Chicken Soup for the Dieter's Soul (2 page)

Working on this book has been an enlightening experience. Certainly, I’d heard all the news—we’re fatter than ever and our children are destined for lives filled with heart disease and diabetes unless we make some major changes in our lifestyles. I knew from other work I’ve done that we are a culture obsessed with unattainable standards of beauty and body image issues, whether real or perceived. But I had no idea how many people suffered lifelong with their weight, dieting repeatedly, hoping for the fix (it’s never quick) to be permanent (it’s usually temporary.)

I sifted through hundreds of stories, and a pattern emerged. The success stories were those in which people realized their attitude had to change on a deeper level to create permanent change in their daily lives. Millions succeed to some degree or other with the popular programs and supplements that fuel a multi-billion-dollar dieting industry. But universally, more important than which program or plan dieters followed was the fact that they had finally reconciled their hearts and minds to changing their relationship to food. Success began when they chose to eat to live, not live to eat.

The "simple" truth is that we must eat a diet of nutrient-rich, balanced food groups, in smaller portions, more frequently, and we must get daily exercise. It takes effort, as you’ll see from Guy Burdick’s piece, “Running from a Diabetic Coma to the Marine Corps Marathon,” but it can be fun, as Greg Faherty shows us in “Gone to the Dogs.” Trying to go it alone can be a daunting prospect, so finding a partner or making it a family affair is a great way to stay on track. Tricia Finch learned some solid tips from her “trainer,” which she shares in “Weight-Loss Wisdom from a Toddler,” and Peggy Frezon dealt with her empty-nest syndrome and got some exercise at the same time in “Phone Friend.”

Why we eat seems to be as important as what we eat, and we have several pieces that get to the core of the issue of emotional eating. Jacquelyn B. Fletcher shares her experiences with food and feelings in “The Road to Self-Worth,” while Georgia A. Hubley’s transformation described in “MondayMorning Blues” is a blueprint for dieting success.

For some, our early environment or our genes stack the odds against us. When all else fails, surgery is a viable option. Marilyn Eudaly describes how she chose gastric bypass in “The Secret.” In “Whatever I Want,” Perry P. Perkins tells us how growing up in poverty dictated his relationship with food. Anyone considering bariatric surgery needs to read Perry’s story.

Exercise is the second, but equally essential, part of the weight management equation. Harriet Cooper met the challenge head-on and shares her insight in three pieces, “Where Money Meets Resolutions,” “The Exchange Rate” and “Couch Meets Table.” You may see a glimpse of yourself and have a good laugh when you read “The Exercise Bike” from Ann Morrow. And Charmi Schroeder, one of the former “stars” of a Richard Simmons’s
Sweatin’ to the
Oldies
video, returns for an encore in an inspiring piece, “Stroke of Inspiration.”

Throughout
Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul
you’ll find delicious recipes anyone can enjoy, taken from cookbooks authored by two physicians with a special interest in diet and health. Diana Schwarzbein, a California endocrinologist and internist, developed
The Schwarzbein Principle
in the early 1990s and has since helped thousands of type 2 diabetics and insulin-resistant clients reclaim their health and take control of their well-being. Andrew Larson, a specialist in bariatric surgery, teamed up with his wife, Ivy Ingram Larson, a fitness and nutrition expert, to create a diet and exercise program after Ivy was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her twenties.
The Gold Coast Cure
is a life-saving program for anyone living with autoimmune or inflammatory diseases. In addition to stories, we’ve included a resource section to help you maximize the effectiveness of your weight-management program.

Although dieting is a solitary, personal process, we offer you
Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul
as a source of companionship, motivation, insight and inspiration, empathy and encouragement. And we wish you—no matter what the number on that scale may be—a healthy, strong and vibrant life, lived to the fullest.

Theresa Peluso

Share with Us

We would love to hear your reactions to the stories in this book. Please let us know what your favorite stories were and how they affected you.

We also invite you to send us stories you would like to see published in future editions of
Chicken Soup for the Soul.
You can send us either stories you have written or stories written by others. Please send submissions to:

Chicken Soup for the Soul
P.O. Box 30880
Santa Barbara, CA 93130
Fax: 805-563-2945

You can also access e-mail or find a current list of planned books at the
Chicken Soup for the Soul
website at
www.chickensoup.com
.

We hope you enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed compiling, editing and writing it.

1
MIND OVER
MATTER

T
his life is yours: Take the power to choose what
you want to do and do it well. Take the power
to love what you want in life and love it honestly.
Take the power to walk in the forest and
be a part of nature. Take the power to control
your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.

Susan Polis Schutz

My Weight-Loss Journey

W
hen we move out of the familiar here and
now, we set in motion a series of events that,
taken together, bring about changes at the very
root of our being.

Joseph Dispenza

There was a time in my life when everything was completely out of control. I was considered “morbidly obese” at 290 pounds, my marriage was horrible and I was a diet junkie but still gaining weight on every fad that I tried. Looking back, it is still difficult for me to pinpoint how I got myself into such a rut, but it is quite easy for me to explain how I broke the cycle that kept me in the downward spiral that had become my life.

At thirty years old, I felt way too young to be my mother, yet there I was, weighing 290 pounds, unhappy all the time, in debt, lonely and eating for comfort. I so desperately wanted my life to improve and laid my hopes on the belief that once I lost weight, everything would! In an attempt to solve all of my problems, I went on every popular diet that I heard about—from the cabbage soup diet to the lesser-known “cantaloupe, tuna and Diet Pepsi diet.” Each diet left me overweight and disillusioned —certainly not the outcome I desired. I resigned myself to the fact that I was destined to be fat, lacked any willpower and would likely fail at any diet that I ever tried.

