Letters to the Editor
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Bulimic and back...(corrected typo..sorry!)
What's often missing from these pieces on weight/health/women is any real sense of what it means to be healthy & happy as a human in our insane looks-are-collateral culture. There are real physical tsunamis out there -- Diabetes 1 and (for me) bulimia -- but so much of the actual cure lies outside of the physical issue itself.
When I was 16, my family uprooted from a safe suburbia to the heart of NYC during the 1977 Black Out/son of Sam mania. Out of fear, I refused to go out of the apartment and made excuses to stay home. Staying home, the only comfort food around was spaghetti, lots of butter. I gained about 50 pounds in under three months. In a panic, I discovered, after eating, I could throw up. The fear was never really addressed -- my family was too busy with other crisis; so the cycle began to spin out of control.
Compound this with "puberty" and trying to deal with the next phase of my life -- etc. etc. and, fast forward, at 29 I ended up in the emergency room with a sub arachnoid brain hemorrhage.
The years of throwing up had put so much pressure on my cranium, a blood vessel finally exploded, nearly killing me. The doctors said I was only one of the 5% who survive without life paralysis, if they survive at all.
What no one ever told me -- as a bulimic -- was the ways in which the behavior was both a self-protective act as well as self destructive. It was trying to fix the problem of stuffing in comfort foods (still letting myself zone out to deal with unresolved fears) and not allow my body to balloon up to another 50 pounds. In other words, I was trying to "NOT have my cake and eat it too."
I had to (on my own) determine how to put my own health above and beyond anything else. I forced myself to go to dance classes where I had to deal with being "in" my own body and eventually found a balance where the amount of energy I put out equaled what I was taking in. After years of practice, I overcame both the bulimia and the fears that initiated the behavior in the first place.
The causes are so much more the point than the behavior -- in my case -- nobody really helped me to understand what I needed in order to feel good in my body. All of the issues had to be dealt with on my own. One by one. Nobody who has talked or written about eating disorders ever spoke to my need to understand my problem.
This article does much more for understanding the causes of needing to be thin than I've seen in ages. Good work.
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Healthy diet that WORKS
quit eating so much processed food.
After years of being overweight, I recently finally am mastering my diet. I got up this morning and had not only no belly but a nice shape. And I DESPISE exercise too, I do not do it, unless you call the occasional walk exercise.
The keys--
Have an apple in the morning-- scientists recently found out you eat 200 less calories a day as a result of eating an apple, thus you lose two pounds a month just from this one change.
Have some good organic yogurt in the morning, preferably with a squirt of Omega 3 flax seed oil. The yogurt biolife and the omega 3 reverse depression and make you all but euphoric-- you will also eat less.
Try to avoid restaurants or limit them to as little as possible, focusing on places with better food. What is better food? Eat ONLY organic for a week, then go to Chilis or Taco Bell. You will immediately feel the effects of eating JUNK. Remember this rotten, sick feeling, it will keep you skinny for life.
As for going to better food places-- I will have a salad once a week at least (since I hate salads), I will also go to Whole Foods or Central Market (in Texas) twice a week and eat ANYTHING I WANT there, I will have a loaded baked potato from a local bar-b-q place since it is tough to throw a lot of chemicals and junk into that kind of food. Search out similar foods that cannot have a lot of junk added to them-- avoiding inedible crap like corn syrup, or artifical things. Have good bar-b-q once a week, it is meat, it is therefore less likely to be stuffed with chemicals (though the hormones and antibiotics are not so good either). I love Thai food, so I hit the buffet once a week. I do eat a Big Mac and fries every few weeks, I have my occasional pizza, I have to have Chuy's Mexican Food Elvis Platter (Texas again) once every few weeks-- Ultimately, I do eat what I want, but in moderation, occasionally, as a treat, and from places that bother to use real ingredients that have not been chemicalized to death.
I do not eat at night much more than a latte or some nuts or corn chips (natural, not Doritos junk) or fruit (I like melted frozen berries or cherries), occasionally I indulge a whole quart of Ben & Jerry's, all 1200 calories
Avoid as much salt as possible, this gets MUCH easier when you avoid processed foods.
Avoid as much high fructose corn syrup as possible. It is POISON and breaks down the human body and makes us all fat since it cannot be metabolized properly and is therefore stored in our fat.
By all means, have wine, good chocolate, good steak, high quality candy, beer-- just not in excess.
Here is my dirty trick. I do something called the Shangri La Diet. Google it. It is very simple and seems to actually work once you master it. The theory is that putting calories into the body slowly without any flavor associated with it gives the body calories while also lowering your 'hungerstat'. Think of how skinny people seem when they come out of the hospital once they have been on a glucose drip for a while. This is such an easy diet, the inventor deserves a Nobel Prize. Get a cup of water, mix in 10-15 teaspoons sugar-- not artificial sweetener, it has to be flavorless and have calories (sweet is not interpreted as a flavor by the body apparently). If you think 15 teaspoons of sugar is excessive, ONE CAN OF SODA contains 13 teaspoons of sugar. NOW, sip the water occasionally, once every ten minutes take a sip, more often and your sugar high kicks in and makes you feel hungry. The key is to be slow. MAGICALLY, you will feel completely un-hungry the next morning AND much more relaxed because your body is no longer urging you on to constantly seek out more food. Cravings will all but disappear. YOUR hungerstat has gone down. NOW YOU WILL EAT LESS.
The other half of the Shangri La diet is that your body is no longer in 'starve' mode. It will begin to pull calories from your fat stores in its spare time, the way your body was meant to work until the demons running the food companies stuffed your food with chemicals designed to thwart your natural response to food. Really, these food companies ought to ALL be sued out of existence for what they are doing to you and me. (but where is justice on an evil planet?)
Oh, and make love to someone regularly. Find someone if you need to. If your significant other is not amenable, do what you have to [dump her ass-- (did I say that?)].
In conclusion, if you are diabetic, keep taking your insulin and follow what I have told you-- this is based on years of wisdom and trila and error.
The point of all this is to be moderate, work your way up to these things. Try a new item from the list above each month, then combine them in subsequent months til you have much of the whole diet going.
You will not miss anything since you still get to eat most of what you want-- nor will you ANYMORE be tired, depressed, anxious, agitated, sleepless, gassy, cranky, or bloated.
For men, there are other fringe benefits: all the shallow women out there (most of them are shallower than you or me-- you and I know we would gladly do a slightly fatty girl) will love you again, AND you will avoid future health problems caused by obesity. THAT ALONE is worth a million dollars.