Jacki's Story

This article is from the overcoming overeating website

Free From 25 Years of the Diet/Binge Prison!

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Hi! My name is Jacki, and I have been applying the OO approach to my life for about 5 years now, and I feel like it's given my life back to me! I feel like I'd been in prison for 25 years (I fought the compulsive eating problem for 25 years!) and have finally been set free to go out and enjoy my life now! This may sound quite exaggerated, but it's really exactly how I feel! Never before have I felt so calm around food! I'm even forgetting about foods that are in my house—that's a first! It feels so great to be a part of the "real" world now—to have regular Coke in my refrigerator to offer company; to be able to bake birthday cakes for people instead of avoiding baking due to fear; to be able to go to weddings and have a piece of cake and be "satisfied" (a word I never knew before!)—just to live free in a world of food and not have to constantly restrain myself and feel different and deprived!!

My food problem started when I was about 5 years old. My parents forced me to eat when I wasn't hungry and got mad if I wouldn't finish everything on my plate. I've got a picture of me asleep at my little table when I was 5—I'd fallen asleep because I was told I couldn't get up until I'd finished everything in the "TV dinner" I was eating and I refused to eat the "yucky" carrots/peas section! So I guess I got the message that I was to ignore what pleased or displeased me, ignore my "full" signal and eat anyway—that eating made my parents happy. When I was around 6, I started getting a little tummy on me—the kind all kids get right before a growth spurt. However, my parents (who were always on a diet and worried about their weight) were afraid I'd get "fat," so they put me on the "Stillman Diet" that they were always on. It was like a family rule—we all had to be on a diet together. Now, my parents were happy when I didn't eat!! How confusing this must have been to a child of 6!

You probably can guess what happened from then on! The diet/binge cycle had begun, along with my sneaking food to my room, getting caught with it, feeling ashamed, eating before my parents got home from work, feeling guilty, etc. I remember when I was just 7 years old(!) I would call Daddy every morning at work to tell him how much I weighed that day; and I got praised if I'd lost weight and "fussed" at if I'd gained—7 years old!! However, interestingly my 3 younger siblings were never put on diets—only me—and I believe that because they were left alone about this subject is the reason they never had eating problems. (However, one sister later started dieting on her own and also developed a problem.)

I went on several weight-loss programs throughout my childhood, teens, and early twenties, and lost up to 67 pounds about 3 times, along with smaller losses of 20-40 pounds several times—so there was no problem with will power, as everyone always assumes large people just need to muster up in order to lose weight! (Personally, I'd like to see any of THEM go on such strict diets!) But by the time I was 27 years old, my eating problem had progressed to the point where I weighed 250 pounds (I'm 5'4"). My life had gotten so wrapped up in food that it consisted of: waking up in the morning, getting dressed, going to a fast-food place and getting some kind of breakfast (usually a sausage biscuit and hash browns and maybe a milkshake), driving to the parking lot of the building where I worked and sitting in my car to eat my food. Then I'd go into the cafeteria and buy a 2nd complete breakfast (my favorite was a bacon and egg sandwich and grits)—that's the breakfast I let people see me eat. Then around 10:00 a.m. I'd go to the vending machines and stock up on candy bars, M&M's, etc. I'd go to the restroom and eat all but 1 item—then I'd let everyone see just the 1 item. I'd eat a "regular" lunch and then around 3:00 I'd repeat the vending machine routine. After work, I'd hit 2 or 3 places (usually a couple of fast-food places—maybe hamburgers and tacos—and also a convenience store for candy bars, ice cream, canned Cokes, chips, etc.). I'd go home and spend the evening eating and watching TV. My Friday and Saturday night dates consisted of food, "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest" and the "Soaps" I'd taped during the week. What a sorry life! Food was in charge of my life—not me. Just writing this really makes me feel sad to remember just how strong a hold food once had on me—and how much of my life was wasted.

