The Life You Want Read online

  Everybody, though, experiences discomfort differently, and many people have a higher threshold for discomfort than others. That’s one thing that may separate those who are eventually able to lose weight and keep it off from those who can’t seem to get it right. But success—or failure—as it relates to discomfort is not quite as simple as that. Eating unhealthfully and avoiding physical activity not only lets people evade unpleasant things like chocolate withdrawal and sweaty gym clothes, it allows them to dodge dealing with uncomfortable emotional pain. For those people, especially if they’re emotional overeaters, the biggest barrier to weight loss is an aversion to the pain or discomfort of confronting personal issues.

  And yet here is an odd little twist to the whole idea of how an aversion to discomfort and pain can get in the way of long-term weight loss. Angela Taylor, LCSW, a licensed psychotherapist in Los Angeles who specializes in eating disorders and weight management, points out that some people also use something they find painful—say, a feeling of self-loathing and embarrassment about being fat—to motivate them to change their eating and exercise habits. That might sound like a good thing, and it can be a good way to jump-start a program, but ultimately it may be impossible to stick with a way of life that is solely driven by such negative feelings. “In most things in life, we use pleasure to motivate us,” observes Taylor. “We reward kids with gold stars to motivate them, we give ourselves vacations for a job well done. But somehow, when it comes to weight loss, people seem to be more motivated in the beginning by things that trigger their pain center. And it’s typically not sustainable. You burn out because the natural inclination is to run away from pain.”

  One exception to this viewpoint is the fear of becoming ill—or actually becoming ill. For example, suffering a heart attack (or being told by your doctor that you might if you don’t lose weight) or learning that you are prediabetic can be powerful motivators. I’ve seen many people, roused by illness or a fear of illness, suddenly adopt regular healthy behaviors after years of inconsistency. It can be the most influential motivator there is. Yet in cases where these threats don’t exist, pleasure is often a stronger motivator for changing habits. “If you can find a way to introduce pleasure into the experience, it shifts your mind-set,” says Taylor.

  As it is, many people’s minds are closed to the idea that they may find some pleasure in changing old habits, and that’s often due to the “stories” they tell themselves about healthy eating and exercise: They expect it to be unpleasant, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Say, for instance, that you start a new job, and your coworkers gossip to you about Gary in the mailroom. “Oh, Gary is so awful.” “He has a bad temper.” “You’re going to hate Gary.” By the time you do finally meet Gary, you’re going to have him pegged because of all the stories you’ve heard about him. The poor guy isn’t going to have a chance with you.

  In the same way, people often tell themselves stories about the gym and nutritious meals, dashing any hope that they’re going to find something to like about either. “The brain likes to take shortcuts. It analyzes, compares, and makes associations so that it doesn’t have to learn something new in every situation,” explains Taylor. “So if you associate the gym with pain, pretty soon just pulling into the parking lot or looking at your gym clothes is going to stir up feelings of dread. Your brain skips the middle part, so that pretty soon you only have to look at your gym clothes, and your mind thinks, Ugh.”

  The good thing about the brain, though, is that it’s malleable. You can learn new, more pleasant associations, even if you have to consciously think about what those pleasant associations are: “The gym gives me a break from my family.” “I feel calmer after I’ve gone out for a brisk walk.” “If I don’t eat so much at dinner, my clothes don’t feel so uncomfortable.” And so on. In subsequent chapters, we’ll be dealing a lot with how to zero in on the pleasurable aspects of healthy living. If the barrier that’s stopping you is an aversion to discomfort, that’s going to help you move closer to success.

  Barrier 2: Caught Up in the Business of Life

  Our culture dictates that the more we do, the more we will get out of life. In response to this, many people work too much, commit to too many activities—and even overschedule their kids. Yet instead of feeling fulfilled and contented, they end up stressed, exhausted, and hungry. Your true hunger for rest, meaning in life, balance, and closeness with others may register as cravings for food and alcohol, and even other things, such as drugs. As the stress of being too busy increases, you can begin to feel out of control.

  Being caught up in the business of life can become a huge barrier to success for several reasons. Besides making you hungry in the ways I just mentioned, it gives you the idea that you are too busy to attend to your health. It’s your out: “I can’t exercise, I can’t make healthy meals; my schedule just won’t permit it.” Yet many busy people do eat right and exercise, and one reason they’re able to do it is because they make it a priority. They find balance. But if you’re overcommitting in other areas of your life, you’re not going to achieve that balance.

  People who overbook their lives often have trouble saying no, limiting time with people who stress them out, and letting go of perfectionistic standards for both themselves and others. All these things, too, stand in the way of long-term weight loss success because they make it almost impossible to find the time or an acceptable means of nurturing yourself. But nurturing yourself is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. In chapter 4, I’ll specifically address the excuse that people often use to avoid exercise: “I don’t have time.” You’ll see that, despite your busy life, you actually can work physical activity and eating nutritiously into your schedule.

