Sorry in advance this will be long. It feels like I’ve turned a corner, and I want to get it down here.
I’m 65 years young. Put on my first diet at age 10. Fought this wt thing all my dang life.
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I tried to do everything “they” told me to do. Spent thousands over the years, including going into debt from a hospital based Dr/nutritionist program in the 80’s. Liquid fast of 400 calories a day. Ended up in hospital with mini-stroke and gallstone attack. You get the idea. Only reason I never did wt loss surgery was my insurance refused to cover it.
I believe “they” meant well. Most just gave some form of “eat less, move more” advice. But nothing worked for this food addict. I finally discovered, that FOR ME, I needed to let go of sugar. I went low carb and sugar free several years ago, which finally released me from the physical food cravings.
Yet… the emotional part was still there. A lifetime of using food to “mood shift”, to try to fix feelings. That ingrained habit persisted.
Over the years I’ve tried about every book/CD/video/course out there. Secular, Christian, psychology, behavior modification, power of positive thinking with all it’s various offshoots. Private counseling, various alternative herbal, alternative therapies. Investigated rational emotive therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and some I can’t even spell.
I still think there is merit in some of that. But…
I think now, I was wrong. For some issues, all that is great. For this food addict… it didn’t work. Believe me, I sincerely tried. I wasn’t playing around. I would plunge in and give it my all, with high hopes. Only to be painfully disappointed when I eventually crashed once more.
Through the private support and accountability group A Better Weigh, I was introduce to the little free e-book from Dr Marty Lerner. He has run an in-patient addiction recovery clinic for many years, and knows a few things. I’ve been studying his book for weeks. I had to be teachable, since a lot of what he says is the opposite of other stuff I’ve read! Yet as I read, then re-read, thought about it, prayed about it… I finally understood some of it.
Thank you, Dr Lerner, for showing me why I was wrong. Why I had the “cart before the horse”. I sincerely believed what “they” all said: Change your thinking, change your life. That was the whole premise of my former approach. I mean, all the big name writers/teachers said so, each in their own way.
Yet, for the food addict… there it is again. For the addict, Dr Lerner says that approach doesn’t work, in his years of experience.
And he explains why that is BACKWARDS for the addict. His approach finally, finally has penetrated this hard head. In a nutshell, he says to obtain recovery from an addiction (in my case, using food as my drug of choice) one must DO the right thing regardless of how one feels. In his words:
“Recovery is about transcending our need to fix how we feel and doing the next right thing no matter what we’re feeling.”
“The cart is placed before the horse when we get it backwards by insisting we fix our feelings first. Believing our feelings and thoughts must be changed before we’re able to change our behavior can be a very costly mistake.”
I still believe in the truths about the power of our words; of what we choose to consistently think upon… all that. But thanks to Dr Lerners explanations, I can see that for this food addict to obtained and KEEP recovery, the answer lies first in the DOING, regardless of feelings. AFTER recovery is when those therapies have merit. I had the cart before the horse.
Feeling very thankful today.
If you would like to read Dr Lerner’s e-book, he is generously offering it free online HERE. Just put in your first name and email addy, and they will send you the link. Truly, it’s life changing.
Still on the Journey,
Retta
