Kansans and Friends In Weight Loss

Yesterday was the last day for my Emotional Eating 101 free articles emailing. In the last article we are given what are called 6 failure strategies and are asked to look at them to see where we fall. For space and times sake I am going to just give you the strategy and the first sentence to give you a glimpse into the description of the strategy.

Failure Strategy #1: Deprive and Binge
Almost every single diet book and diet plan leads to the deprive-and-binge approach, and so this is the most common strategy.

Failure Strategy #2: Binge and Run
This is the approach where
you allow yourself to overeat, or try to exist side by side with your
addiction, but try to compensate for it with exercise.

Failure Strategy #3: Binge and Purge
The binge and purge
cycle of bulimia is a very dangerous strategy, and luckily it is
normally viewed as an unhealthy approach to weight management.

Failure Strategy #4: Going Public
I call the fourth failure
strategy “Going Public.” I’ve seen many variations of this strategy,
including losing weight for a specific event such as an upcoming
wedding or family reunion, or making a public declaration that you’ve
started a diet, or buying clothes that fit only if you lose weight, or
paying to join a support group that encourages success but rejects you
if you fail.

Failure Strategy #5: The Blame Game
Do you curse parental
genes for giving you a slow metabolism? If so, you’ve fallen prey to
the fifth failure method–blaming the extra pounds on your metabolism.

Failure Strategy #6: Medicate the Hunger, Trick the Metabolism
In
our culture, many seek a magic pill to dissolve cellulite, reverse
weight gain, and make getting thin a breeze. This search constitutes
the sixth and final failure strategy.

Then we are asked to think back to a time when you tried to lose weight with one of the
failure strategies. Describe the attempt in detail. Was emotional
eating the main reason it was unsuccessful? If not, why didn’t that
strategy work?

For me the first strategy certainly holds true. I am one to find a diet that restricts me and then when it puts me into feeling like I am deprived I want to immediately go off of it because I don’t want to be hungry all the time. Now with the fifth strategy that is something I can honestly say that is a problem for me I don’t blame it on genes that my metabolism has slowed over the last couple of years. When I started taking birth control and Zoloft together it did cause some weight gain and also caused my metabolism to stall out. This is where the vicious cycle of depression rears it’s ugly head because I am on both medications for a reason. I need the birth control more for regulating that time of the month and allowing for an easier time of it during that time. I need the Zoloft to function every day.

I tried Nutri System and that diet was too restrictive. Even though I had great immediate results I felt starved and the cost was too much. I have sat in on a Weight Watchers meeting but when I went it felt too robotic. I don’t do well with that approach. I have tried Isagenix which again has some great short term results but I couldn’t handle being physically hungry for the first week on the program and it was an MLM type product that they would try and sell you only if you became a distributor. I didn’t want to become a distributor at the get go I just wanted to lose weight and see if the product was right for me. I have tried ephedra based products. Now I am here to tell you that is one thing that did work for me. In a matter of two months I easily lost 10 pounds because it kick started my metabolism so I could lose the weight.

I know I know what your thinking,”that’s failure strategy number 6,” and your right. I needed it and to be honest if it sounds like a cop out here or a sell out if I could find it on the market again I probably would go out and buy it because it was the only thing that worked. With that being said though I still have deep seeded emotional issues to deal with and I know this too.

What I need to do is refocus my energies back into running my support group full steam ahead because that is what has helped me with my emotional eating. I need to bring us out of the box and make us more main stream, but everyone that I talk to says I have to have a degree to do this and that so I have a lesser chance of being held liable in case someone runs into a problem. To that I can only say even though I am not a Dr. I am still someone who has the same struggles that people who are losing weight have. I don’t need a degree to support someone and to be a source for assisting them in finding resources in their community to help them with their weight loss needs. I don’t need a degree to sit quietly by while someone sobs their frustrations in life out to me and I don’t need a degree to take that persons hand and tell them I DO KNOW what they are going through. I don’t need a degree to take that person in my arms and give them the comfort of a hug to make them feel they are not alone. I got my degree in the school of hard knocks a very long time ago. I have street smarts and am working on the book smarts. Those two combined can be a very lethal combination.