I finally ending up finding out about "Overeaters Anonymous" (similar to "Alcoholics Anonymous") at the age of 27. I felt like I was finally "home!" It was great to be around others like me—who really understood my relationship with food. The sheer "high" of this helped me to stop compulsively overeating for several months. But then the "honeymoon" was over! I had a 4-year struggle with working the 12 Steps, making phone calls, sponsoring people, being sponsored, writing, reading, going to up to 3 meetings a week. Sometimes the compulsion seemed to go away for a while—up to about 5 months once—but it always came back. I still felt deprived and had to "white knuckle" to stay "abstinent." Food was still controlling my life. I resented the fact that I was "different," that I was like an alcoholic around food. I was told to never eat my "binge" foods (i.e., my "favorites"). I was so terrified that if I took one bite of a binge food I'd be out of control again. In fact, this is exactly what happened—several times. I'd binge and then be out of control for several weeks or even months before I could muster up the discipline to let go of the food again and get "abstinent." Now I understand this was because I was so deprived it was causing me to binge every chance I got! And this was a perfectly NORMAL response to deprivation! Yet, I was made to feel something was wrong with me…

Anyway, through OA I did lose 83 pounds in about a 2-year period. But then I came down with what I thought was "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" (we eventually learned it was actually "Environmental Illness" or "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity"—and years later that it was in fact Lyme Disease!). This illness took all my energy from me and left me virtually bedridden. I was so upset and rebellious—I'd finally gotten under 200 pounds for the first time in my adult life, and I was loving life, buying clothes in the "normal" section, down to 167 pounds—and then had my new life robbed from me by a chronic illness. Then to top it all off my Mother passed away suddenly and left me and my younger siblings without any parents or grandparents (my Father had passed away in 1979.) So during the next year I gained ALL my weight back and went even further—up to 260. I felt hopeless, like I just HAD to work my program harder (meaning the constant working of the 12 Steps, meetings, phone calls, etc.)— but now I was too sick to get to meetings, and I was so tired of fighting off food—so tired of the struggle. Also, I had to quit my wonderful job that I loved so much—it was just an awful time for me.

I struggled until November of 1992 when I saw Geneen Roth on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Something about her caught my attention. She seemed to smile as if to say "I've got a secret!!" I LIKED what she said about letting myself eat all I wanted and to stop depriving myself. I was SO READY to hear that! Her whole approach is that "for every diet, there's an equal and opposite binge"—in other words: dieting causes binging!! Instead of causing weight-loss, dieting causes weight-gain!! 

This idea was so crazy-sounding, but I knew in my heart it was true!! For every time I had dieted, I binged even harder when I finally got sick of being deprived and broke out of the diet and ended up gaining even more weight than I'd lost! This happened every time! I thought it was just me—that I was failing at weight-loss—when, in reality, I was just using the wrong "medicine." Dieting has a 98% failure rate—if a medical procedure had that kind of failure rate, it would be snatched off the market! But for some reason, people still think dieting is the answer for weight problems. By the way, when I say "dieting," I mean any form of restrictions whatsoever! Nowadays, they call it "eating healthy," eating "fat-free," a "lifestyle change," "being careful," "stopping the insanity"(!), etc. But it ALL amounts to deprivation and eventually weight-gain!

I really wanted some instructions on how to "Break Free" myself, so I bought Geneen's book, Breaking Free From Compulsive Eating. It was sort of scary to me, because the idea was so revolutionary: it meant totally "bucking the system" and letting go of trying to lose weight. I was so programmed to believe that I could never eat my favorite foods again—and this approach was telling me I needed to do just that! By this time, however, I was so sick of dieting and deprivation that I was willing to keep an open mind. My fear of giving this a try was overcome by the fear of living like I was for the rest of my life. I was sick of being controlled by food and weight obsession.

I had to tell my husband what was going on—he saw me going after cookies in the grocery store and panicked! He thought I was "slipping" from my OA program again. When I shared this new philosophy with him, he thought it made a lot of sense! So I'm really thankful to have his total support in this. During the holidays that year I just let myself eat whatever and whenever I wanted with my total permission and no guilt. It was amazing! I did eat a lot, but I WASN'T BINGING!! I had no desire whatsoever to binge. The compulsion was lifted instantly—instead of after weeks and months of struggle like in OA.

