Dear Weight Loss, I’m Leaving You

I don't usually birthday too hard, but I do treat it like my personal New Years Eve ritual and I love a journal prompt. I had already done my big creative/financial/joy planning ritual (more on that later) but I was thinking this week that I wanted to give myself a big gift this year.

I want to give myself the gift of not thinking about losing weight for an entire year. 

I'll be real, 20 hours into this personal gift giving I was panicking a little bit. Not a single diet? not a single enforced workout schedule? My husband took a video of me scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees, my mom pooch hanging gently over the band of my sweatpants, certainly I HAD TO CONTROL THIS. MY mission in life has always been to control this.

Look, some of you love your bodies and always have. You won't get this, this isn't for you. You don't understand this pain. But for the women and men who know what it's like to be perpetually unsatisified with what they see in the mirror, or have used eating disorders as a way of coping with the lack of control in their life, maybe this will hit for you like it did for me.

I spent the better part of yesterday morning (it's my rest week of the month so, passion projects only) doing a painkiller on weight loss. For those of you that don't know, Painkillers is an expedited grief recovery method that I spent four years building. I did grief recovery with over 600 people to be able to compress the seven week, 300 page process into a 30 page worksheet. It is the work I'm proudest of,  and I use it all the time. Proud to say that it's deployed by several known therapists around the globe. It's always free to the public.

Grief Recovery allows you to assess the data of a relationship, so that you can let the painful pattern go and only the positive will remain. Every relationship has ups and downs, but when we're grieving, and we don't know it, we unconsciously think a relationship was either all good, or all bad. Healing can only occur when you accept that it was both good and bad. 

You can do painkillers on a person. You can also do it on a feeling, like "control", and you can also do it on a vice, habit, or substance. The reason why there's the book version with 55 sheets, is because once you get into the swing of it, you'll use all 55.  I also love, love-love, the meditation. No pen required.

When I looked at the data, I had three months of "winning" in a 28 year black hole. My two pregnancies were also exceptions, I felt remarkably good about my body while pregnant even though I couldn't get out of bed.

When I look at the data, 3 months out of a 336 month relationship is a 0.89 success rate. When I look at the data, I see it hasn't worked.

YO, I felt so good after doing this I immediately want to add to my birthday pile that I won't think about if I'm a good parent or not for a year. Hope you enjoy.

Dear Weight Loss, 

I’ve been reviewing our relationship, and there’s some things I need to say.

My first memory with you is vague, you don’t come in as a character, it’s discovering you were in the background all along. It’s at the DC home, I don’t fit in anywhere. There’s no kids except my sister, she is young enough to be cute, and fits in with the older girls, I don’t. I find out they’re all doing this thing called “binge and cringe” together. They all workout together, Paula Abdul at naptime. I want to be a part of their crew. I’m eight. The older girls compliment my little sister for “eating like a bird” I start trying to eat as little a possible.

Dear Weight loss, our relationship over the past 28 years has been filled with ups and downs. It has been 28 years of ups and downs. In order for me to develop a healthy relationship with you, or even continue having one, I need to close the painful chapter of this book and enter a new one.

Dear Weight loss, the first good memory that comes to mind with you is realizing after I had scarlet fever that I must have lost a lot of weight. I see the way my pants hang around my waist, and I love it. I still love it. I feel beautiful, I feel like pushing my body forward in my clothes. I’m so proud of my body, I’m so proud of myself. Like how I am when I’m pregnant. 

I’m 12 or 13. This is the first time I feel my weight loss mission has worked. I always, in my life, have goals to lose weight but when it’s dinner time I just love to eat, period. Always have. For 28 years. At some point around this time my mom tells me to watch my weight because I don’t want to get “hippy” like my stepsister. I am tiny at this stage of my life, naturally. My stepsister was anorexic for about a year, which everyone loved. She is always on whatever diet allows her to binge eat the approved food, like the Atkins diet. She’s been obese for the last 15 years. I decide that my mom sees fat in my body that I am somehow missing. She doesn’t say anything about my weight loss. 

When I look back on this memory, I need to honor that I didn’t lose weight by will power or anything else, I was sick, like deathly sick. 

Dear Weight loss, the first bad memory that comes to mind with you is collapsing in the bathroom in Mexico City. Clare has taught me how to throw up my food without putting my finger down my throat, and I’ve been working the system daily. After throwing up my food I burst into tears, I just can’t handle my life. I can’t handle me, I can’t handle my body, I can’t handle my life. It was tolerable when we lived remote, now I’m in the middle of a city surrounded by people that show me what life is like for people who don’t live in cults. I can’t handle it. I lock myself in the bathroom and I’m weeping. There’s 25 people in the house, and only one bathroom downstairs. My mom is at the door. I think she’s going to comfort me. She throws me in the shower with cold water and says “ I rebuke you Satan, in Jesus’s name” over and over. A month after that I attempt suicide.

When I look back at this memory, I need to honor that I was hoping controlling my weight would give me the ability to control my life. My life was uncontrollable back then, the conditions were unlivable. But my life is really nice now. I also need to forgive my mom for being inept in situations like this. 

