Alliance of Hope : Get Involved
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Sunday, August 16, 2009
Thursday, October 23, 2008
How to know if you are a glutton or an addict?
Are you a glutton or a food addict?
How do you know?
Have you sold your birthright for a meal lately, as Esau of the Bible did?
Most of us were born with glorious potential, but also with that particular something that blocks us from reaching that potential. Ask yourself what is it that reveals the weaker, short-sighted aspect of your personality. Food is mine. Is it yours?
Does the idea of eating only one-half cup of ice cream make you mad? You might need to consider your piggish ways.
If the ADA’s notions about portions leave you starved and frustrated, your colleagues and siblings may soon be calling you garbage gut.
If the idea of eating just one is truly incomprehensible, you may be sealing your fate with your fork.
Are you often voracious? Insatiable? Ravenous?
But here’s the important question: Does it matter? Is your weight or BMI or how you look in your clothes interfering with your living up to that glorious potential you were born for? Do you care?
Desperately?
Well, here’s a well-kept secret. If you care now, you will still care in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. Caring about the consequences of gluttony and/or food addiction rarely goes away. Putting food first in our lives may not cost us the right to lead a country, but it certainly can cost us many happy times.
What are the consequences?
Fat. Sadness because you feel shame about not being able to control your eating.
Fat. Depression because over-eating has robbed you of having fun. Again.
Fat. Self-condemnation because something compels you to behave in self-destructive ways and it spills over into every area of your life. People assume you’re weak. Undisciplined. The emotional consequences of gluttony present themselves long before health concerns do.
If your hips are heavy, your heart probably is too. When the sin of gluttony or the disease of addiction lies at your door, it blocks the opening of many other doors. If belly bulge is stealing your joy now, you won’t feel any better about it next year or the year after that. It will go on stealing from you until pretty soon, it has stolen your whole life. How many parties does a girl have to miss before she gets it? How many fashion trends and fads does she have to pass up because her portly profile resembles a boiled egg?
But what can you do about it? It isn’t as though you haven’t tried already. You’ve been on all the diets. One or more worked but you didn’t stay on it. All that advice about determination and perseverance hasn’t done a bit of good. Why not? Because the gluttonous alter ego in us doesn’t care about fashion trends. She likes to eat. What she wants. When she wants. And as much as she wants. And God help the one who comes between her and her Cherry Cordial ice cream. Addiction is sneaky.
There is always a moment when we choose to care about the food more than anything else. Like Esau when he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. He was hungry and he didn’t care that he was supposed to inherit a fortune.
Getting to the truth about gluttony and addiction
Why do we fail in attempt after attempt to permanently change our eating behavior, and likewise our appearance? We tell ourselves we failed yet again because of some logical sounding excuse, but the real reason we don’t stay on diets is gluttony. Period. End of sentence. Or is it? Is it gluttony or addiction?
Think about the last time you pigged out on something that made you feel crummy about doing it. Gluttony masquerades as fatigue, stress, even illness. So does addiction. Someone who is not a glutton or an addict will not use those excuses to stuff herself. Normal people might occasionally eat too much because their plate is too large, or the ambience too inviting, but never because of some inner compulsion. But I am not normal. Even though there is always a moment when I could choose differently, I occasionally don’t. I fall off the chow wagon yet again. And I do it often enough to keep my two body hovering two good sizes larger than I’d like. No amount of distorted logic can account for the regularity with which I sabotage my best intentions. Plainly, self-will runs riot. We are defined by our actions, not our thoughts or feelings.
What’s the difference between a glutton and a food addict?
A food addict might love the taste of food but hates the results of overeating. When a food addict overeats her whole life begins to spin out of control and the addiction takes over. She begins to act out in other ways. Control issues show up. A glutton loves food despite what it does. A glutton just accepts the results of overeating as part of life and does not care about getting it under control until health problems threaten. And she doesn't care enough about other people to try to control them.
Hi, my name is Lin and I'm an addict.
How do you know?
Have you sold your birthright for a meal lately, as Esau of the Bible did?
Most of us were born with glorious potential, but also with that particular something that blocks us from reaching that potential. Ask yourself what is it that reveals the weaker, short-sighted aspect of your personality. Food is mine. Is it yours?
Does the idea of eating only one-half cup of ice cream make you mad? You might need to consider your piggish ways.
If the ADA’s notions about portions leave you starved and frustrated, your colleagues and siblings may soon be calling you garbage gut.
If the idea of eating just one is truly incomprehensible, you may be sealing your fate with your fork.
Are you often voracious? Insatiable? Ravenous?
But here’s the important question: Does it matter? Is your weight or BMI or how you look in your clothes interfering with your living up to that glorious potential you were born for? Do you care?
Desperately?
Well, here’s a well-kept secret. If you care now, you will still care in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. Caring about the consequences of gluttony and/or food addiction rarely goes away. Putting food first in our lives may not cost us the right to lead a country, but it certainly can cost us many happy times.
What are the consequences?
Fat. Sadness because you feel shame about not being able to control your eating.
Fat. Depression because over-eating has robbed you of having fun. Again.
Fat. Self-condemnation because something compels you to behave in self-destructive ways and it spills over into every area of your life. People assume you’re weak. Undisciplined. The emotional consequences of gluttony present themselves long before health concerns do.
If your hips are heavy, your heart probably is too. When the sin of gluttony or the disease of addiction lies at your door, it blocks the opening of many other doors. If belly bulge is stealing your joy now, you won’t feel any better about it next year or the year after that. It will go on stealing from you until pretty soon, it has stolen your whole life. How many parties does a girl have to miss before she gets it? How many fashion trends and fads does she have to pass up because her portly profile resembles a boiled egg?
But what can you do about it? It isn’t as though you haven’t tried already. You’ve been on all the diets. One or more worked but you didn’t stay on it. All that advice about determination and perseverance hasn’t done a bit of good. Why not? Because the gluttonous alter ego in us doesn’t care about fashion trends. She likes to eat. What she wants. When she wants. And as much as she wants. And God help the one who comes between her and her Cherry Cordial ice cream. Addiction is sneaky.
There is always a moment when we choose to care about the food more than anything else. Like Esau when he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. He was hungry and he didn’t care that he was supposed to inherit a fortune.
Getting to the truth about gluttony and addiction
Why do we fail in attempt after attempt to permanently change our eating behavior, and likewise our appearance? We tell ourselves we failed yet again because of some logical sounding excuse, but the real reason we don’t stay on diets is gluttony. Period. End of sentence. Or is it? Is it gluttony or addiction?
Think about the last time you pigged out on something that made you feel crummy about doing it. Gluttony masquerades as fatigue, stress, even illness. So does addiction. Someone who is not a glutton or an addict will not use those excuses to stuff herself. Normal people might occasionally eat too much because their plate is too large, or the ambience too inviting, but never because of some inner compulsion. But I am not normal. Even though there is always a moment when I could choose differently, I occasionally don’t. I fall off the chow wagon yet again. And I do it often enough to keep my two body hovering two good sizes larger than I’d like. No amount of distorted logic can account for the regularity with which I sabotage my best intentions. Plainly, self-will runs riot. We are defined by our actions, not our thoughts or feelings.
What’s the difference between a glutton and a food addict?
A food addict might love the taste of food but hates the results of overeating. When a food addict overeats her whole life begins to spin out of control and the addiction takes over. She begins to act out in other ways. Control issues show up. A glutton loves food despite what it does. A glutton just accepts the results of overeating as part of life and does not care about getting it under control until health problems threaten. And she doesn't care enough about other people to try to control them.
Hi, my name is Lin and I'm an addict.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Random Notes
THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS
1994 shall forever be remembered as the Year of the Wounded Healers.
Wounded Healers know:
1.about loving in the midst of apparent abandonment - abandonment by a parent — apparent (a parent) abandonment, and about how the inner parent abandons the child within;
2.how money isn't everything until there isn't enough, then it becomes everything, and how if you don't pay attention to money it will take over your life;
3.why letting go of the good stuff is just as important as letting go of the bad;
4.that the Ideal determines consciousness;
5.why a radio with all its many channels is a metaphor for the many voices within us;
6.how it is necessary that organized institutions must fall;
7.why it is necessary to stop trying to make ourselves feel better;
8.why it is good to get beyond form, labels and belief systems;
9.why there are so many ways of saying the same thing;
10.why there are so many people saying the same thing;
11.why "this too shall pass" is both comforting and terrifying;
12.to accept pain and joy in the same spirit;
13.the meaning of what on the planet needs doing that no one else is doing and that I care about;
14.why Buckminster Fuller and Descartes both spent a year in silence, discovering what they already knew without anymore input.
JUST FOR THE HEAVEN OF IT
1.Choose one person (surely you know of many) who is having a hard time financially and tithe to them for a time.
2.When someone is sick or injured, instead of saying, "If there's anything you need, let me know,'' look around you. Whatever you would need if you were in their shoes is what they need. Do what is at hand to do.
3.When someone is recuperating, instead of saying, "I'll be praying for you,'' go to their house and, if nothing else, water their plants.
4.When someone is terminal, do not say, "I took a course in pie-in-the-sky healing. Is it all right if I practice on you?'' Instead, say "I am here for you." Then be there, knowing they might outlive you.
5.When someone is sick or injured, do not try to explain it away with platitudes about how they must have needed to rest.
6.When someone is sick or injured, do not ask THEM to explain it away with nosy questions about whether or not they've examined why this has happened. You can bet they have and don't like the answers, and are not about to discuss them with you just so you can feel superior.
7.When someone is down on their luck, do not feel superior because you are healthy or walking around. Paybacks are hell.