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Try to pinpoint the times when you were tempted to break your diet or overeat. What were the main causes? Were you anxious or angry?How about depressed or stressed? If you do eat during these times, how specifically did it make you feel? Content or safe? Numb or detached?How many distinct patterns can you identify?
The most recent incident that I wanted to overeat but fought it was when I found out that my sons father had been approved to be released back to the woman he was with when he committed the crime that landed him in prison. I found out that the parole plan had been approved back in Nov. of 2007. I was furious that they did all of this without considering what kind of impact it would have on his son. I was even more anxious when I found out that I would have to be facing him this coming month so soon after his release to have to go before the court to settle child support. Again no one told me a damn thing about any of this until I had to call for information and no one told me that the judge had revoked the warrant for his arrest in Douglas county so he could do work release. It feels like the parent in prison has more rights than the parent out in the world trying to work to make it for her son. I was glad that on both of these occasions I was broke and also had a pretty slim selection of food here at the house to medicate myself. If there would have been ice cream here the whole half gallon would have been gone in one sitting I would have really felt crappy afterwards but that is the reality of the situation.

Beside emotional eating patterns, what evidence for food addiction can you find in your life? Your weight might be one piece of evidence, but there is probably more if you think about it. Try to think of at least a few things besides your weight that show food addiction plays a major part in your life.
I like chocolate and ice cream.Those are my two food weaknesses. My other addiction is Diet Pepsi.I really am hopelessly addicted to that I have to have a case in the fridge at all times. I know all the caffeine isn’t good for me especially when I am trying to wind down at the end of the day, but due to all the medications I am on that make me sleepy I have to have one thing that keeps me awake and alert albeit artificially.
You undoubtedly have positive motivations to lose weight. What are these positive motivations? Try describing what you would feel like if you reached your target weight. After you’re done, ask yourself why these motivations aren’t strong enough to carry you to success?

My big motivation is that I want to always be healthy. I do not ever want the life many relatives on my mothers side of the family have had. So many have had heart problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancers the whole lot. I just don’t want that for myself ever. I don’t want to be 60 yrs old and taking insulin injections instead of going out and taking in a movie because the insulin is taking more of my money to live and I can’t afford to do other things I want to be doing. I want to live long enough to see my son grow up to be a good man and find a good woman if he wants. If he chooses to have kids I want to live long enough to see those grandchildren and I want to have the energy to keep up with them. I want to be healthy so I can make clear headed decisions for my son right now at this moment in time. I would say I want to look nice in clothes but I don’t look bad in the clothes I have right now, I could look better but feeling better and having more self confidence still outweighs that.If I were to lose the weight that I need to lose I would feel even better than I do right now. It isn’t necessarily that these motivations aren’t strong enough it is that too often even with the help of Zoloft depression takes hold of my brain and I can’t shake the fog that settles there even if I try very hard to shake the cobwebs. This will be a process for me for the rest of my life.

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I am doing some more work into emotional eating as it is something that is a big part of my love hate relationship with food.I was surfing The Fit Shack blog the yesterday and JoLynn Braley was talking about the Shrink Yourself Diet Plan that looks into the emotional side of eating. Well I took the free diet profile analysis and surprisingly it was dead on as to what my eating habits look like. It said that I am a merry go round dieter. Which is very true I freely admit this.

I decided to sign up for the four day emotional eating 101 emails. They give you an article to read and then some questions to ask yourself. These are the questions they ask in the first module.

How hard is it for you to see emotional eating in your life? Is it very visible? If so, describe the instances you’ve got in mind. Do you think instances like this are the main obstacle to you losing
weight? If it’s not so visible, why do you think you have trouble eating less and exercising more?
For me it isn’t very hard to see where I do a chunk of my emotional eating. I seem to do a lot of mindless eating when I am working on the computer and I also used to have a very bad habit of going for what ever was close when I would get angry or upset or depressed. This happened frequently when I was growing up it seemed food was my only outlet from the abuse. I knew I was a little bit overweight it seemed as though I was always 20 pounds overweight and could never get under a certain number because I knew what I needed to do in order to stay in that 20 pound comfort zone. I knew that if I just did an average job of eating right that I would never achieve maximum potential. I think that is also true in many other patterns in my life. I never felt that I really had to be anyone special because at the time I didn’t feel special. I felt dirty, unattractive and like a loner. I didn’t think there was anyone who could relate to how I felt about abandonment issues I suffered from an early age. Many times I just wanted to curl up into a corner and let the world pass me by.

