To date I’ve lost over 1000 lbs. That doesn’t make me a success story or hero any more than it makes me a yo-yo dieter. I’ve gained over 1000 lbs too. Just because I’ve repeatedly put my body through some ritualistic ground hog’s day kind of biochemical overhaul, it doesn’t make me any more than an exhausted but experienced health psychologist who admittedly can also be considered a former binge eater, overeater, sometimes under eater, more orthorexic, never anorexic, but chronically obsessive, and for the majority of time, an extremely healthy eater. Confessions of a practitioner’s binge eating disorder, appropriately labeled, along with some antidotes to end the physical manipulation and emotional bludgeoning we amass in the process of trying to be invisible and seen at the same time.
I have learned some the essential whys and hows that can help you end this cycle. Weight is a consequence of our behavior, more specifically it is a function of habitual emotions and, to a much smaller degree, our metabolic and genetic condition. Void of our labels as lazy, undisciplined, weak and others, we can find solace in knowing that recovery is possible and in the process of understanding, accepting, and creating new behaviors and emotions, we can rid ourselves from assigning a label to who we are and more appropriately acknowledge we have a changeable condition. It is not what we are but what we are experiencing. Not who we are as much as an aspect of behavior that we are managing. If thoughts do create reality and we can rid ourselves of labels attached to self-deprecating thoughts, we have a much higher success opportunity to lose weight, gain weight, stop restricting, purging, hiding, lying, and self-loathing. If we start every day with the same emotions of failure, embarrassment, guilt, shame, then we are doing nothing more than living in the past because those negative feelings were created by past experiences. We need to create a new set of emotions that drive positive outcomes. This is the key to your diet success. This is the key to joy!