering in. It's been a process that has been going on for a couple of years now, but has recently increased in intensity and I am thankful beyond words for what the Lord is doing. I have lost almost 7 pounds since Sept. 9th and my size 20 clothes are too loose and my 18s are getting comfortable! Thank you for continuing to be transparent with the lessons that the Lord is teaching you as you share with others. Jennifer
Posted by: Jennifer | October 6, 2006 8:37 AM
Barbara,
Have you ever thought about writing a book about the emotional/spiritual effects of being overweight and of losing the weight? I think it would be helpful to a lot of people. It's a topic that is so overlooked in our fast-food, super-size, all-you-can-eat culture. And I believe people would listen to you since you've been there and you write with such truth, clarity and conviction.
I often talk to people about sexual issues because of my past addiction to pornography. I can relate to what people are going through in that arena. But I've always been thin. (Believe it or not, it is very difficult for me to gain weight!) So I find it difficult to speak to the issue of being overweight. I'd love to be able to point people to a good reference on the topic that comes from a Christian worldview.
Besides, you needed something to do in your spare time!
Posted by: Brian | October 6, 2006 8:43 AM
I really appreciate your honesty. We will never change unless we are honest about the areas in our lives that need change. I have lost 32 lbs since the first of May. As a 41 yr old mommy of eight children it has been a challenge to get the weight off before getting pregnant again!! I don't know how many times I have lost and gained the same 10-15 lbs. What is different this time? Honesty. Being honest with myself that I was behaving in a way that was destructive to my health and happiness. Being honest with myself that I was not just naturally "a little heavy". Being honest with myself that being a glutton is a sin. Yes, amazing, that me a born again christian was living daily in sin!!! I had a revelation this summer (please stay with me on this, the beginning sounds off track but it all relates at the end). My husband and I have been blessed with a beautiful intimate life that I believe comes only from God. I would never go outside our marriage to seek the enjoyment and pleasure that we have as a couple. It is a part of God's design for marriage, and meant for us to enjoy. Food is also a part of his design. He has given it to us to nourish us, and I believe also for enjoyment. But, when we abuse it, and use it for other than what He planned, it becomes sin. I believe just as much sin as if I were to have sex outside of my marriage. It is amazing the number of overweight christians. How many pastors would never preach on this topic because they would have to deal with their own problem. Again I go back to honesty. I am thankful that the Lord brought me to the place that I can be honest with myself. I wonder... what is the next area in my life he is going to open my eyes to?
Thanks Barbara for being to open and honest. It helps the rest of us to be the same.
Posted by: Becky S | October 6, 2006 1:53 PM
Barbara, I love your posts on losing weight. I need them so much. Isn't it amazing how things in our lives can be so related to other things? That seems a little obscure, I know, but I'm finding that I'm having to get rid of clutter all over the place: my home's clutter, my emotional clutter, my spiritual clutter and my physical body clutter.
A male friend of my husband's told me the other day that when I was younger, I was a very attractive woman (he's know me since we were teenagers). While it seems like a back-handed compliment, when I told one of my friends about it, she totally saw the same thing that I saw: I would still be attractive if I wasn't carrying around 60 lbs of body clutter! It wasn't because I was younger, it's because I was taking care of myself. I still have the same face. Ok, the body's taken some abuse after having three children and some health issues, but still...
Thanks so much for continuing to call fat what it is. It helps me to see things in bold type, so to speak.
Posted by: Lucy | October 6, 2006 3:09 PM
Thanks everyone for your honesty too! Brian - Thanks for the vote of confidence! I do have a book proposal circulating called What Do You Have to Lose?. I'm ready to write it if someone's ready to publish it :)
Posted by: barbara | October 6, 2006 5:09 PM