Then in February of 1993, I happened to catch someone from another anti-diet group called "Overcoming Overeating" on the "Vicki Lawrence" show. She seemed so calm about food and so sure that this approach would free people from compulsive eating, that I ordered a copy of the book from my local book store! When I got it, I was so excited to see that it even further explained the same approach I'd been trying! Geneen's books sort of "whetted" my appetite, so to speak, but it was Overcoming Overeating (by Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter) that gave me clear-cut instructions on how to overcome my addiction to food! Their theory is to "eat your way out of your eating problem!!" Also, the ultimate goal is to reconnect physical hunger with eating. In other words, you learn how to tell when your body is hungry and eat exactly what you want and then to stop eating when your body is full. I now believe in this approach 200%!! My food addiction has been totally taken away!! (Yes, really!) I never would have believed this was possible if it hadn't happened to me!

The first time I was able to go to a birthday party and eat cake like everyone else and not feel guilty was amazing! I was totally satisfied after just one piece of cake; whereas before, I'd deprive myself of it and then as soon as I was alone I'd buy a whole cake and eat it myself! Also, to my amazement, I've discovered that food actually goes stale!! I could go on and on about my experiences, but really the main thing I wanted to share with you is just how FREE I feel! My life has been given back to me! I feel like I was in prison for 25 years, then Jane and Carol just walked up to my prison door and unlocked it and said, "You're free—go out and enjoy your life now!"

What's so amazing is that this has freed my husband as well! He no longer has to "hide" food from me. He was so amazed when I baked my first chocolate cake in over 5 years, had a piece each day for a few days and then forgot it was on the counter!!! He said, "This is a miracle!!" But I've relaxed around food now—I know I can have chocolate cake (or whatever) any time I want it, so I don't have to go crazy with it right now! Also, Valentine's Day of 1993 was the first time since I was a child that I got a box of chocolates for a Valentine! My husband gave them to me and said it was really neat to be able to buy me whatever he wanted to instead of a substitution! He gave them to me in the morning and I had 3 pieces. Then something truly amazing happened: I forgot I had them!! And they were sitting right beside my chair!! Before, the box would've been empty within an hour!

My husband and I talked about the differences between this program and OA (which I'd thought was the "answer" before this!). I realized that OA worked to a point—but only after you fought and struggled and worked the steps and made phone calls and went to meetings and basically gave your whole life to the OA program. It was a constant struggle and effort to stay away from overeating that got harder and harder as time went by. This program gave me an INSTANT release from the struggle! There was no fighting, no working hard at it, no struggling—and it get's easier as time goes by! My husband made a comment that I thought was so neat: "Eating" is what I'd struggled to avoid for 25 years of my life; and ironically, "eating" is what finally set me free!!

Right at first, the tendency is to eat quite a bit, since you're getting rid of all the deprivation for however long you've been restricting your eating. I spent about 6 months in the "legalizing" phase, then I started to naturally gravitate towards demand feeding. I don't really like feeling "too full" any more and I'm finding I actually enjoy eating when I'm hungry more than when I'm not. But if I'd have told myself when I first started this that I HAD to wait till I was hungry and only eat till I was full, I think I would have rebelled again—it would've just felt like a "demand-feeding diet!" By being gentle with myself and loving myself through the process, I believed that eventually I would be able to do that type of eating because I WANTED to more often—and that's exactly what happened! I ate past full most of the time at first, but it gradually started to change. It feels so good to nurture my hunger now, instead of fighting against it. I think this is how God created us to eat in the first place! I'm just going through a "healing process" to return to that natural state.

I gained about 23 pounds during the first 6 months of allowing myself to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. When I thought about this, I realized that the year before (after breaking out of the restraints of OA), I'd gained 65 pounds in 4 months!! So I guess gaining 23 pounds is a lot better! Also, I realized that I would have gained it anyway—probably even more—because I was still rebounding from all the deprivation I'd felt in OA. It was a little scary to be gaining weight—but every time I started feeling anxious about this and thinking that I needed to do something about my weight, I'd stop myself and say, do what?!! Go on another diet and gain even more weight?!! That wasn't an option anymore! I had to just keep going forward with this approach and whatever happened with my weight would happen! What did happen was that in the next year I lost 24 pounds, lowered my cholesterol from 241 down to 214, had a great A1C (diabetic test) (5.4) and totally amazed my doctor! I told him about the OO approach, and pointed out how ironic it was that the year I quit dieting I lost weight and had all these great results! He said, "Well, whatever you're doing, just keep doing it!!"