1994 shall forever be remembered as the Year of the Wounded Healers.
Wounded Healers know:
1.about loving in the midst of apparent abandonment - abandonment by a parent — apparent (a parent) abandonment, and about how the inner parent abandons the child within;
2.how money isn't everything until there isn't enough, then it becomes everything, and how if you don't pay attention to money it will take over your life;
3.why letting go of the good stuff is just as important as letting go of the bad;
4.that the Ideal determines consciousness;
5.why a radio with all its many channels is a metaphor for the many voices within us;
6.how it is necessary that organized institutions must fall;
7.why it is necessary to stop trying to make ourselves feel better;
8.why it is good to get beyond form, labels and belief systems;
9.why there are so many ways of saying the same thing;
10.why there are so many people saying the same thing;
11.why "this too shall pass" is both comforting and terrifying;
12.to accept pain and joy in the same spirit;
13.the meaning of what on the planet needs doing that no one else is doing and that I care about;
14.why Buckminster Fuller and Descartes both spent a year in silence, discovering what they already knew without anymore input.
JUST FOR THE HEAVEN OF IT
1.Choose one person (surely you know of many) who is having a hard time financially and tithe to them for a time.
2.When someone is sick or injured, instead of saying, "If there's anything you need, let me know,'' look around you. Whatever you would need if you were in their shoes is what they need. Do what is at hand to do.
3.When someone is recuperating, instead of saying, "I'll be praying for you,'' go to their house and, if nothing else, water their plants.
4.When someone is terminal, do not say, "I took a course in pie-in-the-sky healing. Is it all right if I practice on you?'' Instead, say "I am here for you." Then be there, knowing they might outlive you.
5.When someone is sick or injured, do not try to explain it away with platitudes about how they must have needed to rest.
6.When someone is sick or injured, do not ask THEM to explain it away with nosy questions about whether or not they've examined why this has happened. You can bet they have and don't like the answers, and are not about to discuss them with you just so you can feel superior.
7.When someone is down on their luck, do not feel superior because you are healthy or walking around. Paybacks are hell.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Dealing with Fears - Part 3
Dealing with fears
While seeking a way to deal with fears, I came into possession of Faces of Fear, written by Edgar Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, who ran the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) when he was alive. Faces of Fear combines Edgar’s readings with Hugh Lynn’s own 40 years of counseling young people and giving seminars on understanding and coping with fear. This book is relevant today as it was when it was written almost 29 years ago.
The “Conclusion” from Faces of Fear, Overcoming Life's Anxieties, Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1980 is reprinted here, with permission:
“Fear, indeed, has many faces. Fear patterns become so entangled in our lives that tracing causes or identifying the nature of our anxieties may become difficult. Do not become trapped by fixing your attention on possible causes. Begin to use the negative, sometimes even strangely fascinating, feelings of fear to change your life. You can transform anxiety and fear energies to constructive thought and action. My experience with self and others suggests that persistent work with the concepts explored in this book not only brings freedom from fear, but also releases new energies that lead to a richer, fuller life.
“This book has been written for you. If you were a desperately sick person, you would not have come this far. Fear is a universal pattern arising from our rebelliousness. Our thought form, the flesh body itself, blocks our perception of our real goal of existence. Yet through it, as we move in consciousness, we can come to know our Creator and a true relationship of love with our fellow human beings. We have shut ourselves off from God; we are guilt-ridden, unable to accept God’s constant love for us, so we find it difficult to love others or ourselves.
“Yet guilt is itself a sign that we are capable of growth. J.F. Bugental puts this succinctly in The Search for Authenticity: ‘Guilt is a part of the dignity of being a man. Were there no responsibility attaching to our choices, no guilt inhering in our identity, we would be inconsiderable, as unmeaningful as the chance scrawlings of a man infant.’
“The unconscious mind is a battlefield. Conflicts between aspects of ourselves create our fears. Our desires war with our tendencies to repress them; our real worlds struggle with our imaginary worlds; we are torn between our drive to be important and our sense of insignificance; we hope for acceptance but confront rejection; sometimes we want to live; sometimes to die.
“Fear symptoms arise from bodily stress, psychological childhood conditioning, and the stress of daily living. Fears may arise to haunt us from other lives. And we fear annihilation or punishment in death. Finally, we all, at some time in our lives, feel a sense of failure that grows out of the sameness of existence and a threat of meaninglessness.
“The Edgar Cayce readings speak to many of these fears and provide, for many people, ways to deal with them. For example, an important spiritual law can help renew our relationship with our Creator—the oneness of all force. We can begin to sense that we are parts of a whole and that we do have a part to play as children of God and co-creators with Him.
“Moreover, through prayer and meditation, we begin to awaken the real self, the soul. Our wills are aroused and we can control the mind, the builder. As we set Ideals, we can measure our thoughts, words, and actions. We can build fear-free constructive attitudes by ceasing to feel negative thought patterns; tuning up our flesh bodies through the mind; conscientiously trying to be positive and constructive in our thinking; checking our dreams to observe what we are building with the mind; using positive suggestions on self; spending time with inspirational reading; and developing a sense of humor. We can use small groups for protection, help with self-observation, and healing. And service to others needs to be incorporated into our daily action.
“No one idea, prescription, or action resolves anxiety or specific fears. Fear, as we have seen, is entangled in our flesh bodies, our minds and emotions and our spiritual lives. We need to change our patterns of life activity. Waking up helps us understand new dimensions of ourselves. Turning loose, letting go of our negative past and beginning now to rebuild new patterns of physical, mental, and spiritual activities can free us from anxieties and fears that hold us chained in a consciousness of inadequacy and even self-destruction. We can transform fear by remembering Christ’s admonition: ‘Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’ (John 14:27)” (pp. 139-140)
We don’t need to be afraid to be held accountable for our victories as well as our defeats. An Ideal (standards) and meditation helps us to embrace both.
While seeking a way to deal with fears, I came into possession of Faces of Fear, written by Edgar Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, who ran the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) when he was alive. Faces of Fear combines Edgar’s readings with Hugh Lynn’s own 40 years of counseling young people and giving seminars on understanding and coping with fear. This book is relevant today as it was when it was written almost 29 years ago.
The “Conclusion” from Faces of Fear, Overcoming Life's Anxieties, Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1980 is reprinted here, with permission:
“Fear, indeed, has many faces. Fear patterns become so entangled in our lives that tracing causes or identifying the nature of our anxieties may become difficult. Do not become trapped by fixing your attention on possible causes. Begin to use the negative, sometimes even strangely fascinating, feelings of fear to change your life. You can transform anxiety and fear energies to constructive thought and action. My experience with self and others suggests that persistent work with the concepts explored in this book not only brings freedom from fear, but also releases new energies that lead to a richer, fuller life.
“This book has been written for you. If you were a desperately sick person, you would not have come this far. Fear is a universal pattern arising from our rebelliousness. Our thought form, the flesh body itself, blocks our perception of our real goal of existence. Yet through it, as we move in consciousness, we can come to know our Creator and a true relationship of love with our fellow human beings. We have shut ourselves off from God; we are guilt-ridden, unable to accept God’s constant love for us, so we find it difficult to love others or ourselves.
“Yet guilt is itself a sign that we are capable of growth. J.F. Bugental puts this succinctly in The Search for Authenticity: ‘Guilt is a part of the dignity of being a man. Were there no responsibility attaching to our choices, no guilt inhering in our identity, we would be inconsiderable, as unmeaningful as the chance scrawlings of a man infant.’
“The unconscious mind is a battlefield. Conflicts between aspects of ourselves create our fears. Our desires war with our tendencies to repress them; our real worlds struggle with our imaginary worlds; we are torn between our drive to be important and our sense of insignificance; we hope for acceptance but confront rejection; sometimes we want to live; sometimes to die.
“Fear symptoms arise from bodily stress, psychological childhood conditioning, and the stress of daily living. Fears may arise to haunt us from other lives. And we fear annihilation or punishment in death. Finally, we all, at some time in our lives, feel a sense of failure that grows out of the sameness of existence and a threat of meaninglessness.
“The Edgar Cayce readings speak to many of these fears and provide, for many people, ways to deal with them. For example, an important spiritual law can help renew our relationship with our Creator—the oneness of all force. We can begin to sense that we are parts of a whole and that we do have a part to play as children of God and co-creators with Him.
“Moreover, through prayer and meditation, we begin to awaken the real self, the soul. Our wills are aroused and we can control the mind, the builder. As we set Ideals, we can measure our thoughts, words, and actions. We can build fear-free constructive attitudes by ceasing to feel negative thought patterns; tuning up our flesh bodies through the mind; conscientiously trying to be positive and constructive in our thinking; checking our dreams to observe what we are building with the mind; using positive suggestions on self; spending time with inspirational reading; and developing a sense of humor. We can use small groups for protection, help with self-observation, and healing. And service to others needs to be incorporated into our daily action.
“No one idea, prescription, or action resolves anxiety or specific fears. Fear, as we have seen, is entangled in our flesh bodies, our minds and emotions and our spiritual lives. We need to change our patterns of life activity. Waking up helps us understand new dimensions of ourselves. Turning loose, letting go of our negative past and beginning now to rebuild new patterns of physical, mental, and spiritual activities can free us from anxieties and fears that hold us chained in a consciousness of inadequacy and even self-destruction. We can transform fear by remembering Christ’s admonition: ‘Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’ (John 14:27)” (pp. 139-140)
We don’t need to be afraid to be held accountable for our victories as well as our defeats. An Ideal (standards) and meditation helps us to embrace both.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Fear of ______(fill in the blank) Part 2
FACING FEARS
Deliberately choosing not to be thin is decidedly different from wanting to be thin but being afraid of the effort—or the results.
