Fat, Thin, In Between: My Personal Weight Loss Journey

Several of my clients have asked me to provide more details about my own weight loss journey.  Here it is:

I struggled with my eating for the major part of my life. At my top weight, I was 212 pounds. In 1991, I made an about face and joined Weight Watchers and lived what some may call a life of abstinence in terms of food. I followed the Weight Watchers plan and struggled to lose every pound. I constantly fought hunger, cravings and feelings of self loathing that always seemed to beckon to me to give up my efforts and enjoy yet another binge.

 In 1995, At about 15 pounds from goal, I declared my freedom and stated that I was done and ready

to get off of the merry go round of dieting and deprivation. Some unexpected things occurred in my life at that time.  Some of those included becoming pregnant a second time, moving out of the city, a sudden heart attack suffered by my grandmother, who I called "Nana", a decision made by my husband, Angel and I to care for Nana in our new home, feeling abandoned by my father and Nana, being left to run 4 corporations owning residential and commercial buildings in Manhattan with 110 tenants by myself, and being estranged from my beloved dad during those years. My plate was pretty full.

The stress of all that along with dealing with other issues around my  mother's bipolar disorder and several other painful life challenges gave me permission to eat like food was going out of style.  Naturally I regained 72 of those pounds back again.

Tony Robbins Personal Power Tapes: An Impetus For Change

In 2000, after four more years of feeling sorry for myself, I returned with my tail between my legs to another Weight Watchers in the upstate location where I lived.  I was newly motivated because a friend of mine and I had purchased a set of Tony Robbins Personal Power Tapes and I had made some major changes.  I got back my reason to care for myself again.  I wanted to give something back to my Nana.  I had decided that I would do an Avon Breast Cancer Walk in her honor.  It was a walk of 60 miles over the course of 3 days.  I trained for a year to prepare for it. That meant that I needed to get serious about changing my eating, hire a personal trainer and make major lifestyle changes.  I did it.  In October 2001, I crossed the Avon Finish Line and I dedicated that effort to my Nana.

My Nana: The Ultimate Juicy Woman Role Model

That represented a 50 pound loss over a couple of years of hard work.  I was tired. A few months later Nana passed away gently in her sleep.  On February 6, 2002,  I held her hand as she gracefully slipped away while I whispered The Lord's Prayer in her ear and led her through a guided visualization on the beach into the Maine sunset. I grieved her loss and then came to the realization that she is still with me, living and fueling my spirit to help others.  She has been and always will be my ultimate role model.  She embodies the meaning of The Juicy Woman and she is the source of all of my inspiration for my work.

Soon after, I realized at that point that I had worked very hard, was really enjoying my body, felt more fit than ever and was ready to take a break from the grind of losing weight. I did that successfully for 5 years.  I remained about 25 pounds from goal and was really satisified with my body.

EFT Takes Center Stage: Reframing My Sexual Abuse As A Gift

Then about a  year a half ago, I stopped going to meetings consistently.  Over the course of the next year I had gained back 10 pounds.  That is just about the time that I had discovered Emotional Freedom Technique.  Although I did not know that I could use it for Cravings I knew about it.  It was then that I was working on some major rebuilding of my life, my career and saying "Goodbye to the ties to the old victim, Andrea" It was EFT that I credit with being able to reframe my experience of adversity. 

Over the past year, I've come to realize that now I can actually look upon my experience with the abuse that I suffered as a golden gift.  It is my shining star that has made me the loving, sensitive person I am, able to reach out in compassion and love and help others.  That's why I'm here for you. I've still got a few of my battle scars left including my generous thighs, but as with everything else in life, all good things in their own time.

Like you, I have my ups and downs.  I've also felt resentment for myself for being weak, stupid and having no will power.  Now with EFT, I'm able to reframe that old critical self talk as well. 

Weight Loss With EFT:  Inspired by the work of Dr. Carol Look

In December of 2005, I had a personal breakthrough.  I discovered Dr. Carol Look's EFT CDs for Weight Loss.  That is the first time that I realized that EFT could be applied to weight loss.  I began to use it myself and then  I tested it with a core group of women for 5 weeks. 

