I have a friend (distant family member, really) whose weight and eating have led to morbid obesity. She’s a normal woman. With a normal job. And a normal life. But a VERY abnormal weight. She and I have worked together in the past to help her find her way to weight loss and vitality. (This is not an ad. I don’t do consulting. Nothing I say anywhere on this blog should be used as medical advice. I know you know that. NOT medical advice. My friend Annie is under the care of her own physician for overall health.) She did awesome. She rocked health and wellness and could have been a poster woman. Everyone was so proud of her. Then, life kicked her butt with some uninvited and completely undeserved huge life stressors, and eating right and being active fell down the ladder of importance. She and I had to stop corresponding and working on her health and weight due to lifestyle constraints beyond our control, but she knew I cared a lot. Discouragingly, she gained lots of weight back, and embarrassment and shame about her eating and her weight pursued her and closed in for the kill. But I was so happy when she contacted me the other day to see how we can get back to getting her on track again.

Since I’ve been busy trying to research select alternative treatments of traumatic brain injury and pancreatic cancer, I haven’t been able to put anything up on the blog. So I asked my friend if I could share some of what we write back and forth as encouragement to others too. She agreed, and my response to her request for my help is below. (Her name has been changed.) If it feels right, I’ll occasionally post snippets of our conversation to hopefully encourage others. She and I both want people to succeed.

My dearest Annie,

You can never let me down. I promise. This isn’t about me at all. It’s all about you! This whole thing is a million times over more than being about food and weight, and through it you will transform your food, your life, your inner spirit. That’s what it will take.

A couple of years ago, you moved forward in health and vitality. You’ve fallen down and you’re skinned up. Okay. But now, it’s time to move forward again. I believe the hard times and the face plants come to show us, to help us learn, to carve more deeply into ourselves and what our lives mean to us. What we want them to mean to ourselves and others. I see our bodies as a reflection of our inner state. In your letter, I heard shame, disappointment, and guilt. You’ve had a rough time of it all year. There’s NO doubt! And your eating simply reflected that inner (and outer) chaos.

So we will say, “Thank you, shame, guilt, and disappointment for reminding me to take care of my body and brain. You’ve served your purpose. You are dismissed now. I have a good life to go live. Come back when I get off track again.”

 

Now, this summer is time to move into the next phase of a “healthy” FOREVER life. Don’t be afraid. You can do it. You will do it. You have done it before.

 

Right now you’re just overwhelmed. Really tough medical patients used to bother me, the ones in the ICU on a ventilator with kidney disease, heart disease, and bad lungs from smoking. Treating one thing just worsened the other critical problems. Sometimes I’d get frantic, want to turn around and walk out. But I learned that if I organized their problems, treated them, and then regrouped frequently, I could eke them out of the critical care unit.

 

That’s what we’ll do here. We’ll prioritize, organize, take action, and then frequently regroup to assess needs. Here’s some of your list. [I’ve worked with Annie before so I know how she successfully lost weight before. The questions I ask her below wouldn’t apply to everyone, they’re specifically tailored for Annie based on our prior work.]

 

Diet:  Do you want to do low carb or ketogenic even? Or are you happy with just whole foods? You will record what you intake and how much of it you intake. That’s not optional.

 

Activity: How are you going to work it in every day? It’s not optional. Do you want to do it alone? With a friend?

 

Accountability [Everyone needs accountability to something or it won’t work]: You will send me lists every week of what you’re ingesting. You will never lie to yourself about your food choices and how important they are. Every bite we eat DOES matter. (We should not chronically obsess about it, but it DOES matter. The oil-type matters. The sugar matters. The empty calories matter.)

 

Psychology: How your brain thinks affects how you eat. How you eat affects how your brain thinks. Right now, your brain is punk from hard living over the last many months. Get eating right so you can truly gauge your psychology.

 

Homework [These are tailored to Annie. They are not general advice to ANYONE. Just Annie.]:

 

1. Tons of vegetables and fruits. I like to say 6-8 cups a day.

2. No gluten. [From elimination and reintroduction, Annie knows she feels worse with gluten.]

3. No dairy unless it’s high quality, nutrient dense dairy used as an accent.

4. Meat to craving, although eat your TONS of vegetables first.

5. If it’s a baked good or has added sugar, it needs to throw up LOUD alarms. LOUD. LOUD. As in “stop.” Now is not the time.

6. Inspect food for quality that you consume: If you eat out, what kind of oil do you think they use? Oil and fat quality is huge, and I often use that to remind me to eat my own food. My family knows that I sometimes even carry my own olive oil to use in restaurants. Crappy oils make crappy bodies and brains.

7. I need you to do 10-15 (NO MORE) minutes of endorphin-producing exercise just about daily. For me, that’s jumping, sprinting, hitting volleyballs, doing hills. I know you, and I know your brain will respond to this in valuable ways.

8. Take daily, leisurely exercise outside. A walk. A bike ride. Cleaning up the yard. Swimming with the kids. And so on.

9. Start noticing thoughts. (We’ll talk more later on what to do about those. For now, just NOTICE just HOW MANY times you feel them each and every day!) Particularly this week I want you to notice EVERY SINGLE, DARN TIME you feel: GUILT, SHAME, ANGER, DISAPPOINTMENT YOU PUSH ASIDE, FEAR and EMBARRASSMENT.

10. Keep logging every food and drink that passes your lips, and shoot a photo of it and text it if you’d like or e-mail.

 

 

You’ve got this! Let’s start working now and develop some goals for the next month, months, and next year. You do very well with directed goals.

 

With love,

 

Terri