I have dieted many, many times in many, many different ways. All of those times, I suffered. I drank shakes, counted points, ate prepackaged meals, met with nutritionists, forced myself to follow various regimens, and above all, I suffered. Yes, I lost weight on those diets, but I also felt deprived and hungry. I ached for the forbidden foods. I could not wait to be done with the diet so I could go back to my old ways.

This time, though, I am not dieting. I have made drastic changes to the foods I eat: no refined sugar in 2019; no wheat or dairy for the foreseeable future. But I have made those changes not because an expert told me to but because that is what I want.

I have lost over forty pounds, and I did not suffer over a single one of those pounds. I lost every one of those pounds because I was doing the things I wanted to do.

(I feel like I need to blog about my weight loss adventures to sort out the ideas in my head. I know it’s important to understand what I’m doing to make these changes on a permanent mind-soul-body level. But I have so much to say, that it’s infuriating to try to distill it in a single blog post. Still, my intuition says I need to slowly spin out my thoughts over blog posts and maybe eventually, I’ll know what I need to say in a book. In the meantime, I wish I could transfer everything I have learned into your mind, but I guess that’s the point. We are supposed to go on our own personal journeys and figure things out in our own way. I can share what I have learned, but I can’t get in your head and reset all your neural pathways. You have to do that for yourself.)

(Sorry. I’m rambling.)

(I love rambling!)

As I was saying: I have not suffered over the past forty pounds and I do not anticipate any suffering over the next sixty.

Why? Pain and pleasure.

I was starting to figure this out on my own last year when I eliminated refined sugar from my diet for one hour and managed to extend that hour again and again until I was sugar-free for nearly three months. I experienced the best menstrual cycles of my life. I realized that sugar was causing me the pain of awful PMS; and that living without sugar was giving me the pleasure of easy menstrual cycles. When I let myself eat sugar over the Christmas holidays, I experienced vile, miserable PMS and this cemented my new neural pathway: refined sugar = Painful PMS; no refined sugar = Pleasant Menstrual Cycles.

That’s why I decided to abstain from refined sugar for 2019. I wanted to give myself the gift of a year without PMS. I want to see just how healthy I can feel if I let my body truly reboot and rebuild without refined sugar.

Then I started reading Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within. Robbins writes a lot about pain and pleasure. Humans are motivated to do things that increase pleasure and avoid things that cause pain. We are that simple. If we associate food with pleasure, then we are going to eat food, even if we eat too much and gain weight. But if we associate pain with overeating and pleasure with eating moderate amounts of healthy foods, then we can lose weight.

I’m not even halfway through Awaken the Giant Within. It’s a hefty tome (over 500 pages!). But the points that Robbins makes about pain vs. pleasure have really resonated with me and my recent experiences with refined sugar.

I think this is why I have enjoyed losing the past forty pounds. I have learned to associate weight loss with the immense pleasure of good health. Something has changed within me. I used to look at a cookie or carton of ice cream and anticipate enormous pleasure. Now, I see those same desserts and just think about pain and terrible PMS. I don’t want to experience insomnia or violent mood swings at the end of my menstrual cycle, so I now recoil when I encounter sweets.

The same thing is happening with exercise. I am walking and stretching every day. I am spending more time exercising than I ever have in my entire life. Why? Because I have associated exercise and stretching with so many pleasurable things: weight loss; better moods; and more vibrant energy. In the past, I thought that any time I spent exercising was time stolen from writing. This caused me pain. Now, I see how my creativity is enhanced by exercise. I have also associated exercise with the absence of pain. I used to think that exercise caused pain, but now I see that the more I walk and stretch, the better my muscles feel.

I am exercising more and eating better than I ever have in my entire life, and it feels easy because I associate these new habits with enormous pleasure. I am loving my life. I am not suffering.

At the beginning of 2018, I weighed in at 235 pounds. Given my height (5’5″) and body type, I should weigh closer to 135. That means that in order to get back to a healthy body, I have to lose 100 pounds. I lost the first 35 pounds in 2018, and I have already lost 4 more pounds in 2019. As of today, I have approximately 61 pounds to lose.

And I feel lucky.

In the not so distant past, I felt a lot of things about my weight – annoyance, disappointment, shame, despair- and none of those feelings were positive. Today, though, I have gotten to a place where I can look at the numbers on the scale and feel lucky.

I am overweight because I ate too many of the wrong things and did not exercise enough. But I knew what I was doing wrong and kept doing it anyway. I kept looking for a magic bullet. Maybe if I added cucumber to my water… or gave up carbs … or tried Zumba … but I could not find a magic bullet.

That’s because for me and my body, there is no magic bullet. I’m overweight because I eat too much and I eat too much because I am burying my issues. That’s it.

Now I am addressing my issues and lo, I have suddenly found that I actually want to give up sugar and take longer walks.

I’m not trying to gloss over my issues by calling them “issues.” I want to write about all of this. I wrote a memoir about postpartum depression. There’s a very strong possibility that before this weight loss adventure is over, I’ll write a memoir about losing 100 pounds. But I can’t begin to summarize my feelings, thoughts and ideas about my various issues in a single blog post. I’ll have to write another post. And another and another, until the weight has been lost and I have gotten a handle on taking care of my magnificent body. And then I’ll keep writing until I have feel I have written everything I need to write about my weight.

For now, I just want to say this: I feel lucky. I am overweight and it’s hard to ignore that reality when I look in the mirror. The weight is the physical manifestation of my emotional, spiritual and psychological issues. It serves as a reminder that I still have work to do.

I think many (if not most) (or all) of us have issues that need to be addressed. That’s part of the human experience. But we handle our issues in different ways. That’s why I feel lucky: because I have numbed my issues in a way that has become impossible to ignore. My body is there in the mirror, and I have felt the self-loathing, and I have heard the call to action to adventure.

But other people numb their issues in different ways. I’m sure you can think of a few (alcohol, cigarettes, sex, work) but I want to focus on food. There are people who use food to numb their issues but in ways that appear healthy. Just because a person has a beautiful body does not mean she has a good relationship with food. She might spend her entire day agonizing over her caloric intake. Or she might be this close to an eating disorder. The point is: my issues with food are easy to see because I am obviously overweight; but someone else’s issues with food might not be so easy to see because her body fits society’s beauty standards; and that is why I feel lucky.

I feel lucky that I am overweight.

I feel lucky that I can see that I am overweight because I have been numbing my feelings and avoiding my issues.

I feel lucky that I have made the connection between my weight-issues and soul-issues.

And I feel lucky that I can see that even though I have conquered postpartum depression, I still have work to do.