A Journey to Wholeness

Yesterday morning I heard a woman share her story of her journey to wholeness and healing. I don't remember her name, but I want to share a couple of things she said that got me to thinking.

First of all, this woman struggled for years with anorexia and eventually added bulimia to the mix. Her eating disorder almost killed her, but she shared that even during the time she was medically fragile due to her disorder, people would comment on how thin she was and asked for her secret. Thinness is so admired and desired in our culture that she found people envious of her even as she was in a battle for her life. This was a poignant reminder to me that this program, and my own weight loss journey, wasn't about getting thin - it was about getting healthy.

This program isn't about getting into an impossibly small size (although getting into a size 6 pant size and a size 4 dress seemed an impossible thing to me at the time I started) - it is about getting to and maintaining a healthy BMI. Especially for women, we have a tendency to get hung up on what size we wear and getting into a certain size can become our focus. If you are in the weight loss phase of this program right now (and I'm guessing that that applies to the vast majority of you), I really encourage you to get out a BMI chart and figure out where you need to be. In fact, I encourage you to go even further and figure out how healthy you are right now. One great assessment was put together by Medifast's medical director, Dr. Wayne Scott Andersen, and you can take this comprehensive assessment on line at his website, drwayneandersen.com (put in the www. before his name). If your score isn't exactly where you want it to be, that's OK because it will improve over time - your initial score is your starting point.

I said that the woman mentioned a couple of things that particularly impressed me. I've already shared the first, but here's the second. She shared that as she began to deal with her eating disorder addiction, other addictions soon took its place. She likened it to a carnival game where you hit one thing and something else pops up. I totally related to this!

For years I struggled with two huge issues: my compulsive, emotional eating was one issue. The other issue was compulsive shopping and spending. It would seem that when I was trying to bring one under control, the other would get even worse. If I was trying to curb my eating on the latest diet, my credit card took a hit. When I swore off going to the mall, my eating spun out of control. I knew both were issues for me, but I didn't realize at the time that they both had the same root. Until I was willing to deal with what was REALLY the issue, I turned to food or shopping, or sometimes food AND shopping, as a means of stuffing emotions I didn't want to deal with. The end result was obesity and debt, and a very unhappy and stressed-out woman who knew better but seemed incapable of permanently finding a solution to either issue.

I'm sharing this because this might resonate with some of you, too. Many of us with eating disorders have compulsive personalities and if we don't deal with the core issues, our compulsive behaviors will crop up in another area while we're on this program. (I've heard of more than one person who, post gastric bypass surgery, became an alcoholic - they could no longer compulsively eat, but they could drink.) This may not apply to individuals who went on Medifast to lose 20 or 30 pounds, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that if you have lots and lots of weight to lose (I needed to lose 126 pounds), you didn't get to your weight just because you enjoy a good meal. To get to a healthy weight and stay there, and to make sure that you don't end up dealing with another area of compulsion, it's important to do the hard work of figuring out and dealing with the issues that brought you here to begin with.

Because this blog is long, I'm not going to go into all that I learned on my journey, but I've blogged about it in the past if you want to dig through old blogs to read about it. Bottom line was that I DID address those issues and, more importantly, I finally understood in an entirely new way that stuff - food, shopping, etc. - couldn't meet the deep needs of my heart. An integral part of my own journey was significant spiritual growth as I learned to look to my Heavenly Father for those needs. He was faithful, as He promises He will be, and He brought healing and wholeness to me. I pray that you will allow healing and wholeness to flood through you, too!

So do you view this program as a diet or as the journey to wellness and health it's meant to be? If you embrace this as a journey to true health, you may well end up in a better place than you could have imagined. The choice is yours . . . choose wisely :-)