  LOSING TO GAIN A CAREER DREAM

  The signs were all there: the fact that simply turning over in bed made him out of breath, the alarming reflection of his 375-pound body in the mirror, and then his doctor mentioning the words gastric bypass. But what finally nudged Shaun Tympanick to do something about his weight was the realization that if he didn’t, his career dreams would never come true.

  “I’d been a probation officer for years and was sick of it. There were these far more interesting law enforcement jobs I wanted so badly, but at my weight, there was no way I could get through police academy training,” explains Shaun, who, like many of the people you’ll be reading about throughout this book, is a participant in the National Weight Control Registry. To help him out, his brother bought him a gym membership and they went together. He focused on cardio—the treadmill, bicycle, step machine—and he and his brother became hooked on racquetball.

  Meanwhile, he overhauled his diet. “I used to eat out every single night,” recalls Shaun. “A lot of it was fast food, which I cut out completely. Somewhere midway through my weight loss, I bit into a chicken nugget and it tasted like bleach. I was relieved; I’d been afraid that even tasting fast food again would make me revert back to my old ways.”

  Shaun lost 155 pounds in just fourteen months. The first 100 pounds took nine months to lose; five months later, he lost the last 55. For three years, he has been maintaining at 220, which feels just right for his six-foot-three-inch frame. A year later, Shaun entered the police academy. “More than the badge and the gun, I wanted the Physical Training Award. I was the fastest guy there and could outrun anyone on the obstacle course. When the instructor presented me with the award, he couldn’t believe that I used to be so completely out of shape.”

  After graduation, Shaun landed his dream job with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Just because I’ve met my goals doesn’t mean I’m going to slack off,” he emphasizes. “I run seven miles straight three or four times a week. Once a year, I guest lecture a high school criminal justice class my brother teaches. I tell the students that you don’t just get fit to graduate. God forbid you have to defend yourself on the job— you need to be fit for that.” When his coworkers rib him about being a diet and exercise freak, he asks them, “If there’s
a scuffle or a serious incident, who’d you rather be at your side: the fit guy or the unfit one?”

  Barrier 3: Your Pleasure-Seeking Physiological Wiring

  Our bodies are incredibly elegant machines. They have wiring, which was laid down about one hundred thousand years ago, that helps us avoid starvation by influencing our food preferences and appetite. That was useful to our cavemen ancestors, but, of course, most of us have little chance of starvation today. In fact, with today’s overabundance of food, this hardwiring is more of a liability than an asset.

  Everyone’s brain is programmed to seek pleasure, a mechanism that encourages us to consume more high-calorie foods. Given the body’s drive to store body fat in anticipation of leaner times, every time you munch on a bag of chips or scarf down a doughnut, pathways in your brain trigger the release of neurotransmitters such as endorphins and serotonin, chemical messengers associated with positive emotions. That’s why it feels so good. And if you use foods to self-medicate when you feel lonely or sad or stressed, you reinforce the system. The next time you’re in the same emotional low, your brain will remember what gave you relief the last time and urge you to eat those chips or doughnuts all over again.

  The body’s natural propensity for pleasure can be one of the biggest barriers to changing habits. How many times has someone set a piece of cake in front of you and part of your mind tells you “no, no, no” while the other part whispers “yes, yes, yes”? The latter is a tough impulse to fight, especially for some people. Evidence suggests that, while we may all have pleasure-seeking encoding in our brains, overweight people in particular seem to have malfunctions in this system, compelling them to eat more than other people to get the same “buzz” from high-calorie foods.

  In chapter 3, Janis is going to sketch out the physiological barriers to weight loss in full, but one thing you should know right off the bat is that the reward centers of the brain—where the pleasure of those high-calorie foods registers—also respond to other substances that bring about pleasure. That’s why alcohol, drugs (including the nicotine in cigarettes), and high-calorie food can be equally addicting and why many people begin overeating when they give up those other vices. But those reward centers also respond to other gratifying things, like watching a beautiful sunset or experiencing a loving touch—or the endorphins produced by exercise. So while you may not be able to change the wiring in your brain, you can “feed” those reward centers other pleasures. That’s the key to overcoming this hurdle. Biology isn’t destiny when you have effective strategies like the ones you’ll find throughout this book firmly in place.

  Barrier 4: Feelings of Unworthiness

  If you ask someone, “Do you feel worthy of having a good life?” that person will almost always answer, “Of course.” But is that the truth? Often, when you get down to the specifics of what someone feels he or she deserves in life, the answer is no.

  Self-worth is having a sense that it’s okay for you to get what you want and to enjoy life. It’s also a sense that your opinions, your priorities, and your needs matter as much as the next person’s. People who have a sense of unworthiness, on the other hand, may chronically apologize for their actions, find it hard to accept a compliment, let other people take advantage of them, be quick to take the blame for things that aren’t even their fault, and sublimate their needs in favor of the needs of others.