Dear Weight Loss, the second good memory I have with you is five years later. A friend’s girlfriend goes to the same guy that did my tattoo and they talk about me. She says they refer to me as “thin, like VERY thin”. I only ever see myself as fat, even though the combination of full on bulimia and coke has dropped me down to 105 lbs on my 5’6” frame. I hate myself, basically. So it doesn’t matter what I look like. Tattoos help, because I feel like they make me look strong. I don’t consider myself strong, because I feel so bad all the time.

When I look back on this moment, I realize they were probably not talking about my thinness like it was a good thing. It’s obviously not natural to me, and I’m obviously not happy.

Dear Weight loss, the next low point that comes to mind is being called out for bulimia by the parents I nanny for in St. Barths. This is the first time I’ve ever been in the double digits, so when I had to decide if I’d pack a sweater or pack my scale, I chose the scale. I keep it hidden in my room. I tell the mom I need to go to the bathroom and she says “Okay, but no throwing up.”. As if it’s that simple. I feel so shamed, so miserable and alone. I throw my scale off the cliff and miss it instantly. When we get back to New York, I get fired. She also contacts my mom behind my back who I’ve been no contact with since my suicide attempt and tells her she needs to come save her 17 year old daughter. I meet my mom in Florida for therapy. My mom sits with me in the therapists office and says she has no idea why I’m like this, that I grew up in a good home. I’m insulted. She MADE me this way. The cult made me this way.  In every therapist’s office for my whole life, I always feel like it’s no mystery why I’m here. I’ve had a fucked up life. I ask my brother for help when I get home. He tells me that eating disorders are rich white girl problems. Considering we both come from extreme poverty, this is his biggest insult next to saying I’m just like mom.

Dear Weight Loss, there’s only two more ups and two more downs I need to do to close up our relationship, and I already see that the amount of times I’ve been able to “succeed” were actually extreme low points in my life. It seems pretty obvious that the weight loss and happiness don’t come as a set for me.

My next good memory with you is losing a bunch of weight from a parasite in Austin, but a memory that does stick out for me before that, is when I’m doing a lot of Ashtanga yoga and not really fussing too much about food. I have a food blog and am living alone for the first time, so everything I eat is a photoshoot. I’m eating whatever I want, as long as it’s vegetarian. Having one simple restriction gives me a lot of personal freedom. I’m working out a lot, taking a lot of walks. I get outside every day but I’m not doing gnarly workouts. Long, mission-driven walks, and about 30 minutes of yoga every day. I’m about 128 lbs and I feel good about myself. Brian tells me one time that my stomach is so flat and he loves that about me. I know he usually prefers thicker women, so I’m flattered and I do feel “hot enough”. At this stage in my recovery I’m about two years out from active bulimia. Even though it felt great to be so thin so easily from a parasite, that weight came right on back. When I wasn’t fussing about food too much, I felt like I was finally stable and not fluctuating. Any time I’ve lost a lot of weight it always comes back. I also love long, mission-based walks. Like not a random hike in the woods “being present”. I like having a mission: I’ll walk to whole foods and get a ______. I’ll climb to the top of that and smoke a _______.  Listening to a podcast on the way.

Dear weight loss, the last bad memory I’m really surprised I’m categorizing it this way. It’s when I got a parasite. I had such bad diarrhea, didn’t eat anything but yogurt and coffee and smoke weed for like, a whole month and didn’t even notice because I was just so stoked to be thin. I was so proud of myself, so into myself, and it wasn’t even me. I was just sick. The tough thing is that as I started to gain it all back I was trying so hard to stay in those conditions. I wish I could just say “dieting isn’t for me” and it never has been. 

When I look back on this history with food, dieting really isn’t for me. It never has been something I could do or have done successfully. Changing my lifestyle or getting sick are the only things that ever impacted my weight.

Dear weight loss I only have to say a few more things before we can say goodbye to this painful relationship that’s held me prisoner for so long.

If I had known that our painful relationship would really be ending, here, today (I wasn’t expecting that, I’m almost afraid to finish now)y my u I’ll 72,73?6:3!) there’s definitely at least one thing I had done differently, and that would be, honestly, to do this when I feel like I have achieved the perfect weight. To be “all done” with weight loss because I achieved and held my goal. And what is the perfect weight? A body I love with minimal effort devoted to it? Less belly fat? Bigger boobs? Bigger ass?  I don’t have answers for this, I guess there was never a clear definition of what perfect weight is before. Now for me the perfect weight is feeling like I absolutely love my body and I don’t think about food at all.

And weight loss, if I had known we would actually be closing up here, today, there’s at least one thing I wish I had done better and that is sticking to consecutive eating (human design) , because that’s still something I really want to do, I just can’t do it when it’s in the diet category for me. I literally cannot DIET I can only LIVE. it’s live or diet lol.

And weight loss, if I had known that we were really closing up here, there’s at least one thing I wish I had done more and that is APPRECIATE THE FACT THAT I HAVE NEVER BEEN FAT. I WAS SPLITTING HAIRS OVER POUNDS NO ONE WOULD EVEN NOTICE BUT ME. it’s been this nonstop game of if I lose weight I’ll be hotter and have more opportunities. I’m ready now.

Weight Loss, I’m ready to release this story for at least one year. If I feel like I need to pick this back up again, I know where to find you. 

When I say Goodbye Weight Loss, it will be official, I’m closing up this chapter. All the pain connected to us will be shifted and I will be shifted. I’m ready.

Goodbye Weight Loss, I’m SO over this.