To many, both men and women, fat feels safer, but especially to women because men seem to feel fewer emotional complications relating to body image. Men, whether fat or thin, generally do not define themselves in terms of how much space their bodies occupy. From childhood, women receive contradictory input regarding their roles. On one hand a “real” woman is presented as a nurturing creature, angel wings outspread, sheltering all who enter her dominion, solver of problems, and she’s supposed to look sexy while she’s at it. Sexy, but not too sexy. The shoulds and oughts surrounding womanhood doom many accomplishments, including efforts to lose weight.
As a weight control columnist I received many letters from readers expressing their desires to be thinner, but undercurrents of fear and anxiety ran throughout these letters, often ill defined, but unmistakable, nonetheless. I recognized them because I had been there and done that.
Fears may overlap, but the recurring themes fall into six categories, and I’ve added a seventh:
Deliberately choosing not to be thin is decidedly different from wanting to be thin but being afraid of the effort—or the results.
To many, both men and women, fat feels safer, but especially to women because men seem to feel fewer emotional complications relating to body image. Men, whether fat or thin, generally do not define themselves in terms of how much space their bodies occupy. From childhood, women receive contradictory input regarding their roles. On one hand a “real” woman is presented as a nurturing creature, angel wings outspread, sheltering all who enter her dominion, solver of problems, and she’s supposed to look sexy while she’s at it. Sexy, but not too sexy. The shoulds and oughts surrounding womanhood doom many accomplishments, including efforts to lose weight.
As a weight control columnist I received many letters from readers expressing their desires to be thinner, but undercurrents of fear and anxiety ran throughout these letters, often ill defined, but unmistakable, nonetheless. I recognized them because I had been there and done that.
Fears may overlap, but the recurring themes fall into six categories, and I’ve added a seventh:
Fear of…
…loss of familiar boundaries
…appearing self-centered
…competition and jealousy from and of others
…feeling powerless or too powerful
…imagined expectations of self and others
…sexuality
…perfection.
…loss of familiar boundaries
…appearing self-centered
…competition and jealousy from and of others
…feeling powerless or too powerful
…imagined expectations of self and others
…sexuality
…perfection.
Fear of loss of familiar boundaries
A 45-year old woman we’ll call Jane wrote, “I need to lose about 60 pounds, and I really do well sometimes. But lately I’ve noticed that whenever I lose about 25 pounds, everything begins to close in on me…”
This closing-in-on-me feeling occurs in women who are using fat as a protective wall against the world. The need to keep others out, to be separated from others, clashes with the need to be closer to others, producing a conflict, a paradox. By losing weight we think others can get closer to our real body, which we think is hiding somewhere beneath the fat. When weight loss occurs, we may be left feeling vulnerable, fragile, and invade-able. These feelings can be terrifying.
Unless the entire body, fat and all, is first claimed as your own and acknowledged as a manifestation of past choices, any weight loss is likely to be temporary. To separate the body into two sections, one fat and one thin, is to deny self. Thinking of ourselves as being surrounded and protected by fat—rather than seeing the fat as an integral part of the whole person—blocks the ability to relate to other people lovingly. We cannot allow anyone to get too close until we expand the consciousness to embrace all of one’s self and recognize that the barriers we put up against self and others are imagined. Once we understand that barriers are only mind images, subject to our control, we no longer need fat to keep the world from closing in.
In A Search for God we read: “We should never allow ourselves to feel separate and apart from God or our fellow man; for what affects our neighbor…affects us. The people of the earth are our great family. We should love without distinction, knowing that God is in all. By making ourselves perfect channels that His grace, mercy, peace, and love may flow through us, we come to realize more and more the Oneness of all creation. Let us keep the heart open that the voice of Him who has called may quicken every thought and act. His ways are not hidden, nor far away, but are manifested to those who will hear and see the glory of the Oneness. Through the activity of the will is the method by which each of us should prepare himself as a channel for forces that may assist in gaining a greater concept of the Oneness of the Father in the material plane.” (ASFG 1, p. 116)
Fear of appearing self-centered
Many who desire slimmer, healthier bodies express difficulty because of the time and energy expenditure involved. Always taught to put the interests of others ahead of their own, some feel conflict when attempting to merge their own need to be thin with the need to be of service to others.
Laura, a wife, mother of school-aged children, and secretary to an executive, wrote, “Every minute somebody needs something from me. I love my family and my job, but I never have time to think about myself except for being unhappy about letting myself gain 40 pounds. I hate the way I look…”
The implication in Laura’s letter is that to give to herself the time and energy she needs to lose weight would take something away from those for whom she cares—her family and her boss. To sacrifice the needs of others for her own might cost her in terms of family affection and her career.
Laura’s letter further indicated that she feared appearing vain and selfish to others, but even more afraid of seeming so to herself. Her life was centered on service to others, and the idea of doing unto herself as she would do unto others made her anxious.
Self-involvement with thinness seemed appalling to her. At the same time she had needs of her own: “I love my family, but…”
Laura’s need to like the way she looked created conflict because she felt the time would be taken away from others. She felt she had time to love everybody but herself. Resentment can result when our own needs are always suppressed. Resentment toward those we love, plus anxiety about how to meet our own needs and everyone else’s too, restricts our flow of love. Our whole lives then become unbalanced. Therefore, giving to our selves first, fulfilling our desire for whatever we define as a slender, healthy body is liberating. Appearing acceptable to ourselves frees the mind to think of others, unhampered by self-recrimination. Taking care of our needs results in being less self-centered and more willing to go and do for others. When we know ourselves the truth sets us free.
Fear of competition and jealousy from and of others
Negative impulses, which might be horrifying, can arise when the body starts changing. Suddenly we find ourselves having to compete in a thin world, where our self-worth is ranked according to outward appearance. This has sent many screaming for sanctuary back inside a shelter of fat.
Being fat may allow us to remain outside the arena of human emotion, where life is played out against a background of bright lights and loud music. Imagining ourselves competing where someone is always prettier, smarter and thinner makes us feel so inadequate, we just want to give up, as did Martha, who wrote:
“I was an account executive for four years during which time I battled constantly to keep my weight down, so that I appeared more efficient, competent and trustworthy. I got so tired of feeling judged by my appearance, I finally couldn’t take it anymore and quit.
“The first thing I did after quitting was gain 28 pounds. Now I’m contemplating trying to lose it, but I can’t bear the thought of having to compete again…”
To Martha and others, competition equals being thin. Maybe this is because in our society beauty and personality are marketable qualities. Beauty contestants vie for money, prizes, and glory. Cute baby contests and Queen-of-the-Prom consciousness perpetuates the myth that, somehow, beautiful is better, and somehow manages to ignore the fact that beauty is both subjective, debatable, and probably temporary.
Also, in a thin world, one may be asked to deal with jealousy from others and of others, both painful experiences. Without a sense of balance, a sense of place, and an understanding of ourselves in relation to others, withdrawal from society seems preferable. But in A Search for God, we read: “We should let neither flattery, criticism, nor opinions of others turn us aside from those vital things for which we stand—those things that are lifting us upward and building within us that which will endure until the end. Let us turn within to see if we are being true to ourselves when temptations arise. We know that we cannot be true to others unless we are first true to ourselves.” (ASFG 1, p. 33)
Fear of feeling powerless or too powerful
Some of us may fear that a major accomplishment such as losing a lot of weight would make us feel too powerful. We fear misusing the power. Another person may feel just the opposite. Some feel that reducing the body mass means losing the ability to overpower an imagined enemy. A feeling of frailness interpreted as weakness may accompany weight loss. Both fears may exist alongside one another within the same person.
After losing 33 pounds, Susan wrote, “I get so happy when I realize I’m no longer fat. I feel like I could do anything. Sometimes I feel like I could fly. That scares me and makes me want to eat. Then some days I feel so tiny that I could be stepped on, like a bug. And I think I’d better eat (and get bigger) so they can see me…”
Susan’s fears illustrate the point that either fear places the self-image in jeopardy. These anxieties must be balanced from within, else no significant weight loss will be permanent.
Power is not to be feared. In A Search for God we read: “Knowledge is power, yet power may become an influence that brings evil, when it is not used constructively…Secular knowledge is man-made. The knowledge of God does not bind us to dogmas, or man-made beliefs; rather it sets us free.” (ASFG 2, p. 82)
Fear of imagined expectations of self and others
While imagined expectations from others create tension, we fear most what we might expect from ourselves if we were not fat. If we feel that to be thin is to be different, then we will no longer know whom we are, how we’ll look, how we’ll react, how we’ll feel. We won’t know ourselves. We’ll feel strange. Strangeness can feel threatening to one who has trod the same path time and again. The unknown path to permanent thinness is paved with questions that begin, “What will I do if…?” We what if ourselves to death. There is safety in sameness.
If we change we may have to do something different to live up to our own expectations, never mind someone else’s. If we believe that being fat is the only thing preventing us from some major accomplishment, then when the fat is gone, so is our excuse. No longer can we say, “If I weren’t fat I would get a promotion, get elected to office, get a boyfriend, get a girlfriend….” No fat, no excuse.
If we fear that being thin would mean we’d have to accept additional responsibilities, we might use weight to avoid activities we do not like:
I’m too fat to get a job, cook dinner for my husband’s boss, go to an office party with my husband, do volunteer work at the hospital, take a Scout Troop, and on and on. There would be no sin in admitting we don’t want a job, hate housework, feel insecure or inadequate, uncomfortable or bored. Guilt about avoiding social and charitable functions creates even more anxiety, which in turn, compels more eating and more weight gain. God does not expect of us what we do not expect of ourselves, but what we expect of ourselves, God expects of us.