One day in 1994, while opening the mail, I came upon an envelope without a return address. I opened it, read it and discovered that my husband was having an affair. It was like being punched in the stomach, but the pain didn’t go away. An argument ensued and I rushed out the door, needing to get away—you know, to get something to eat.

I headed to the closest gas station to buy a candy bar and there he was—the man who would facilitate my change in destiny! As I got out of my car, I gave my sweatshirt the obligatory tug, pulling it down so that it covered my butt and thus hid my fat from the world—or so I thought. As I walked toward the attendant’s window to get my food fix, this man leaning on the side of the building, drinking something out of a tattered brown paper bag and wearing clothing stained with soot and grime, loudly observed, “Girl, you got too much food in you!” Not just a quiet observation, mind you, but very loud and heckling. Repeatedly and more loudly my tormentor kept up his chanting. Everyone, even the attendant behind the bulletproof glass window, was laughing—laughing at my fat and me. I took my candy bar and quickly retreated to my car as he got one last comment in: “Damn, girl!” I was beyond humiliated.

Enough was enough. “Too much food in me!”
I’ll show
him
, I thought as I sped off; giving him a parting gesture as I spun my wheels like a bat out of hell. I quickly opened up my Mounds bar and sought solace. Strangely, comfort wasn’t to be found that night—not in the coconut and chocolate, not in the ice cream that I ate when I got home, and least of all, not when I took a good look in the mirror.

He was right—and it hit me hard. He hadn’t meant to be cruel, but he was being honest and called it as he saw it. Sure, other people’s comments could be construed as mean-spirited, but not this man’s. He didn’t make fun of me, he didn’t call me “fat”; no, he simply stated the obvious: I had too much food in me.

I took a long look at myself and at my life that night, and I realized what the problems really were. It wasn’t my husband’s fault that I had gotten overweight; it wasn’t my parent’s fault; it wasn’t the teasing; it wasn’t anything that anyone else did to me—it was every bite of food that went into my mouth that didn’t belong there.

From that day on, I quit thinking that simply losing weight would change me and improve my life; I realized that if I changed my actions, in time my life had no choice but to change! From that day on, I quit putting “too much food in me.” It was very easy for me to identify a few foods that I had way “too much of in me”; after all, I was eating at least a half gallon of ice cream a night. That seemed like a good place to start.

My weight loss did not happen overnight and my life didn’t improve overnight; but, rather, over a series of many nights, days, weeks and months I made consistent small steps in the direction of a healthier life—a well-balanced life! I literally started by changing one habit, which led to changing one more habit, and so on, which wasn’t overwhelming and was very doable. I gave up my ice cream vice, “busted” fast food, started cooking and eating with my children, stopped eating in the car or in front of the TV, and started to read labels and learn about the contents of what I was consuming.

I also started getting some exercise. After I lost fifteen or twenty pounds, I joined an aerobics class. After I lost about fifty pounds, I became comfortable and more confident in myself and I started to work out more often. I began taking step classes and performing muscle-strengthening exercises. I started walking around the park with my children and playing with them in the playground.

Over the course of the next fifteen months I lost over 130 pounds—almost exactly two pounds per week—a healthy pace by all standards. My productivity at work improved, my attitude was vastly more positive and my life was finally pulling out of the downward spiral. Sadly, my marriage did not improve despite the fact that my body did. For so many years I thought that losing weight would change everything in my life and my marriage. My husband was a very nice person, but together we didn’t work. Each of us had different interests and desires for our lives, and it became clear that my weight loss wasn’t going to change us—
only how I looked.

Each day is a new page in my journey, which began with a homeless man, my guardian angel, who opened my eyes, gave me a dose of reality and shocked me into changing my life. It worked!

Julia Havey

Phone Friend

T
he family is the essential presence—the thing
that never leaves you, even if you find you have
to leave it.

Bill Buford

It’s too early, too cold, too hot, I’m too tired, the wind is blowing in the wrong direction . . . whatever the excuse, I’d try anything to get out of exercising! But my daughter Kate wouldn’t fall for any of that. “C’mon, Mom,” she’d say. “You’ll feel better after you get out there and move.”

Sometimes we’d go to the gym together. It was always so much easier to pound that treadmill when I saw she was sweating right beside me. Sometimes we’d play tennis. I wasn’t any good, but she kept hitting those balls to me, never losing patience. And at least I’d get a lot of exercise chasing the ones that went over the fence or into the woods. “Good job,” Kate would say. “Wasn’t that fun?” And you know, it was when we did it together.

Last fall, though, it was time for Kate to go away to college. I was happy for her to have such an exciting opportunity, but I missed having her around.
At least now I won’t have to worry about anyone dragging me out there to exercise
, I thought. But do you know what? I missed that, too.

At home, things just weren’t the same. My husband worked hard at the office all day, and when he came home, he wanted to relax and unwind. The last thing he wanted to do was run off to the gym. And my fifteen-year-old son was active with soccer, basketball, and baseball practices and games. There was no one left at home to force me to push my body in ways I naturally tended to avoid.

Since I wasn’t sure how to motivate myself, I ended up doing nothing. I worked from home, and pretty soon my only exercise was rolling my office chair from my desk to my computer screen and tossing wads of paper into the trash can. I did dive for the phone when it rang, though. That was when Kate would call from college.

“It’s a long way to classes from my dorm,” she said, “but the walking is great!” She referred to the expected weight gain for new college students. “The freshman fifteen? Not for me!”

Soon Kate called me whenever she was making that long walk to campus. She filled me in on all the exciting details of her life: inspiring courses, new friends, interesting clubs and activities. I really looked forward to her calls and connecting to her life. I cradled the phone, cozied up on the couch and settled in for a nice chat.