Do you have trouble differentiating between emotional hunger and physical hunger? Describe
a time when you may have mistaken emotional hunger for physical hunger.What was happening at the time to make you emotionally hungry? Why didn’t you deal with it directly, instead of using food? This is a good question in relation to boredom eating. I sometimes do eat when I am bored. I just eat because well I am not hungry I just eat to have something to do. I did this last weekend and just felt horrible about it the next day. My son and I had been out and about and we had just had a bag each of M and M’s. Well ok I was physically hungry at that point, but then I had kept promising my son a hot fudge sundae and well mom couldn’t get the kiddo something and not get herself something. Yeah you can see where this is going. I got an ice cream too just because I wanted something to do while he was eating his ice cream. I sometimes catch myself snacking at meetings because well it is there and the people who prepared it for us worked so hard to fix it. Yup I grew up in the household that you ate what was on your plate and you also didn’t leave much leftovers or they became the meal for the next day. There again old habits from the past carry over into adulthood. I don’t do that so much now. I used to take seconds growing up just to not to have to eat leftovers the next day or try and get a second helping before my brothers got one. Now if it is leftover it is ok with my son eating at school all week I have to have something to eat for lunch so now I am cool with leftovers. Now actually I did do very good this past week dealing with my emotions instead of going to the fridge or cupboards to find something to snack on. I was upset about his father finding a loophole around a warrant for his arrest and I could have done any number of things but instead I got online and chatted to my friends in order to keep my mind from going to food. I am working on that it is going to be an ongoing issue with me.

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I had to take a bit of a break from the self analysis because well quite frankly going back into my childhood and rehashing some of the recent stuff from the not too distant past takes an emotional toll on me and while writing does help keep me from turning into an emotional eater I still get drained from trying to deal with it.

To this day I still feel dirty when I think of what my grandfather did to me and it makes me angry that he did it to me. My grandfather,my mom, my oldest brother and both abusive, alcoholic ex boyfriends are the reasons I find it hard to trust anyone which brings me to the first question of Chapter 6.

1. Do you have someone you trust, someone who will never tell what comes up during an angry spat, someone who can listen with understanding-someone you can vent to?

I had to take some time and really think about this question as I do not trust myself when I get angry. I am on a high enough dosage of Zoloft that it pretty much tampers most of my negative feelings. If I can’t trust myself to get angry I don’t trust myself to get angry around other people and I don’t have that many people I consider close enough to let them ever see that side of me. I know I let a lot of people see the informative, intelligent, up with the latest info yadda yadda here and over on my other blog and other places I reside in on the internet but to show anyone my vulnerable, scared, and angry side is something I try to sheild those who follow me on the internet and in my personal life from. Actually I live alone with my son. I also decided not to get into another relationship right now.

My existence offline is really rather a hermit like existence. I have to force myself to get out every day and see the outside world and if I didn’t have my son I would hardly ever venture out. Why? I feel at times I really don’t fit in anywhere. I know I am not alone in the world when it comes to sexual abuse and a history with alcoholic abusers, however, there is something in an abuse survivors head that will linger for the rest of their lifetime telling them they aren’t good enough for anyone because they are unclean or unwanted. I think that is one reason why I have turned to a higher power. My choice is the Christian God. I know that some may not or will not listen past this point, but well there is something within the Bible that resonates with me. Since I have become leader of my WELCA group and have been studying this Bible study series I have seen that Jesus and God don’t care about the color of your skin, what you have done, or what has been done to you, they only care about you.

Now mind you it is still taking me time to really wrap my head around this and I am not about forcing my beliefs on anyone what I am about it trying to find something to believe in. Which by the way that was also a song by Poison released in 1990, the year I graduated from high school three months pregnant.

I wanted so badly to find something to make sense of what was going on in my world at that time and I am still trying to make sense of it. I know there is a reason why I have gone through what I have and why I still continue to struggle. It isn’t clear at times but I have seen things happen and for folks who have led a less traumatic life it cripples them when a major crisis hits for the first time. I,however,am the calm in the storm for them. I have been through whatever it is they are going through. So I can then move into a position of strength for them when they need it.

2. Have you ever turned a frustrating event into a funny story?

Well now now that is an answer I would have to really think about. I am not sure which frustrating event in my life would merit trying to make light of. I guess it could be all the aggravations I have had with my car. Now that has been an adventure of sorts since owning it. I have had nearly $2000 in repairs done to the engine and the electrical system and the brakes because well my ex boyfriend and his friend are shade tree mechanics at best. Neither one of them are certified mechanics.

3. When you are facing a tough day how do you feel after you pray about it?

I tend not to really pray about something I kind of mull it over and try to figure out how to handle it. I look at it this way I can either get angry about it or I can figure out someway to move through it and past it so it doesn’t consume me. I have to do that now more than ever because I don’t feel good when I let myself sink into depression. I get this overwhelming sense of fatigue and then I just want to sleep or shrink inside myself and then I lose the ability to be productive. So I have to NOT let the smallest set back get in my road.

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