In A Search for God we read: “If we would have life we must give life. If we would have joy we must make joy in the lives of others. If we would have peace and harmony we must create peace in self and in our relationships with others. This is the law, for like begets like. We do not gather olives from thistles, or apples from bramble bushes, neither do we find love in hate.” (ASFG 2, p. 38)
Neither do we plant corn to grow tomatoes, nor cookies to grow skinny.
Fear of sexuality
Of the many fears that motivate obesity, the easiest to recognize but the most difficult to deal with is fear of the sexual nature. Among the most poignant letters I ever received was one from a 28-year-old woman who had reduced her weight by 80 pounds, but who still had 50 pounds to lose.
“I thought getting fat would protect me from men. I’ve learned through psychiatry that I need to be protected from myself.
“My father ‘touched’ me when I was young. He wasn’t as bad as other fathers I’ve read about, but I know he made me feel that I must be bad because even though I was only nine, I knew what he was doing was wrong. I blamed myself because, after all, he was my daddy, and he couldn’t be wrong, so I must be doing something to make him act like that.
“Then when I became a teenager, boys were so attracted to me it scared me. I could not understand why they behaved toward me s they did because I never felt like I measured up to the other girls. My mother said boys don’t act like that toward ‘nice girls,’ so I believed I was not a nice girl. Now I know that isn’t true, but I am still afraid to let myself become attractive...”
I thought this reader would benefit greatly by professional counseling. No one should have to carry this burden alone.
Fear of perfection
I include fear of perfection as one of the primary fears about losing weight because Edgar Cayce spoke of the destiny of the body. He said we could only take a perfect body back to our Maker. Which body was he speaking about?
“Our body is the temple of the living God, of the living soul. Is it to see corruption? Is it to be lost entirely, or is it to be glorified, spiritualized? As our body is a structure in which we manifest as a portion of the whole, so our body is in the keeping of its Keeper, even within us. What will we do with it? God gave us free wills. God Himself does not know what we will destine to do with ourselves, else would He have repented that He made man? God has not ordained that any soul should perish. What of the body? Have we ordained, have we so lived, have we made our temple so untenable, that we do not care to have it glorified?” (ASFG 2, p`54)
Glorified how? What is perfection?
“Our Lord resurrected and quickened His body. He is our pattern. So we, as He, must overcome death, overcome that transition, overcome that which is the conscious change of being in all matters, all phases, all experiences, that we may be one with Him, as He is one with the Whole.” (ASFG 2, p.57)
That is perfection, therefore…
“…If we would be like Him, then we must so live, so conduct ourselves, that our body may be one with Him, and be raised a glorified body to be known as our own.” (ASFG 2, p.54)
Resurrection? Of this body?
Does this mean we are supposed to be able to resurrect in the same physical body we are living in now?
I, for one, would not want to.
For most of us, resurrection of the body we presently occupy seems a little far-fetched. So while we work on overcoming “the conscious change of being in all matters, all phases, all experiences…” which will include, no doubt, walking on water and through walls, what about right now?
I’d be satisfied just to lighten up and quit getting so nervous when things go too right. I’d like to stop taking myself so seriously and laugh more. I’d like to enjoy my efforts and the results.
Some say God finds humans to be delightful creatures; He reveals himself to us through our humanness. Every blunder can become a blessing, every cross a crown when we trust Him, supposedly. The changes we would make in ourselves hasten through developing an objective eye and a sense of detached humor about our mistakes and our accomplishments.
The late Dr. Gina Cerminara, in The World Within, wrote: “…any deviation from harmony or proportion or health is indicative of some psychic necessity somewhere.” (p.51)
Therefore, it seems a worthwhile effort to develop insight into conditions that produce a compulsion to overeat. But this must be done without getting sidetracked by ego-glorification and selfishness, else the soul seems to sense it and blocks the way to physical improvement until we can handle it. Improving ourselves physically is work worth doing if we can do it with an attitude of objective, humorous detachment.
Again, from The World Within:
“…all of us, men and women alike, can be prompted by the long-range view of many lifetimes, to the awareness of our own obligation to strive consciously for beauty, on all levels of being.
“This must be done almost impersonally, however, and without sensual attachment; in the spirit, as Cayce puts it, of ‘making a perfect sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.’ It must be done with the same sort of terrible compulsion that an artist feels to transfer some beautiful proportions in stone. For unless it is done out of such an impersonal passion for beauty itself, and out of a kind of sense of obligation to render to the universe a gift at least as beautiful as the most insignificant of nature’s handiwork, the beautiful body we create will become itself a terrible snare, trap, and delusion.” (pp. 80-81)
A 45-year old woman we’ll call Jane wrote, “I need to lose about 60 pounds, and I really do well sometimes. But lately I’ve noticed that whenever I lose about 25 pounds, everything begins to close in on me…”
This closing-in-on-me feeling occurs in women who are using fat as a protective wall against the world. The need to keep others out, to be separated from others, clashes with the need to be closer to others, producing a conflict, a paradox. By losing weight we think others can get closer to our real body, which we think is hiding somewhere beneath the fat. When weight loss occurs, we may be left feeling vulnerable, fragile, and invade-able. These feelings can be terrifying.
Unless the entire body, fat and all, is first claimed as your own and acknowledged as a manifestation of past choices, any weight loss is likely to be temporary. To separate the body into two sections, one fat and one thin, is to deny self. Thinking of ourselves as being surrounded and protected by fat—rather than seeing the fat as an integral part of the whole person—blocks the ability to relate to other people lovingly. We cannot allow anyone to get too close until we expand the consciousness to embrace all of one’s self and recognize that the barriers we put up against self and others are imagined. Once we understand that barriers are only mind images, subject to our control, we no longer need fat to keep the world from closing in.
In A Search for God we read: “We should never allow ourselves to feel separate and apart from God or our fellow man; for what affects our neighbor…affects us. The people of the earth are our great family. We should love without distinction, knowing that God is in all. By making ourselves perfect channels that His grace, mercy, peace, and love may flow through us, we come to realize more and more the Oneness of all creation. Let us keep the heart open that the voice of Him who has called may quicken every thought and act. His ways are not hidden, nor far away, but are manifested to those who will hear and see the glory of the Oneness. Through the activity of the will is the method by which each of us should prepare himself as a channel for forces that may assist in gaining a greater concept of the Oneness of the Father in the material plane.” (ASFG 1, p. 116)
Fear of appearing self-centered
Many who desire slimmer, healthier bodies express difficulty because of the time and energy expenditure involved. Always taught to put the interests of others ahead of their own, some feel conflict when attempting to merge their own need to be thin with the need to be of service to others.
Laura, a wife, mother of school-aged children, and secretary to an executive, wrote, “Every minute somebody needs something from me. I love my family and my job, but I never have time to think about myself except for being unhappy about letting myself gain 40 pounds. I hate the way I look…”
The implication in Laura’s letter is that to give to herself the time and energy she needs to lose weight would take something away from those for whom she cares—her family and her boss. To sacrifice the needs of others for her own might cost her in terms of family affection and her career.
Laura’s letter further indicated that she feared appearing vain and selfish to others, but even more afraid of seeming so to herself. Her life was centered on service to others, and the idea of doing unto herself as she would do unto others made her anxious.
Self-involvement with thinness seemed appalling to her. At the same time she had needs of her own: “I love my family, but…”
Laura’s need to like the way she looked created conflict because she felt the time would be taken away from others. She felt she had time to love everybody but herself. Resentment can result when our own needs are always suppressed. Resentment toward those we love, plus anxiety about how to meet our own needs and everyone else’s too, restricts our flow of love. Our whole lives then become unbalanced. Therefore, giving to our selves first, fulfilling our desire for whatever we define as a slender, healthy body is liberating. Appearing acceptable to ourselves frees the mind to think of others, unhampered by self-recrimination. Taking care of our needs results in being less self-centered and more willing to go and do for others. When we know ourselves the truth sets us free.
Fear of competition and jealousy from and of others
Negative impulses, which might be horrifying, can arise when the body starts changing. Suddenly we find ourselves having to compete in a thin world, where our self-worth is ranked according to outward appearance. This has sent many screaming for sanctuary back inside a shelter of fat.
Being fat may allow us to remain outside the arena of human emotion, where life is played out against a background of bright lights and loud music. Imagining ourselves competing where someone is always prettier, smarter and thinner makes us feel so inadequate, we just want to give up, as did Martha, who wrote:
“I was an account executive for four years during which time I battled constantly to keep my weight down, so that I appeared more efficient, competent and trustworthy. I got so tired of feeling judged by my appearance, I finally couldn’t take it anymore and quit.
“The first thing I did after quitting was gain 28 pounds. Now I’m contemplating trying to lose it, but I can’t bear the thought of having to compete again…”
To Martha and others, competition equals being thin. Maybe this is because in our society beauty and personality are marketable qualities. Beauty contestants vie for money, prizes, and glory. Cute baby contests and Queen-of-the-Prom consciousness perpetuates the myth that, somehow, beautiful is better, and somehow manages to ignore the fact that beauty is both subjective, debatable, and probably temporary.
