The Lord has always blessed me with the knowledge that the answer to my weight issues are not fad, lose weight quick diets. Every time I have ever gone on a diet, it was always a healthy eating or exercise plan. It was something that I had to put something in to in order to get something out of. I am a very finicky eater, so those diets that you have to eat specific things at specific meals never worked for me. First of all, they always have fish on them, and for those of you that know me, you know that I don’t do fish! So, from the very start, I would not be able to follow those plans. I would always look for a plan that I had control over what I ate. I had friends and family members that gave me plans for diets like the grapefruit diet, or the cabbage soup diet, or the rice diet. I always knew that these types of diets were not good for the body, so I never even attempted them.
When I go to see my doctor, undoubtedly they ask me if I have ever considered having a gastric bypass, or lap band surgery. Of course, I always say: “No I haven’t.” Don’t get me wrong, some people absolutely need to have this type of drastic intervention done or they will die, but I do not feel that I fall into that category. I know that I have the ability to change my diet, and I am still fairly healthy, so doing something that drastic has never crossed my mind. I know quite a few people that had gastric bypass done, and most of them have gained most of their weight back.
I have book shelves full of health, diet and cook books. I love learning about health. In another life, I would probably be a nutritionist or a dietitian. Who knows, maybe that will still happen. Anyway, I have always been fascinated by medical and health topics. Through avid reading of these topics, I have learned a lot about health, and I guess it is because of the reading and studying of these topics, I learned that these lose weight quick, and extreme diets were not good for you, so I never did them.
What I have come to realize is that if you are struggling with an issue in your life, not just weight, any issue, you will not be able to overcome it without acknowledging the problem, and proper analysis of the origin of that problem, and an in-depth look at how that problem has and is affecting your life. Just stopping a behavior is not good enough. It will come back if you don’t deal with it properly. That is exactly what has happened to me over the years. I could not maintain any of the diets/plans that I had started because I had never come to terms with the emotions that were linked to the eating. I had to go to that dark place within me that I avoided my whole life and take a good look at myself and what I had been doing to myself all of these years. I had to learn that I was hurt badly by people very close to me, and to protect myself from the emotional pain from those situations, I turned to food for comfort, control and perceived safety. The big problem with that is that the thing that I thought was protecting me and giving me comfort is actually killing me, slowly but surely.
In order to start healing from our eating issues, we have to face the problem head on. We have to take back the power that food has usurped over us. The food is not in control!!! We are in control of the food. Until that concept is learned, success is difficult. This is part of the reason that fad diets don’t work. They are an attempted physical remedy to a deep down emotional problem. DIETS ONLY ADDRESS THE PHYSICAL ASPECT OF EATING. THEY DO NOT ADDRESS THE EMOTIONAL OR SPIRITUAL ASPECT OF THE PERSON. I believe that many people hold on to their weight because of an emotional or spiritual deficiency in their lives. Yes, there are many people out there that have some very serious medical issues that cause them to gain weight, or make it very difficult to lose it, but even with this group of people, many of them suffer from the same emotional and spiritual deficiencies.
It is very interesting that the first three letters of the word diet is die. So, let’s stop dieting, and let’s start living. As a matter of fact, let’s eat to live.
Rechel