Even after being diagnosed with Type II diabetes in March of 1994, I still use this approach—I eat whatever I want (including sweets) and have excellent blood sugar control. I know in my heart that if I were to restrict my eating and focus on weight-loss again, I'd end up binging again and gaining more weight. I have to stick with the freedom I've found. I really don't even care anymore if I ever reach the goal weight of 135-145 that I've always had. Maybe I'll gradually lose some weight; maybe I won't! Regardless, I've made myself a promise to never deprive myself again—ever!! The benefits I've received from the OO program far outweigh any weight loss I've had in the past, and I'm happier with myself and with life now more than ever! I hope more and more dieters and compulsive overeaters will be set free by this approach—I know I'm sharing it every time I get the chance! Maybe by the 22nd Century, "dieting" will be a thing of the past…

– Jacki B.

(NOTE: If you'd like to learn more about Jacki's Environmental Illness and how she's finally getting better, please see her personal web site!)

Source:- http://overcomingovereating.com/support/personal-stories/73-jackis-story-set-free-from-25-years-of-the-dietbinge-prison

Diet is a 4-Letter Word

Tired of Dieting?


Try intuitive eating





Remember when you were two?


Me neither, but pictures of that time of my life show me smiling, laughing and eating an ice cream cone while wearing a bikini and standing in my baby pool. That was long before I knew that ice cream was 'fattening' or that you had to look a certain way to wear a bikini, and eating ice cream wasn't the best way to achieve that look.

I'm not sure when it happened for me, but research suggests that somewhere between the ages of 2 and 5, most of us lose our ability to eat healthily and naturally on our own. Rather than listening to what our bodies are telling us that we need, we learn to eat for:
Social reasons (e.g., birthday parties)
Emotional reasons (e.g., having a bad day)
Sensory reasons (e.g., passing a bakery and you have to go in even though you just ate lunch)

Over time, we begin to ignore internal cues (i.e., hunger), and pay attention to external cues (i.e. taste, smell, variety; especially high fat and/or high sugar foods). In fact, 30-50% of us engage in unconscious or ‘mindless’ eating on a fairly regular basis and all of us have done so at one time or another. This can cause “conditioned hypereating” and make you twice as likely to be overweight. Or we make 'rules' about what we should and should not eat to look a certain way. Or because we think our way of eating is 'correct.' I certainly fell into this latter category. As a result, many of us start to view food as the enemy. We forget the way we used to eat with joyful abandon. And instead food becomes not fuel for our bodies, but something we think we should have control over - or alternatively, feel that food controls us.






According to Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, this alters our relationship with food in such a way that we form different types of eating personalities.

Careful Eaters - very aware of and pay attention to what they put in their bodies. On the outside, they seem to be “perfect” eaters, as they are very nutrition-conscious. However, if you look closer, you’ll see someone who: Displays agony about every bite of food allowed into their body, carefully analyze food labels for ingredients, fat grams, and calories – or carbs depending on which ‘diet’ they are on right now.  Ask the waitstaff numerous questions about nutrition content and preparation before ordering a meal
Professional Dieter - constantly dieting. They know a lot about portions, calories, and dieting, but they are constantly diet because dieting has never worked for them. Their eating choices tend to be based on losing weight not health. If they are not currently on a diet, they are anticipating their next diet. Because they tend to label foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ they often binge eat or partake in Last Supper eating when a forbidden food is eaten. They feel like they have to “eat now” because they cannot eat these foods tomorrow when they start their diet, so it’s their ‘last chance.’
Unconscious (Mindless) Eater - The unconscious or mindless eater engages in paired eating: eating while doing another activity. Tribole and Resch in their book Intuitive Eating break mindless eating into 4 categories:

The Chaotic Unconscious Eater - very busy people. They usually have an overbooked life and will eat whatever is available. They recognize that nutrition and diet is important but they don’t have time to focus on it. They may go long periods of times without eating due to their hectic schedule. So when they do eat, they often over eat because their bodies are deprived of calories and nutrition.
The Refuse-Not Unconscious Eater - very vulnerable to the presence of food, whether they are hungry or not. If food is lying around at meetings, candy dishes, or on a counter, it will be gone in no time flat! Most of the time they don’t realize they are eating or the quantity of food they are consuming. Thus, social events centered around food are problematic because they will mindlessly over eat past the point of satiety.
The Waste-Not Unconscious Eater - often grew up in poverty or in a nutrition-deficient household. They focus on the monetary value of food and are driven by getting as much food as possible for their money. As a result, they will clean their plate and possibly others, so as not to waste any food.
The Emotional Unconscious Eater - uses food as their primary coping mechanism, especially when they have to deal with uncomfortable emotions, such as stress, anger, and loneliness. Their ‘coping’ ranges from eating a single candy bar to chronic binge eating.

Now that you know what problems you may have with food, it’s time to focus on what to do about it. According to Tribole and Resch, there are 10 steps to recovering a healthy relationship with food.

10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

1. Reject the Diet Mentality Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

2. Honor Your Hunger Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.

3. Make Peace with Food Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can't or shouldn't have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing When you finally “give-in” to your forbidden food, eating will be experienced with such intensity, it usually results in Last Supper overeating, and overwhelming guilt.

4. Challenge the Food Police .Scream a loud "NO" to thoughts in your head that declare you're "good" for eating minimal calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created . The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the Food Police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

5. Respect Your Fullness Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you're comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence--the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you've had "enough".

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won't fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you into a food hangover. But food won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating.

8. Respect Your Body Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel better about who you are. It's hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape.

9. Exercise--Feel the Difference Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it's usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time.

10 Honor Your Health--Gentle Nutrition Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds while making you feel well. Remember that you don't have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It's what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts.

Stop dieting attitudes and behaviors – restricting your food intake sets you up for mindless eating because you are so hungry
Honor your hunger and fullness – relearn what it feels like when you’re hungry and when you’re full
Make friends with food – there are no ‘bad’ foods and labeling foods as ‘off-limits’ only makes you want them more
Challenge those who question your eating habits (even yourself) – Say no to grandma’s seconds and ignore the nay sayers who ask “are you going to eat THAT?”
Respect your fullness - if you’re hungry, eat; if you’re full, stop.
Enjoy your food – that’s right. Taste it. Savor every bite. Wolfing down your food leads to overeating because your brain doesn’t realize it’s had enough to eat.
Learn more appropriate coping skills – food is your friend, but it is not the solution to all of your problems.
Respect yourself and your body – learn to love yourself and your body as it is now. Only then will your body work with you to lose that unwanted extra weight.
Get out there and move – ‘Exercise’ is a loaded word, so let’s use play or movement. Just get out there and do something you enjoy that gets your body moving every day.
Honor your health – By all means, if your doctor has put you on a special diet for a medical condition, follow it; but also do your own research and learn as much about your condition and how to maintain optimal health.

What step will you take today to repair your relationship with food?




Source:- http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/diet-is-4-letter-word/201406/tired-dieting

If You're Tired Of Dieting, Please Read This!

Like many women over 40, I’ve experimented with a wide variety of weight-management strategies since my teens, including near-starvation, bingeing, deprivation, limiting myself to certain food groups or only eating at certain times of the day, never snacking, only snacking, sugar-free, fat-free, carb-free, fruits only, veggies only, food combining, over-exercising, under-exercising (usually when I didn’t eat enough to have any energy), living on Diet Coke (ugh!) and the list goes on. I am sure I have forgotten some of them. Aside from gaining weight during three pregnancies (and far more than the “healthy” level for the first two) and consciously losing it afterwards, my weight has usually been “average” with a few highs and lows. Since I am fairly tall (5’8), a few extra pounds are easier to carry. Being underweight was more obvious as my long limbs looked longer than usual and along with that came comments (usually from my parents) about not eating enough. If I were totally frank with myself, the reasons I had such an unhealthy relationship with food had a lot to do with some bad childhood habits that blossomed into teenage weight gain and the dreaded freshman fifteen in college, resulting in the usual self-esteem issues for a young woman trying to find her real adult self.