Also, in a thin world, one may be asked to deal with jealousy from others and of others, both painful experiences. Without a sense of balance, a sense of place, and an understanding of ourselves in relation to others, withdrawal from society seems preferable. But in A Search for God, we read: “We should let neither flattery, criticism, nor opinions of others turn us aside from those vital things for which we stand—those things that are lifting us upward and building within us that which will endure until the end. Let us turn within to see if we are being true to ourselves when temptations arise. We know that we cannot be true to others unless we are first true to ourselves.” (ASFG 1, p. 33)
Fear of feeling powerless or too powerful
Some of us may fear that a major accomplishment such as losing a lot of weight would make us feel too powerful. We fear misusing the power. Another person may feel just the opposite. Some feel that reducing the body mass means losing the ability to overpower an imagined enemy. A feeling of frailness interpreted as weakness may accompany weight loss. Both fears may exist alongside one another within the same person.
After losing 33 pounds, Susan wrote, “I get so happy when I realize I’m no longer fat. I feel like I could do anything. Sometimes I feel like I could fly. That scares me and makes me want to eat. Then some days I feel so tiny that I could be stepped on, like a bug. And I think I’d better eat (and get bigger) so they can see me…”
Susan’s fears illustrate the point that either fear places the self-image in jeopardy. These anxieties must be balanced from within, else no significant weight loss will be permanent.
Power is not to be feared. In A Search for God we read: “Knowledge is power, yet power may become an influence that brings evil, when it is not used constructively…Secular knowledge is man-made. The knowledge of God does not bind us to dogmas, or man-made beliefs; rather it sets us free.” (ASFG 2, p. 82)
Fear of imagined expectations of self and others
While imagined expectations from others create tension, we fear most what we might expect from ourselves if we were not fat. If we feel that to be thin is to be different, then we will no longer know whom we are, how we’ll look, how we’ll react, how we’ll feel. We won’t know ourselves. We’ll feel strange. Strangeness can feel threatening to one who has trod the same path time and again. The unknown path to permanent thinness is paved with questions that begin, “What will I do if…?” We what if ourselves to death. There is safety in sameness.
If we change we may have to do something different to live up to our own expectations, never mind someone else’s. If we believe that being fat is the only thing preventing us from some major accomplishment, then when the fat is gone, so is our excuse. No longer can we say, “If I weren’t fat I would get a promotion, get elected to office, get a boyfriend, get a girlfriend….” No fat, no excuse.
If we fear that being thin would mean we’d have to accept additional responsibilities, we might use weight to avoid activities we do not like:
I’m too fat to get a job, cook dinner for my husband’s boss, go to an office party with my husband, do volunteer work at the hospital, take a Scout Troop, and on and on. There would be no sin in admitting we don’t want a job, hate housework, feel insecure or inadequate, uncomfortable or bored. Guilt about avoiding social and charitable functions creates even more anxiety, which in turn, compels more eating and more weight gain. God does not expect of us what we do not expect of ourselves, but what we expect of ourselves, God expects of us.
In A Search for God we read: “If we would have life we must give life. If we would have joy we must make joy in the lives of others. If we would have peace and harmony we must create peace in self and in our relationships with others. This is the law, for like begets like. We do not gather olives from thistles, or apples from bramble bushes, neither do we find love in hate.” (ASFG 2, p. 38)
Neither do we plant corn to grow tomatoes, nor cookies to grow skinny.
Fear of sexuality
Of the many fears that motivate obesity, the easiest to recognize but the most difficult to deal with is fear of the sexual nature. Among the most poignant letters I ever received was one from a 28-year-old woman who had reduced her weight by 80 pounds, but who still had 50 pounds to lose.
“I thought getting fat would protect me from men. I’ve learned through psychiatry that I need to be protected from myself.
“My father ‘touched’ me when I was young. He wasn’t as bad as other fathers I’ve read about, but I know he made me feel that I must be bad because even though I was only nine, I knew what he was doing was wrong. I blamed myself because, after all, he was my daddy, and he couldn’t be wrong, so I must be doing something to make him act like that.
“Then when I became a teenager, boys were so attracted to me it scared me. I could not understand why they behaved toward me s they did because I never felt like I measured up to the other girls. My mother said boys don’t act like that toward ‘nice girls,’ so I believed I was not a nice girl. Now I know that isn’t true, but I am still afraid to let myself become attractive...”
I thought this reader would benefit greatly by professional counseling. No one should have to carry this burden alone.
Fear of perfection
I include fear of perfection as one of the primary fears about losing weight because Edgar Cayce spoke of the destiny of the body. He said we could only take a perfect body back to our Maker. Which body was he speaking about?
“Our body is the temple of the living God, of the living soul. Is it to see corruption? Is it to be lost entirely, or is it to be glorified, spiritualized? As our body is a structure in which we manifest as a portion of the whole, so our body is in the keeping of its Keeper, even within us. What will we do with it? God gave us free wills. God Himself does not know what we will destine to do with ourselves, else would He have repented that He made man? God has not ordained that any soul should perish. What of the body? Have we ordained, have we so lived, have we made our temple so untenable, that we do not care to have it glorified?” (ASFG 2, p`54)
Glorified how? What is perfection?
“Our Lord resurrected and quickened His body. He is our pattern. So we, as He, must overcome death, overcome that transition, overcome that which is the conscious change of being in all matters, all phases, all experiences, that we may be one with Him, as He is one with the Whole.” (ASFG 2, p.57)
That is perfection, therefore…
“…If we would be like Him, then we must so live, so conduct ourselves, that our body may be one with Him, and be raised a glorified body to be known as our own.” (ASFG 2, p.54)
Resurrection? Of this body?
Does this mean we are supposed to be able to resurrect in the same physical body we are living in now?
I, for one, would not want to.
For most of us, resurrection of the body we presently occupy seems a little far-fetched. So while we work on overcoming “the conscious change of being in all matters, all phases, all experiences…” which will include, no doubt, walking on water and through walls, what about right now?
I’d be satisfied just to lighten up and quit getting so nervous when things go too right. I’d like to stop taking myself so seriously and laugh more. I’d like to enjoy my efforts and the results.
Some say God finds humans to be delightful creatures; He reveals himself to us through our humanness. Every blunder can become a blessing, every cross a crown when we trust Him, supposedly. The changes we would make in ourselves hasten through developing an objective eye and a sense of detached humor about our mistakes and our accomplishments.
The late Dr. Gina Cerminara, in The World Within, wrote: “…any deviation from harmony or proportion or health is indicative of some psychic necessity somewhere.” (p.51)
Therefore, it seems a worthwhile effort to develop insight into conditions that produce a compulsion to overeat. But this must be done without getting sidetracked by ego-glorification and selfishness, else the soul seems to sense it and blocks the way to physical improvement until we can handle it. Improving ourselves physically is work worth doing if we can do it with an attitude of objective, humorous detachment.
Again, from The World Within:
“…all of us, men and women alike, can be prompted by the long-range view of many lifetimes, to the awareness of our own obligation to strive consciously for beauty, on all levels of being.
“This must be done almost impersonally, however, and without sensual attachment; in the spirit, as Cayce puts it, of ‘making a perfect sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.’ It must be done with the same sort of terrible compulsion that an artist feels to transfer some beautiful proportions in stone. For unless it is done out of such an impersonal passion for beauty itself, and out of a kind of sense of obligation to render to the universe a gift at least as beautiful as the most insignificant of nature’s handiwork, the beautiful body we create will become itself a terrible snare, trap, and delusion.” (pp. 80-81)
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Fear of Success
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I’d like to introduce to my alter ego. Her name is Betty Blob and she lives in a cage in my head.
One night, on the way from the living room to the bathroom, I stopped off at the kitchen and gained nine pounds. I tried to relieve an anxiety attack with a jar of macaroni salad. This was in the days when I still ate pasta, and I nearly did myself in. It took me three weeks to recover from the knockdown-drag-out fight with Betty Blob, one of my greatest teachers.
Betty Blob is one of a committee who took up residence in my brain when I was much younger. She has been with me most of my life. Listening to her has gotten me into a world of trouble more than once. She wants to eat all the time, and she likes to run the show; only she rarely has my best interests at heart. She has kept me entangled in fear and fat for too long. Popular advice says if I will love her and integrate her into myself so she will feel safe, she will stop being so demanding. Maybe that will happen someday, but experience has taught me that if I give her an inch, she’ll take a mile.
My early childhood was scarred by taunts of “Fatty, Fatty, two by four, can’t get through the kitchen door.” My fifth grade teacher, skinny ol’ Mrs. Freeman, wouldn’t let me square dance on stage because I “spoiled the looks of her group.” Yes, the woman actually said that. To this day I remember that every time someone mentions square dancing. If these teachers only knew what kind of karma they create when they hurt children, they’d probably mend their ways.
As a teenager, from Monday through Thursday I saved up calories so I could eat on Friday nights like a “normal” person. I ended up married at 15, mother of two sons at 17, and generally incapable of coping with life, much less my expanding waistline. It would be decades before I would be strong enough to deal with anything even remotely resembling an actual feeling, especially when that feeling was fear.
But God had a plan.
WORKING UP TO DEALING WITH FEARS
Sometimes it is best to gradually work up to dealing with fears.
By age 17, I had pretty much had it with organized religion. But one night my husband and I were sitting in a high school auditorium at a non-denominational meeting in Augusta, GA. The speaker was named Welcome Detweiler. I felt someone lay a hand on my right shoulder. Startled, I turned around to see who it was. No one was there. About that time I heard a quiet voice speak as clearly as if the person had been standing there: “You’re mine,” the voice said; and I figured it must have been Jesus. I surely hope it was, because I felt a surge of energy run through me like electricity, and I’ve been trying to hear and obey that voice ever since, sometimes without much luck.