In February, I began a series of live seminars and teleseminars showing women that they can get control of their cravings.  I bring candy and chips and goodies to my live seminars and we tap down the cravings.  Since then, I've realized that EFT works like magic on eating issues.

However all along I still relied loosely on using the basic principles of Weight Watchers to guide me along the path to losing the rest of the weight and get to my goal weight, about 20 more pounds.

I’ve since learned that there are better ways to lose weight and deal with my tendency to compulsive eating. As you can tell, the changes are pretty new for me and I'm still on the pioneer trail but I know without a doubt that it works from my experience and that of others.  With that awareness, I’ve decided to teach others what I know and share from my heart because I’ve spent years training and acquiring professional coaching certifications that have prepared me to share what I have learned with others.

Although the majority of my weight (50 pounds) was lost by using many NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) techniques that I learned from listening to the Tony Robbins Personal Power tapes, I know that there are easier ways to lose weight, deal with cravings, obsessive thoughts about food and other issues surrounding eating and body image.

Powerful Realizations: Why I Chose To Hold Onto My Weight

As I already mentioned, I’ve been in a holding pattern for over 6 years and decided that I wanted to take a break from actively seeking to lose weight.  I went down from a size 24 to a size 8.  The reason that I've maintained myself at that setpoint, hovering just above a goal weight was due to the fact that over the course of my life I have connected my weight with being safe and giving me a sense of power and security.

For years, I felt that in order to be taken seriously, especially in the male dominated world of Manhattan Real Estate, I needed to be a large woman.  I now recognize that there were many ties to my old fears and haunts regarding the sexual abuse that I endured as a child at the hands of my step father and several other nameless, faceless men, yet now I know that with the tool of Emotional Freedom Technique and all of the gifts that I have been given with my discoveries and new learnings, I am ready to let go and conquer those last few pounds and allow myself to enjoy the freedom of getting down to my goal weight in my own time in my own way.

Introduction To Intuitive Eating: Ready To Listen To My Body

This is the reason that I advocate that women find their own plan in terms of eating.  I personally refuse to live by the rules of others any longer telling me what is right or wrong for my body.  I recognize that my body has it's own wisdom and that has taken me years to understand and accept. I have Weight Watchers to thank for that powerful realization. I've spent too many years looking to others to rescue me, give me validation and say that I was, "Ok" each week with a weekly weight loss or a shaking of the head and biting down of the lip indicating that I was not doing too well if I had gained weight or stayed the same.

I don't mean to infer that is the same for everyone on any weight loss plan, that was my experience due to much of my conditioning from my childhood.  People pleasing has always been a big issue for me.  Being a good girl is a high priority in my life and living by the rules is directly tied up with my feelings of personal value, integrity and sense of self.  My time with Weight Watchers really taught me so much about myself.  I've since moved forward to something else that I find is now right for me at 43 years on along this path.

For the past 6 months, I’ve been using EFT to control my cravings and sharing that information with my clients. Today instead of following an actual weight loss plan like Weight Watchers or any other diet, I check in with my body, listen to what it needs and eat that.  When in Weight Watchers, there were so many foods that I considered taboo because they were so high in calorie or points values.  I would never have eaten anything like a grilled cheese sandwich, tuna melt, ravioli or any other average type of food that I loved for that very reason. I was terrified that, once started, I would never be able to stop eating the food until recently. Today I can eat those foods and many others because I can feel satisfied with eating much less. More importantly, I know how to disconnect the emotional charge from the food so that it does not hold control over me any longer.  Nothing tastes better than that.

Trusting Myself With A Loaded Gun:  Carrying Chocolate Around With Me

Incidentally, if one day we meet on the street and you ask me if I have a piece of chocolate in my bag, I'll most likely pull out a bar and offer you a piece.  I've realized that by carrying it with me, the cravings for it are gone. Today I can stop eating before I am full, eat small amounts of food and be satisfied and have a great deal more control than I ever had relative to any food. I'm still dealing with issues around body image.  I suppose that will take a bit longer to set in my brain.  Although I am a sliver of what I used to be, in my mind's eye, I often still see myself at 212 pounds. EFT helps alter that more and more.

