I no longer remem­ber the point at which I sim­ply gave up. But I know it hap­pened. My weight crept up and up and up as the years rolled by. Sure, I suc­cess­fully dieted — numer­ous times. But I know now that was the prob­lem: I dieted. And at some point, every diet ended and I reverted to my old habits. Each time, the weight I lost came back — and then some.

Dur­ing one of those pre­vi­ous diets, I launched a weight loss blog, deter­mined to write about every­thing I had learned. I was con­vinced that I had over­come my weight issues once and for all. I also thought that writ­ing about what worked for me would keep me hon­est and account­able … surely the weight would stay off.

Sadly, the result was the same. And since few peo­ple read my posts and even fewer expressed any inter­est in my planned read-along and dis­cus­sion of Fat is a Fem­i­nist Issue, the book I still con­sider a must-read for any woman strug­gling with her weight, I aban­doned the blog, as well as my new-found out­look. Once again, the pounds piled on …

In Jan­u­ary 2011, I learned about Pacific Med­ical Weight Loss. As I read the pro­gram descrip­tion, I began to feel some­thing I had not felt vis a vis my weight prob­lem in years: hope. Actu­ally, the pro­gram sounded too good to be true, and I had to remind myself that there is no panacea, no magic, no fool­proof quick-fix. Still, I deter­mined to inves­ti­gate whether I was a can­di­date for the pro­gram and, if so, give it an hon­est effort.

I began the pro­gram on June 11, 2011. Five months later, on Novem­ber 11, 2011, my faith­ful, sup­port­ive friends joined me in cel­e­brat­ing the fact that I had lost 100 pounds. By the time I boarded a plane bound for Maui on July 11, 2012 — accom­pa­nied by three of those friends — I had lost a total of 177 pounds, grad­u­ated from the weight loss pro­gram, and entered into the main­te­nance phase of my jour­ney. My Hawai­ian vaca­tion was the reward I promised myself if I succeeded.

Sev­eral friends encour­aged me to blog about my par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pro­gram, urg­ing me to detail my weight loss as it occurred. I stead­fastly declined, largely because of my fear that I would fail in a very pub­lic and humil­i­at­ing man­ner. Also, I asked myself if the world really needed another weight loss blog and still resound­ingly believe it does not, espe­cially if the empha­sis is on cut­ting calo­ries and shar­ing recipes.

Most impor­tantly, I did not and still do not think peo­ple want to know the ugly truths about weight loss that I would be required to share if I were to pen a fully can­did account of the emo­tional and psy­cho­log­i­cal explo­rations and analy­sis nec­es­sary to achieve per­ma­nent — mean­ing, life-long — weight man­age­ment success.

Because the real­ity is that until you are will­ing to engage in the unspar­ingly dif­fi­cult exam­i­na­tion of the rea­sons why you became an emo­tional eater in the first place, as well as the myr­iad ways in which being over­weight has served you — yes, served you — over the years, the weight will always come back. Dig­ging that deep inside your­self for answers and being will­ing to develop a new rela­tion­ship with food, your body, your world around you, and every­one — lit­er­ally — in your life is exceed­ingly dif­fi­cult, as well as an unend­ing process. The Pacific Med­ical Weight Loss pro­gram pro­vides the nec­es­sary tools, while Dr. Daren Pri­mack and his won­der­ful staff facil­i­tate the process, but it is soul-rending, unre­lent­ing, and lonely work. No one can do it for you. You must do it for your­self and by your­self. It is a jour­ney you must make utterly alone, even though an uncon­di­tion­ally sup­port­ive net­work of loved ones is, along with pro­fes­sional assis­tance and guid­ance, manda­tory, in my opin­ion. (It is also crit­i­cal that you dis­as­so­ci­ate from any­one who will sab­o­tage, no mat­ter how unin­ten­tion­ally, your efforts, even though rec­og­niz­ing and part­ing with such peo­ple can be gut-wrenchingly painful.)

Pacific Med­ical Weight Loss gave me back my health, con­fi­dence, and the abil­ity to enjoy many activ­i­ties. Every day is gift — a joy­ous oppor­tu­nity to cel­e­brate and learn still more about how my weight got so out of con­trol, why I gave up on myself, and how I can ensure that I never feel that hope­less again. Each morn­ing the chal­lenge of main­tain­ing my suc­cess begins anew, and I am at peace with the knowl­edge that will be the case for the rest of my life. I know how easy it would be to slip back into old habits, resum­ing the emo­tional eat­ing that repeat­edly sab­o­taged my prior, short-lived weight loss suc­cesses, and over­shad­owed each and every one of my numer­ous other achieve­ments. But I am con­fi­dent that will never happen.

That’a the plain, rather ugly truth. Frankly, I don’t think it makes for com­pelling read­ing, nor do I believe there is much of an audi­ence for the details. Most peo­ple want to take a pill, spritz some liq­uid elixir on their food, or think about the prob­lem another day because, after all, that pint of ice cream in the freezer is beck­on­ing them … It is axiomatic that change is never easy. In the case of achiev­ing and main­tain­ing life­long weight loss, it is espe­cially dif­fi­cult — and not spec­tac­u­larly inter­est­ing. But the change is totally worth the effort because — take it from one who knows — there is no food that tastes as good as being thin feels!

{ Comments on this entry are closed }