Totally Healthy “U” – Part 1 by Judi Finneran

“I would like everyone to introduce themselves and share something about their lives which has nothing to do with their weight. “ It was the first night of a new Optifast group and the leader wanted us to get to know each other better.
I am rarely at a loss for words and yet this request had me stumped. This was my 3rd time to rejoin the Optifast program. The first time I had been “perfect” and lost 150 pounds in 10 months without ever taking a bite of food. I had either been “on a diet” or “off my diet” every day for as long as I could remember.
What could I possibly have to share about myself which did not have to do with my weight? What kind of a question is that anyway? Everything in my life has to do with my weight. From how I feel about me when I wake up in the morning, to what I wear that day, to whether I am friendly and talk to people or hang out and hide out.
My seeming inability to achieve and maintain for any time, a normal healthy weight was the shadow on my soul. Obviously I was good at gaining weight as here I was back at Optifast after quickly regaining 30 of the 150 pounds and more appearing every day. I was also great at losing weight. If I count just the “big organized diets” I have been on, I know I have lost at least 1000 pounds as an adult. This does not take into account all of the little 3-day, 5-day etc. quickie diets I have tried.
10 Steps to Achieve and Maintain Body Weight Health
1. You must love yourself first.
2. You must give up dieting.
3. You must know your why.
4. You must live in each moment.
5. You must be willing to trust.
6. You must learn to ask for help.
7. You must learn to allow people to help you.
8. You must be truthful.
9. You must want to do it for you.
10. You must believe in yourself.
Step number one: You must love yourself first! This is the most important and the hardest of all ten steps. It is very hard to love yourself when you cannot even stand to look at yourself as you get out of the shower in the morning. When you constantly perceive yourself as a failure it is really hard to look in the mirror and say I love you to the person looking back at you. For me, it was often difficult just to make eye contact with myself. I was so ashamed of how I looked and how I felt. This truly is the first step. Learning to start with small doable steps is how to begin.
Each of us has at least one part of our body we like and maybe even more. Personally, I think I have great hair and people always tell me I have cute feet. Choosing to focus on a part of ourselves we are ok with is a beginning. Over the past 20 years the size of my clothes has fluctuated between a size 6 and a size 26-28. (No wonder my closet is so packed.) One thing has remained constant however. I have been having my hair cut and styled at the same place for those same 20 years. When I could not stand to think about or acknowledge any territory below my chin in the mirror, I could always count on people complimenting me on my hair.
In learning to love yourself first, find the place of your body you like and nurture it. I know when feeling awful about how much we weigh how easy it is to “let ourselves go.” This is a sign we don’t love ourselves and one which is easily recognizable. Choose your feature, be it your eyes, your skin, your hands, or your fingernails and start there.
In part two of this series I will talk about loving ourselves from the inside out. Step one “You must love yourself first!” is about more than how we look or how much we weigh. Excess weight is just a symptom of a lack of self-love. Totally Healthy U addresses the causes, not the symptoms.