The Psychology of Losing Weight - Listening

Part I of this series

Back in the day when I ate in binges, I was a slave to food. If I was able to control what I put in my mouth, I was somewhat OK. But once I let myself ’slip’ - and I mean, just a tiny bit, the onslaught of food was like an avalance - I simply couldn’t stop eating until my stomach was so distended that another ounce of food would likely have caused internal bleeding.

The tides turned slightly when I went to an Overeaters Anonymous meeting and finally made the admission that I was powerless over food. That took me months to admit - and it was probably the hardest step of all. Yet, with OA participation came the commitment to be ‘abstinent’ from overeating - which certainly was something I needed to do, but at the same time, certainly did not address the feelings of deprivation that accompanied abstinence.

Participating in OA meetings was a critical step on my journey to peace with food. But the approach that got me abstinent didn’t work to keep me abstinent.

Enter Geneen Roth. Geneen wrote an amazing book entitled When Food is Love, and there was a short passage in the book that changed my relationship with food forever.

In this passage, Geneen explains a scenario in which a mother was seeking help in helping her daughter lose weight. The mother was asked what her daughter’s favorite food was, which turned out to be M&Ms. The mother was instructed to fill a pillowcase full of M&Ms and let the child carry that pillowcase with her wherever she went.

Of course, the mother was iniitally horrified, but did it nonetheless. After a few days the mother panicked, because her daughter was eating them all day, every day. A frantic call was made to get some reassurance - and indeed was advised that her daughter was reacting to the years of deprivation. She was told that once her daughter really believed that she could eat whatever she wanted, she would relax and begin eating from stomach hunger.

By the ninth day, the pillowcase stayed in the bedroom. At the end of 5 weeks, she had lost 6 pounds.

This was huge. I totally got it. Immediately, I started eating what I wanted, when I wanted. For a few weeks, I really binged. I even started putting on some more weight. The very important key here is that I did so without guilt (well, less guilt than before…), and that I made it OK for me to gain a little bit of weight as long as I was listening to what my body said I wanted to eat.

It worked.

Over the next 6 months or so, I went from 185 pounds down to 155. I found that when I listened to myself, and really ate what I wanted to eat, I binged less and less.

My body started trusting me too - that when it needed me to pay attention to something, I was there for myself.

The second phase of this process was eating less. This required I actually be “present” when I ate a meal, meaning I was paying attention to my body and how it felt while I was eating. This was extraordinarily difficult at the time, because I had been using food for years for the exact opposite purpose - to escape from myself.

I ate whatever I wanted - but I had to STOP when I became full. This was challenging in and of itself at first, because my stomach was so stretched out from my binges. But gradually, as I became more present and listened to my body, my portions naturally grew smaller and I left more and more food on my plate.

Over the next year and a half (with a pregnancy sandwiched in between), I lost another 20 pounds.

The interesting part was that as I listened to my cravings, I found that I actually craved lighter, healthier foods. I noticed that I felt great when I ate broccoli - so I actually wanted more of it. I felt like crap when I ate a big chocolate chip cookie - so by listening, I found I wanted less of it.

In listening, I also found that my body had a lot more to say to me that just what it wanted it eat.

In the next part of this series, I’ll talk about the real issues behind being overweight and how to find real resolution and be at peace with your body.