That still, small voice has had a lot of competition, from Betty Blob as well as the others on the committee that lives in my head. So, like the Israelites, it would seem I’ve spent a lot of time wondering around in the wilderness on a journey I could have made in a fraction of the time had I been able to listen better. But, like the Israelites, I now understand more each day of how God teaches us. I now see my twisted route as part of God’s plan, and I trust His hand to be there no matter where it leads. But that trust was a long time coming.
After my second son was born I became so desperate about my weight I cried out to God for help. I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror, holding a razor blade to my wrists. My beautiful little boys were playing in their bedroom, and the thought flashed through my mind that they really shouldn’t be subjected to the sight of their mother dying in a pool of blood. In dazed despair I suddenly found a phonebook in my hands. As if in a dream, my finger pointed to a doctor’s name in the Yellow Pages. I dialed the number and made an appointment for the next day, and he put me on a fast. Ninety days later I was 65 pounds thinner, $750 poorer, and pregnant. But I was alive, and 270 days later I was 45 pounds fatter, and the 21-year-old mother of three sons.
In addition to Betty Blob, youth and immaturity account for much of the idiotic eating I did in those days. In all fairness, this was 1962, and we didn’t know then what we know now. The doctor who supervised the fast had no time to work with me on retraining my eating habits. The 65 pounds came off because he took me off food completely and prescribed food supplement tablets, gall bladder pills, thyroid pills and diet pills. Up to 40 pills a day were rattling around in my emerging rib cage. It is always easier to eat nothing than to consistently choose rightly. When the pregnancy occurred, all the doctor really had time to say as I rushed out the door to the gynecologist was, “You have to start eating again.”
So I did. Boy, did I!
Potato chips, chocolate milk, mayonnaise and white bread sandwiches, sometimes with a few tomato slices thrown in for variety—all standard fare for someone Southern born, Southern bred and Southern fed. By 1969, a tactless but honest surgeon told me I looked like a mattress with a string tied around the middle. I remember one especially masochistic day, sitting down for Pete’s sake—as if the measurements weren’t bad enough while standing—I actually sat down and measured my hips. I even exhaled! I watched the tape register 60 inches.
What I do not recall is how I dealt with the facts of my life on that day. There I was, a 28-year-old, 240-pound mass of misery that lacked only six inches measuring horizontally what I measured vertically. But I wasn’t miserable because I was fat, I was fat because I was miserable way down deep inside, so deep it can't be felt because if you felt it you’d kill somebody. But part of God’s plan was for me to find the Edgar Cayce readings. In 1970, I read Jess Stearn’s The Sleeping Prophet, Tom Sugrue’s There is a River, and Hugh Lynn Cayce’s Venture Inward. It was a very good year.
By the time I waded through those three books, I was hooked. I didn’t care that I had been raised as an orthodox, fundamentalist, dogmatic Christian. Everything I read about Cayce made sense. But it was two years later that I finally heard about an inquirer’s meeting with Edgar Cayce’s name attached to it.
My main interests in those days were psychic phenomena, Atlantis, reincarnation, karma…all those neat goodies that are so much fun to study, but may not have a whole lot to do with real life, until application enters the picture. And application they don’t tell you about at inquirer’s meetings. That comes as a rude awakening later.
So one night, it was probably a Tuesday – seems like all inquirer’s sessions are held on Tuesdays – I waddled into a Savings and Loan Association Community Room (most of these sessions are held in community rooms), and there stood little bitty Dee Shambaugh Sloan (who at the time might have weighed 100 pounds dressed for skydiving). She was lecturing on the connection between the endocrine system, colors, karmic memory at cell level, energy flow, and the Lord’s Prayer. I did not understand one word of it, but it sounded absolutely fascinating.
Dee seemed to be talking to me when she spoke of the spiritual centers being connected to the glands of the body, particularly the thyroid. After all, my thyroid had tested under-active all my life—surely the reason I was fat. So when Dee said that meditation could balance the spiritual centers, including the thyroid, my ears perked right up.
My only experience with meditation had been sitting in a field in Ft. Lauderdale with a bunch of hippies whose main interest in life was to try to move clouds! Even then I knew better than to mess around with clouds, so I gave up. I didn’t know that meditation was physical as well as mental and spiritual, and I didn’t know that meditation was listening.
What does listening have to do with losing weight?
Everything.
Every single one of us comes into the earth plane with a certain consciousness, and the only way to alter that consciousness is attunement with God. For once that inner-life connection is made with the still, small voice within, the information we need to learn yet another lesson can be heard, sometimes dramatically.
One Saturday afternoon in 1972, after study group had been meeting at my house for about three months, I was dressing to attend a son’s Little League ball game. I was rushed for time, but I needed to meditate. It sounded simple enough. All I had to do was sit still for fifteen minutes, quiet the body and the mind, and listen to the God within speak to me. Nothing to it.
Well, for three months I had been sitting with a mosquito biting my toe, my eyes itching, dying of thirst, hating that miserable chair and thinking every single day that I’d never get the hang of this meditation thing. But I kept at it every single day, and that’s the point. Meditation lesson number one is: Hang in there—even though it does not seem to be doing one bit of good. I wasn’t even sure what good it was supposed to do, except to make me a better channel for God in the earth, whatever that meant. Then on that Saturday afternoon in June, I found out what it meant.
The day had passed uneventfully. Saturday chores had crowded the time, making meditation inconvenient. As I began to dress for the ballgame, dreading the Florida heat—gads, it’s hard to stay cool when you’re fat—an inner nudge prompted me to take a couple of minutes. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to be late for the game. Besides, the bedroom was air-conditioned. The ball field wasn’t. So I sat down on the floor, made my usual clumsy attempt at a half-lotus position—equally as difficult as keeping cool when you’re fat—and began to try to meditate. This time something was different.
This time I entered an altered state of consciousness. I heard the voice speaking. The exact words are not important, but afterwards, I was certain that I would succeed at losing weight this time where I had always failed before. It felt as though it would only be a matter of days, weeks at the most, before I’d be ravishingly slender and gorgeous.
Needless to say I didn’t exactly announce it over the loud speakers when I arrived at the ball field. One must be very careful to whom one confesses hearing voices. But I was so certain of the authenticity of the voice, I half-expected to shrink four sizes during the drive to the field. I honestly think I was disappointed when no one raved about how much weight I’d lost in the last 20 minutes. Five years later and finally thin—well not exactly finally—I’ve had my share of maintenance problems—I was and still am learning: It ain’t what you know, it’s what you do that counts. I wrote a book based on that meditation.
Weight that could have been lost safely within a year or so took five years to lose because I’m a slow learner, and spiritual knowledge without action makes things worse. Knowing what to do and not doing it is worst of all. Trying to “be spiritual” is a lost cause.
Week after week, we sat around in study group talking about learning to serve others, then we’d hold one another accountable for actually trying it in our lives. The A Search for God books say we can discover our purpose in life and our true relationship with a loving Creator by being a channel of blessings, healing and help to other people. I tried serving my family, but at first it backfired. For one thing service, to them, meant cooking. That’s all we knew: food plus food equals love. After all, nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven. Just ask the Pillsbury Doughboy. Would he lie? For another thing, I was beginning to relax about being fat. I was becoming spiritual. God loves fat people, too, doesn’t He?
Couldn’t one look like a mattress with a string tied around the middle and still be beautiful on the inside, where it counts.
Another meaning of spiritual in those days was to be calm, quiet and peaceful (a condition completely unnatural for me), so I moved through my days “practicing the Presence” with what must have been a glazed look in my eyes. There I was, cooking and smiling and generally acting like a zombie, and being patient with the kids while they wrecked the house. My husband, bored to the teeth with all this spirituality, told me to knock off all the self-righteous junk and forget that bunch of nuts I was meeting with. He wanted his life back.
Now, some would ascribe selfish motives to his demands, but the Cayce material clearly states that studying the readings is supposed to make one a better whatever-it-is that one is, be it rocket scientist or fat housewife.
“If self-development is our aim, then we must begin just where we are. It will do no good idly to wish to be in some other condition or surrounding; for, unless we have mastered our present one, the second state will be worse than the first.” (A Search For God, Book 1, p. 17)
I could not imagine a worse state than being a fat housewife, and now my husband was angry with me too. There I was, trying to get out of that condition, and things were getting all balled up. I was confused, hurt, frustrated.
“The first and last obstacle to overcome is understanding ourselves. Until we are fully aware of all that constitutes our existence we have no right to say that this or that is the aim and goal of life.” (ASFG 1, p. 17)
Holy cow! No right?
It could take forever to become “fully aware” of all that constituted my existence—and it was only existence—it surely wasn’t living. And to “master the present state” to me meant one thing: lose weight. I did not know then that it wasn’t about losing weight. And yet, something called “full awareness” had to be achieved before I could even claim the right to set goals for myself—a perplexing paradox. But at least I was beginning to get a glimmer of why, though I’d been on every diet devised by mankind, I was still fat. So I decided to sit down, shut up, and listen again.
I heard: The body is the temple and yours needs remodeling. I didn’t quite know how I was supposed to accomplish this if I couldn’t even set goals for myself. I just knew I’d have to begin where I was because wishing was not enough. Being spiritual was not enough. Something was moving, and though I did not know it yet, it was I, getting ready to face my fears.
I’d like to introduce to my alter ego. Her name is Betty Blob and she lives in a cage in my head.
One night, on the way from the living room to the bathroom, I stopped off at the kitchen and gained nine pounds. I tried to relieve an anxiety attack with a jar of macaroni salad. This was in the days when I still ate pasta, and I nearly did myself in. It took me three weeks to recover from the knockdown-drag-out fight with Betty Blob, one of my greatest teachers.