Tap Before Hunger Strikes for Maximum Control

I have strategies that work that I share with my clients and friends. The most effective for me is that as long as I tap or even imagine tapping prior to feeling hunger, I will make choices that are healthy and nutritious.  I will actually crave foods like asparagus and spinach, salads, fish and meat.  That is how I am eating and losing the rest of my weight, slowly and surely.  I realize that there are faster ways to lose weight but that is not my interest.  I've gone the weight loss, deprivation route and have personally found it to be an exercise in pure misery for me.

My exercise regimen has been through many major transformations as well.  Due to several injuries in my kickboxing classes including breaking my elbow, falling, pulling muscles, torn ligaments and twisting an ankle at the gym, I am not able to sustain the same degree of activity that I once enjoyed.  I have been doing more walking and other lighter activities and slowly working to rebuild the strength in all those muscles. I typically use EFT for pain relief or muscle soreness or to increase range of motion.

Overall I'm realizing that this is a process.  I expect that my life will be long and lovely, just like my Nana's, especially now that I have come to grips with my body and made friends with it.  It has taken many years to do so and I credit EFT with being responsible for much of the insight that went into that personal transformation.

Freedom At Your Fingertips: EFT Clears the Path of the Old Hurts

My gift to you, dear friend is to teach you and other women like you that you don't have to do it alone.  You don't have to rely on others to get relief from your haunts and hurts.  The answer is literally at your fingertips and that is what I am here to show you.  As you continue to use tapping for yourself, you will uncover some things that need to be released.  Those are the saboteurs that keep  you at arms' distance from your goals and dreams.  I urge you to continue to use this incredible tool of Emotional Freedom Technique and release the junk that clogs up your life.  By doing so, on a maintenance basis, you will feel more joy in your heart and live with more love and freedom each day. That has been my experience and I've seen that in the lives of my clients and my colleagues who also use EFT as a personal stress relief technique.  In my opinion, there truly is nothing like it.

Join My Free Juicy Woman Fabulous, Fit and Free Call

I welcome you to join my next Free Juicy Woman Fabulous, Fit and Free Call.   We'll be talking about changing focus and seeing adversity as opportunity.

Embrace the Present: What's Wonderful About this Moment? No Matter How Cruddy It Looks

I hope that you can join the call and let me show you how to make Emotional Freedom Technique a special  part of your life.  I'm certain that it will have a profound influence on your life and guide you along a fulfilling path as it has done for me.  I wish you Godspeed.

Whew! Enough about me.  Tell me about you.  Please leave a comment and share your journey with me and the other readers. We can all learn so much from each other.  Don't even get me started on the Power of Collaboration.  I'll go into that another time. For now, I'll send you off with a big old virtual bear hug.  You go, girl!

 

 

Comments

[Christine King]

Andrea:

You are truly an inspiration. Your story is so powerful. I'm sure that many, many women can easiy resonate with your experiences.

I love the relationship you now have with food and exercise. It is realistic, non-confining, and safe. There is no reason why any person cannot have a food they love, in moderation. And there is no reason for anyone to go into a gym and beat themselves up so they cannot walk the next morning.

As you mention, weight loss and getting into shape is a process. What I like to share with my clients is the fact that they didn't gain the weight overnight, it happened over time. The same holds true with weight loss, it doesn't happen overnight, it's a process. Just as we patiently allow ourselves to gain weight, we must give the same patience to our weight loss efforts. That patience will pay off ten-fold, when we can walk into our closets and can fit into all of those beautiful outfits we haven't been able to wear in years.

Your sincere desire to help other women through their weight loss is crystal clear. Kudos to you and to those who allow you to help them.

Warmly,
Christine King
www.LifeOnlyBetter.com

[Mary Anne Fields]

What a personal and inspiring story you have to share, Andrea. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for telling it and for choosing to help others follow their own path. You obviously have a lot of wisdom and I'm sure much of it comes from having walked the walk. Thank you!