My Blog

I have been a dieter all my life…since I could remember.  My mother struggled with her weight and as early as I can remember, there I was sitting in the car in the dark on some busy street in Salem, MA while my mother and my auntie made their bi-weekly visits to the diet doctor.  Those visits produced little lasting weight loss and quickly came under fire as “diet doctors” in those days were simply dispensing amphetamines.  Luckily, my mother suffered no lasting effects and quickly abandoned that. 

Still, I grew up with Tops, Weight Watchers and Diet Workshop.  As my own body began its expansion, I became a fervent dieter.  Success was very difficult and by the time I was 17, I had spent nearly 1 1/2 years on diet workshop and increasingly needed to restrict what I ate to lose weight.  In order to achieve my weight loss of 50 lbs, I needed to get down to about 800 calories a day.  Breakfast and lunch were cantaloupe and cottage cheese.  As soon as I tried to eat anything else, the fat raced back on me.  It perplexed and depressed me.   I exercised harder and ate very little.  For years, I tripped from one doctor to another begging to  understand how 1200-1300 calories a day was making me fat.  They never believed me.  I still remember Dr. Olivero.  So nice, he listened patiently and followed me out to the waiting room.  He whispered to me…”The only reason people gain weight, is that the eat too much.”  What a jerk!  I was crushed.  He hadn’t been listening, just judging based on his experience.  I wonder how he would have liked always watching, weighting and calculating your food intake and having a runaway body that wanted only to be fat.  Trouble is, you live in that body and know all too well the shame and judgement inflicted on those who do not comply with society’s ideals.  I have spent thousands of dollars and wasted a life trying to be something my body refuses to let me be.  I exercise regularly, pump loads of vitamins and still, the pounds keep coming.

Recently, I came across Jon Gabriel’s brilliant work and thought I had found an answer, but I have yet to get the success that others have.  If the truth be told, I do believe that my fat is a “thicker skin” ,designed by some part of me that is woefully misguided my protective, to keep me safe from danger, growth that might trigger danger, or fear.  I am a highly sensitive person and I do have to wonder if that is the trigger.  My mother, my brother and myself, the family members thusly afflicted, would all fall into that category. 
Could it really be that some part of ourselves views fat as protection?  Jon Gabriel says yes.  I would like to believe that and get this blubber off me, but so far, no luck.  I am currently attempting to increase my protein levels.  It is now 3pm.  Today, I have eaten a protein shake and a few nuts along with two cups of coffee.  I don’t get it….

Am I just a freak?  Or, are there others out there like me and just how will we win this struggle.  Is it really with ourselves.  Is there some unconscious part of us that starved before or perceives a starvation state and thus will not burn the fat off?  It does seem that way.  I just have not had any luck accessing me unconscious to get it to understand what I want it to do “Burn, baby, burn!  I have had enough of being fat…..