My 600 Pound Life

For the past couple of weeks I've been watching TLC's "My 600 Pound Life", (airs on Tuesday nights).  Each episode follows the story of an individual over the course of a year (they all end up having gastric bypass surgery).  For each of them, their lives and their health have spun out of control due to their super-morbid obesity and it's painful to watch their struggle.This past Tuesday tonight's episode featured a woman from Chicago who was on oxygen and who hadn't left her house in two years. She talked about food and how it made her happy, even though it was clear that she was miserable and feeling hopeless.  How ironic to hear her talking about food making her happy when it was the very thing keeping her trapped!

Even though none of us were or are 600 pounds (thank the Lord!), how many times have we thought the same thing about food?  Even as we've watched our weight increase, even as we've perhaps begun to experience health issues due to our weight, even as we've shied away from activities and social events due to our weight - we've stuffed our faces and told ourselves that food makes us happy. It's easy to see the irony when a 600-lb. woman talks about food making her happy, but sometimes easy to dismiss that same thinking and behavior in ourselves. 

One of the things that's sobering for me to watch this program is knowing that, but for the grace of God, that could have been me. My highest weight was 268 and when I started on Take Shape for Life in June of 2007, I was on the fast-track to reach 300 pounds and beyond. I think I understand what happens to allow someone to reach 600 pounds - I believe they completely lose hope and get lost in their obesity and food addiction and then the food addiction takes over. It's scary because I know what a stronghold my food addiction had on me and I know at one point how very hopeless and out-of-control I felt.

I am so thankful to God for leading me to this program when He did . . . I didn't even realize how ready I was to change my life until I started on program and began to see real results. Yes, my body changed dramatically as I lost 126 pounds in less than a year, but what changed even more dramatically was my relationship with food. I learned to stop running to food, stopped expecting food to fix my stress, my boredom, and to be my comfort. As I did that, as I turned to the true Source of my comfort - my Heavenly Father - I realized that food never really comforted me, it never fixed anything. That realization brought tremendous freedom and it's a freedom I live in today as I approach six years since I reached my weight loss goal.

For so many of the individuals on "My 600 Pound Life," their struggle with emotional eating continues after their weight loss surgery because the surgery could only address their physical hunger, not their emotional hunger.  For those of us here, we have the same challenge. If we don't address our emotional hunger, long-term success will be a challenge. 

For some, it may be as simple as learning to replace old, unhealthy habits with newer, healthy habits. For others, embracing new, healthy habits will be important, but some of those emotional hunger issues may remain.  One book I've found incredibly helpful for me and a number of my clients is "Made to Crave" by Lysa TerKeurst. Lysa is a recovering emotional eater and is very transparent in sharing her own struggles as well as how she is overcoming her food addiction. I highly recommend this to anyone who, like me, struggles with emotional eating.

Getting healthy, physically and emotionally, is a journey and involves making small choices that support our long-term goal every day . . . choose wisely :-)