Betty Blob is one of a committee who took up residence in my brain when I was much younger. She has been with me most of my life. Listening to her has gotten me into a world of trouble more than once. She wants to eat all the time, and she likes to run the show; only she rarely has my best interests at heart. She has kept me entangled in fear and fat for too long. Popular advice says if I will love her and integrate her into myself so she will feel safe, she will stop being so demanding. Maybe that will happen someday, but experience has taught me that if I give her an inch, she’ll take a mile.
My early childhood was scarred by taunts of “Fatty, Fatty, two by four, can’t get through the kitchen door.” My fifth grade teacher, skinny ol’ Mrs. Freeman, wouldn’t let me square dance on stage because I “spoiled the looks of her group.” Yes, the woman actually said that. To this day I remember that every time someone mentions square dancing. If these teachers only knew what kind of karma they create when they hurt children, they’d probably mend their ways.
As a teenager, from Monday through Thursday I saved up calories so I could eat on Friday nights like a “normal” person. I ended up married at 15, mother of two sons at 17, and generally incapable of coping with life, much less my expanding waistline. It would be decades before I would be strong enough to deal with anything even remotely resembling an actual feeling, especially when that feeling was fear.
But God had a plan.
WORKING UP TO DEALING WITH FEARS
Sometimes it is best to gradually work up to dealing with fears.
By age 17, I had pretty much had it with organized religion. But one night my husband and I were sitting in a high school auditorium at a non-denominational meeting in Augusta, GA. The speaker was named Welcome Detweiler. I felt someone lay a hand on my right shoulder. Startled, I turned around to see who it was. No one was there. About that time I heard a quiet voice speak as clearly as if the person had been standing there: “You’re mine,” the voice said; and I figured it must have been Jesus. I surely hope it was, because I felt a surge of energy run through me like electricity, and I’ve been trying to hear and obey that voice ever since, sometimes without much luck.
That still, small voice has had a lot of competition, from Betty Blob as well as the others on the committee that lives in my head. So, like the Israelites, it would seem I’ve spent a lot of time wondering around in the wilderness on a journey I could have made in a fraction of the time had I been able to listen better. But, like the Israelites, I now understand more each day of how God teaches us. I now see my twisted route as part of God’s plan, and I trust His hand to be there no matter where it leads. But that trust was a long time coming.
After my second son was born I became so desperate about my weight I cried out to God for help. I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror, holding a razor blade to my wrists. My beautiful little boys were playing in their bedroom, and the thought flashed through my mind that they really shouldn’t be subjected to the sight of their mother dying in a pool of blood. In dazed despair I suddenly found a phonebook in my hands. As if in a dream, my finger pointed to a doctor’s name in the Yellow Pages. I dialed the number and made an appointment for the next day, and he put me on a fast. Ninety days later I was 65 pounds thinner, $750 poorer, and pregnant. But I was alive, and 270 days later I was 45 pounds fatter, and the 21-year-old mother of three sons.
In addition to Betty Blob, youth and immaturity account for much of the idiotic eating I did in those days. In all fairness, this was 1962, and we didn’t know then what we know now. The doctor who supervised the fast had no time to work with me on retraining my eating habits. The 65 pounds came off because he took me off food completely and prescribed food supplement tablets, gall bladder pills, thyroid pills and diet pills. Up to 40 pills a day were rattling around in my emerging rib cage. It is always easier to eat nothing than to consistently choose rightly. When the pregnancy occurred, all the doctor really had time to say as I rushed out the door to the gynecologist was, “You have to start eating again.”
So I did. Boy, did I!
Potato chips, chocolate milk, mayonnaise and white bread sandwiches, sometimes with a few tomato slices thrown in for variety—all standard fare for someone Southern born, Southern bred and Southern fed. By 1969, a tactless but honest surgeon told me I looked like a mattress with a string tied around the middle. I remember one especially masochistic day, sitting down for Pete’s sake—as if the measurements weren’t bad enough while standing—I actually sat down and measured my hips. I even exhaled! I watched the tape register 60 inches.
What I do not recall is how I dealt with the facts of my life on that day. There I was, a 28-year-old, 240-pound mass of misery that lacked only six inches measuring horizontally what I measured vertically. But I wasn’t miserable because I was fat, I was fat because I was miserable way down deep inside, so deep it can't be felt because if you felt it you’d kill somebody. But part of God’s plan was for me to find the Edgar Cayce readings. In 1970, I read Jess Stearn’s The Sleeping Prophet, Tom Sugrue’s There is a River, and Hugh Lynn Cayce’s Venture Inward. It was a very good year.
By the time I waded through those three books, I was hooked. I didn’t care that I had been raised as an orthodox, fundamentalist, dogmatic Christian. Everything I read about Cayce made sense. But it was two years later that I finally heard about an inquirer’s meeting with Edgar Cayce’s name attached to it.
My main interests in those days were psychic phenomena, Atlantis, reincarnation, karma…all those neat goodies that are so much fun to study, but may not have a whole lot to do with real life, until application enters the picture. And application they don’t tell you about at inquirer’s meetings. That comes as a rude awakening later.
So one night, it was probably a Tuesday – seems like all inquirer’s sessions are held on Tuesdays – I waddled into a Savings and Loan Association Community Room (most of these sessions are held in community rooms), and there stood little bitty Dee Shambaugh Sloan (who at the time might have weighed 100 pounds dressed for skydiving). She was lecturing on the connection between the endocrine system, colors, karmic memory at cell level, energy flow, and the Lord’s Prayer. I did not understand one word of it, but it sounded absolutely fascinating.
Dee seemed to be talking to me when she spoke of the spiritual centers being connected to the glands of the body, particularly the thyroid. After all, my thyroid had tested under-active all my life—surely the reason I was fat. So when Dee said that meditation could balance the spiritual centers, including the thyroid, my ears perked right up.
My only experience with meditation had been sitting in a field in Ft. Lauderdale with a bunch of hippies whose main interest in life was to try to move clouds! Even then I knew better than to mess around with clouds, so I gave up. I didn’t know that meditation was physical as well as mental and spiritual, and I didn’t know that meditation was listening.
What does listening have to do with losing weight?
Everything.
Every single one of us comes into the earth plane with a certain consciousness, and the only way to alter that consciousness is attunement with God. For once that inner-life connection is made with the still, small voice within, the information we need to learn yet another lesson can be heard, sometimes dramatically.
One Saturday afternoon in 1972, after study group had been meeting at my house for about three months, I was dressing to attend a son’s Little League ball game. I was rushed for time, but I needed to meditate. It sounded simple enough. All I had to do was sit still for fifteen minutes, quiet the body and the mind, and listen to the God within speak to me. Nothing to it.
Well, for three months I had been sitting with a mosquito biting my toe, my eyes itching, dying of thirst, hating that miserable chair and thinking every single day that I’d never get the hang of this meditation thing. But I kept at it every single day, and that’s the point. Meditation lesson number one is: Hang in there—even though it does not seem to be doing one bit of good. I wasn’t even sure what good it was supposed to do, except to make me a better channel for God in the earth, whatever that meant. Then on that Saturday afternoon in June, I found out what it meant.
The day had passed uneventfully. Saturday chores had crowded the time, making meditation inconvenient. As I began to dress for the ballgame, dreading the Florida heat—gads, it’s hard to stay cool when you’re fat—an inner nudge prompted me to take a couple of minutes. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to be late for the game. Besides, the bedroom was air-conditioned. The ball field wasn’t. So I sat down on the floor, made my usual clumsy attempt at a half-lotus position—equally as difficult as keeping cool when you’re fat—and began to try to meditate. This time something was different.
This time I entered an altered state of consciousness. I heard the voice speaking. The exact words are not important, but afterwards, I was certain that I would succeed at losing weight this time where I had always failed before. It felt as though it would only be a matter of days, weeks at the most, before I’d be ravishingly slender and gorgeous.
Needless to say I didn’t exactly announce it over the loud speakers when I arrived at the ball field. One must be very careful to whom one confesses hearing voices. But I was so certain of the authenticity of the voice, I half-expected to shrink four sizes during the drive to the field. I honestly think I was disappointed when no one raved about how much weight I’d lost in the last 20 minutes. Five years later and finally thin—well not exactly finally—I’ve had my share of maintenance problems—I was and still am learning: It ain’t what you know, it’s what you do that counts. I wrote a book based on that meditation.
Weight that could have been lost safely within a year or so took five years to lose because I’m a slow learner, and spiritual knowledge without action makes things worse. Knowing what to do and not doing it is worst of all. Trying to “be spiritual” is a lost cause.
Week after week, we sat around in study group talking about learning to serve others, then we’d hold one another accountable for actually trying it in our lives. The A Search for God books say we can discover our purpose in life and our true relationship with a loving Creator by being a channel of blessings, healing and help to other people. I tried serving my family, but at first it backfired. For one thing service, to them, meant cooking. That’s all we knew: food plus food equals love. After all, nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven. Just ask the Pillsbury Doughboy. Would he lie? For another thing, I was beginning to relax about being fat. I was becoming spiritual. God loves fat people, too, doesn’t He?
Couldn’t one look like a mattress with a string tied around the middle and still be beautiful on the inside, where it counts.
Another meaning of spiritual in those days was to be calm, quiet and peaceful (a condition completely unnatural for me), so I moved through my days “practicing the Presence” with what must have been a glazed look in my eyes. There I was, cooking and smiling and generally acting like a zombie, and being patient with the kids while they wrecked the house. My husband, bored to the teeth with all this spirituality, told me to knock off all the self-righteous junk and forget that bunch of nuts I was meeting with. He wanted his life back.