  Unworthiness interferes with weight loss in a variety of ways. For one thing, adopting healthy habits requires that you put yourself first in many respects. It may mean doing things like choosing to serve lean meats and piles of vegetables instead of the macaroni and cheese that your family prefers; leaving your child with a babysitter or your mom for an hour so that you can go to the gym; or putting the brakes on overtime so that you can get enough sleep even though your coworkers are staying late. People who don’t have a healthy self-worth don’t take these necessary steps. They are doormats, worried that their actions of self-love (or even just self-preservation) will hurt or inconvenience someone else. They find it all too easy to defer to everyone else, which makes it very hard to concentrate on developing healthier habits for themselves.

  Unworthiness can also be an obstacle to living up to your full potential if it involves constantly comparing yourself to others and never coming out ahead. If John always gets out and jogs three more days than you, and your colleague Betsy is so strong willed that she never takes even a single bite of cake at office celebrations, you may constantly feel discouraged by your inability to keep up. Again, that’s not exactly a good incentive for someone who wants to make big changes in his or her life.

  RAISING SELF-WORTH, LOWERING

  EMOTIONAL EATING

  “When I was growing up, there weren’t many overweight kids,” recalls Cindy Heiss, PhD, RD, a registered dietitian and professor of nutrition at Metropolitan State College of Denver. “I was a little chubby, and I remember getting teased about it on the school bus at age eleven. That’s when I went on my first diet.” Going from one popular diet to the next, Cindy’s weight yo-yoed throughout high school, college, and grad school. At age twenty-five, she lost over 100 pounds on a liquid diet, only to gain it all back, peaking at 258 pounds by age thirty-nine. “I had a PhD in nutrition; I knew people were baffled and extra judgmental about my weight,” she reflects. “I felt tremendous shame, which led to a desperation to lose weight quickly and going on weight loss regimens I knew weren’t healthy.”

  Cindy’s turning point came a few years later when she caught one of my appearances on Oprah’s show in January 2003. “Years before, I’d read Bob and Oprah’s book, Make the Connection, and realized I was an emotional eater, but I didn’t like myself enough then to do anything about it. It wasn’t until I heard Bob talk about it on the show that I really internalized it. It hit me that as an emotional eater, dieting wasn’t going to work for me; that I was going to have to change the way I lived my life. I realized that I needed to have enough self-worth to take care of myself and that the weight wasn’t the primary issue. So on that day, at 258 pounds, I stopped being the ‘fat girl’ and starting feeling like an inherently worthy person,” she says.

  Eventually, with the help of a nutrition counselor whom she saw not for the nutrition advice but for the support in giving her permission to make herself a priority, Cindy started changing the way she lived. Her first step, literally, was to do something she loved: walking on the beach. On one of those walks, a young man called out, “Look at the beached whale!” Her response: “Instead of thinking I was a defective person, like I did that day at age eleven on the school bus, my first thought was, What a jerk.” She also left her exceedingly stressful professorship at a California university for a saner position at a midwestern school. Better eating habits followed, along with a 115-pound weight loss. Now forty-seven years old, Cindy has maintained her weight at around 145 pounds—a comfortable size 8—for more than five years.

  How did she stop using food to cope? “I’ve had to learn to take better care of myself, which involved learning to say no,” she explains. “That was tough. I had to overcome a victim-martyr mentality and realize that I had a choice in how to live my life. Putting myself first was—and still is—hard. I’m a perfectionist who tries too hard to be liked by everyone, which is impossible, and I have to force myself not to work too hard.”

  Cindy still gets the urge to overeat when she’s very stressed, but she reminds herself that “my problems won’t be solved by a bowl of ice cream.” Instead she now copes by exercising, going to the gym, or taking a walk in the park, and by contacting friends. “My best friend is my sister; we talk at least every other day. I also joined a women’s support group in Denver that meets once a week—that helps me develop further insight and provides tremendous support—and I rely on other friends as well,” says Cindy. “Before, it was hard for me to ask for help; now it’s getting easier.”

  Our sense of self-worth is generally developed when we are children. As Angela Taylor explains, “Wa
tch a small child and you will hear him repeatedly say, ‘look at me, Mommy!’ or ‘Watch this, Daddy.’ In essence, he is saying, ‘Am I okay?’ When a child receives the message ‘yes, I think you are great,’ they feel validated. When they don’t, they often develop the habit of thinking of themselves as ‘not okay,’ and believing they always must ‘do better’ in order to be ‘okay.’ This leads to a chronic feeling of unworthiness.”

  Other things can also lead to low feelings of self-worth. People who get caught up in the media images surrounding us—the perfect bodies, the airbrushed faces—may feel insignificant by comparison because they can’t match those images. (Who can?) People who feel guilty for something, real or imagined, that they did may also feel they don’t deserve a better life. Often, children of physical or sexual abuse grow up believing that they did something wrong and therefore brought on the abuse. And the abuse itself reinforces the fact that they’re unworthy of love and respect; why else would someone treat them that way? Those feelings of guilt and/or low self-worth can get carried into adulthood, making a person feel undeserving of any of the good things in life.