Now, some would ascribe selfish motives to his demands, but the Cayce material clearly states that studying the readings is supposed to make one a better whatever-it-is that one is, be it rocket scientist or fat housewife.
“If self-development is our aim, then we must begin just where we are. It will do no good idly to wish to be in some other condition or surrounding; for, unless we have mastered our present one, the second state will be worse than the first.” (A Search For God, Book 1, p. 17)
I could not imagine a worse state than being a fat housewife, and now my husband was angry with me too. There I was, trying to get out of that condition, and things were getting all balled up. I was confused, hurt, frustrated.
“The first and last obstacle to overcome is understanding ourselves. Until we are fully aware of all that constitutes our existence we have no right to say that this or that is the aim and goal of life.” (ASFG 1, p. 17)
Holy cow! No right?
It could take forever to become “fully aware” of all that constituted my existence—and it was only existence—it surely wasn’t living. And to “master the present state” to me meant one thing: lose weight. I did not know then that it wasn’t about losing weight. And yet, something called “full awareness” had to be achieved before I could even claim the right to set goals for myself—a perplexing paradox. But at least I was beginning to get a glimmer of why, though I’d been on every diet devised by mankind, I was still fat. So I decided to sit down, shut up, and listen again.
I heard: The body is the temple and yours needs remodeling. I didn’t quite know how I was supposed to accomplish this if I couldn’t even set goals for myself. I just knew I’d have to begin where I was because wishing was not enough. Being spiritual was not enough. Something was moving, and though I did not know it yet, it was I, getting ready to face my fears.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Why Oprah is not skinny
See that basket of roses on the right? They were from Oprah. That's Jessee the Maltese and Amber the Persian, nosing it up beside the roses.
Almost ten years ago, on her TV show, Oprah debuted her size 10 body in a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. She had lost 67 pounds on a so-called elitist weight-loss method that cost $400 a week to start, not including long-term maintenance and private and group therapy. I was working at the now defunct Clearwater Sun newspaper in Clearwater, FL when this event occurred, and my editor asked me what I thought about it. Another reporter, She Who Shall Remain Nameless, had written a column taking Oprah to task and accusing her of not being a real person, "like she used to be." Her column began, "Dear Oprah," and included what seemed to me to be snide and undeserved accusations about why Oprah would not tell how much she weighed, and other things that were none of this columnist's business.
I wrote a rebuttal to the "Dear Oprah" column, beginning with "Dear Blank, Excuse me, but who do you think you are?" I chewed her out, point for point, ending with, "In the name of common decency, people like you ought to get off your almighty high horse and give the girl a break." The editor ran the first column on the left hand side of the page, my column on the right, with a giant photo in the center of the page of Oprah in those jeans at the moment of the big reveal. When it came out I sent the whole page to Oprah. Pretty soon, I received a hand-written note from Oprah, thanking me, saying the first column had been on her desk for two weeks, and that I had said everything for her that she'd wanted to say. A few days later the five dozen roses in the photo appeared in the newsroom. The card reads, "Thanks for giving a girl a break."
At the time Oprah was a size 10, so was I. Now, it is apparent that Oprah has not maintained her whole weight loss any more than I have. My ideas about why any of us gain it back may not be very popular, but here goes. I think we regain weight because we want to. And it has nothing to do with the method by which we lost it.
When I was 100 pounds overweight, it took five years to lose it but I maintained the loss for around 11 years, all but ten pounds or so. That ten pounds kept me preoccupied with my favorite pastime: life, liberty and the pursuit of lean. I fiddled around losing and regaining it, then losing it again simply because losing weight is so much fun and provides such a sense of accomplishment. I really hated to give it up, so I didn't.
Then something happened in the family that upset me. Looking back with 20-20 hindsight, I can see that the situation was really serious and required my immediate and full attention. However, because I had lulled myself into an illusion of control, I didn't take it seriously when I began to eat whatever was convenient instead of taking the time and trouble to assure my nutritional needs without overdoing it on calories. I have never had to binge to gain weight. I've only had to give in to convenience, and stop working out.
This situation became a crisis eventually, and the more I tried to fix it, the angrier I got. I was failing miserably in my self-appointed role as rescuer, and everything began to go wrong. Six months and 60 pounds later I woke up to what was happening but it was too late.
I wanted to get fat to demonstrate my anger because I was unable to express it honestly. I couldn't be outwardly angry so I turned it inward. That's when I discovered there is no such thing as control. The only way not to get caught in the illusion of control is to patrol behavior. Feelings simply can't be trusted to accurately gauge one's emotional well-being. Nothing matters except behavior.
I never really feel wonderful about eating right and working out. I just either do it or don't do it. Lately, I've done very well with my Mostly Raw Real Food lifestyle. But when I don't, when my behavior begins to revert back to self-destruction, I take it as a warning that some buried emotion is motivating me which needs to be explored. That's when I sit down with paper and pen and begin to write: "I want to be fat because..." and finish that sentence no matter how long it takes. Then it occurred to me how Oprah would finish that sentence:
I want to (have to) be fat because of ratings...
Oprah may feel she must keep some extra weight on her; otherwise, few of us could relate to her. As rich and powerful as she is, if she were skinny too it would be unbearable for us, as it must have been for She Who Shall Remain Nameless, back there ten years ago. When I was a size 10, it was okay for Oprah to be also. But now? Who knows, our political differences notwithstanding.
Truth be told, I lost that 60 pounds but have danged near gained it all back AGAIN. (...sigh...)
Oprah's roses are long gone. So are Jessee and Amber. But the basket lives on as my dog Lily's toy basket, witness to lessons still unlearned.
Almost ten years ago, on her TV show, Oprah debuted her size 10 body in a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. She had lost 67 pounds on a so-called elitist weight-loss method that cost $400 a week to start, not including long-term maintenance and private and group therapy. I was working at the now defunct Clearwater Sun newspaper in Clearwater, FL when this event occurred, and my editor asked me what I thought about it. Another reporter, She Who Shall Remain Nameless, had written a column taking Oprah to task and accusing her of not being a real person, "like she used to be." Her column began, "Dear Oprah," and included what seemed to me to be snide and undeserved accusations about why Oprah would not tell how much she weighed, and other things that were none of this columnist's business.
I wrote a rebuttal to the "Dear Oprah" column, beginning with "Dear Blank, Excuse me, but who do you think you are?" I chewed her out, point for point, ending with, "In the name of common decency, people like you ought to get off your almighty high horse and give the girl a break." The editor ran the first column on the left hand side of the page, my column on the right, with a giant photo in the center of the page of Oprah in those jeans at the moment of the big reveal. When it came out I sent the whole page to Oprah. Pretty soon, I received a hand-written note from Oprah, thanking me, saying the first column had been on her desk for two weeks, and that I had said everything for her that she'd wanted to say. A few days later the five dozen roses in the photo appeared in the newsroom. The card reads, "Thanks for giving a girl a break."
At the time Oprah was a size 10, so was I. Now, it is apparent that Oprah has not maintained her whole weight loss any more than I have. My ideas about why any of us gain it back may not be very popular, but here goes. I think we regain weight because we want to. And it has nothing to do with the method by which we lost it.
When I was 100 pounds overweight, it took five years to lose it but I maintained the loss for around 11 years, all but ten pounds or so. That ten pounds kept me preoccupied with my favorite pastime: life, liberty and the pursuit of lean. I fiddled around losing and regaining it, then losing it again simply because losing weight is so much fun and provides such a sense of accomplishment. I really hated to give it up, so I didn't.
Then something happened in the family that upset me. Looking back with 20-20 hindsight, I can see that the situation was really serious and required my immediate and full attention. However, because I had lulled myself into an illusion of control, I didn't take it seriously when I began to eat whatever was convenient instead of taking the time and trouble to assure my nutritional needs without overdoing it on calories. I have never had to binge to gain weight. I've only had to give in to convenience, and stop working out.
This situation became a crisis eventually, and the more I tried to fix it, the angrier I got. I was failing miserably in my self-appointed role as rescuer, and everything began to go wrong. Six months and 60 pounds later I woke up to what was happening but it was too late.
I wanted to get fat to demonstrate my anger because I was unable to express it honestly. I couldn't be outwardly angry so I turned it inward. That's when I discovered there is no such thing as control. The only way not to get caught in the illusion of control is to patrol behavior. Feelings simply can't be trusted to accurately gauge one's emotional well-being. Nothing matters except behavior.
I never really feel wonderful about eating right and working out. I just either do it or don't do it. Lately, I've done very well with my Mostly Raw Real Food lifestyle. But when I don't, when my behavior begins to revert back to self-destruction, I take it as a warning that some buried emotion is motivating me which needs to be explored. That's when I sit down with paper and pen and begin to write: "I want to be fat because..." and finish that sentence no matter how long it takes. Then it occurred to me how Oprah would finish that sentence:
I want to (have to) be fat because of ratings...
Oprah may feel she must keep some extra weight on her; otherwise, few of us could relate to her. As rich and powerful as she is, if she were skinny too it would be unbearable for us, as it must have been for She Who Shall Remain Nameless, back there ten years ago. When I was a size 10, it was okay for Oprah to be also. But now? Who knows, our political differences notwithstanding.
Truth be told, I lost that 60 pounds but have danged near gained it all back AGAIN. (...sigh...)
Oprah's roses are long gone. So are Jessee and Amber. But the basket lives on as my dog Lily's toy basket, witness to lessons still unlearned.
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