Grace Engaged My Vanity for the Sake of My Soul
Trying so hard to fix myself, I got more stuck every time I tried. My trouble with weight brought me to my knees. From somewhere inside, came a desire and a commitment that I later realized was the beginning of my last weight loss program. It was this: I made an innocent but sincere commitment to understanding the truth about my issues with food and weight. Whatever it took. No matter what.
At the time I had no idea how important it was. Now I see Grace engaged my vanity for the sake of my soul. Then I thought if I just work at hard figuring this out I’ll be thin in a year and live happily ever after. That fantasy is not what happened at all – not even close – but it gave me the energy I needed to engage in what felt like an impossible, uphill battle. Even though I wanted to lose weight, and a lot of it, somehow, all of a sudden the truth was even more important. Whatever the truth was, wherever it took me, I would go until I knew in every cell of my body what was really going on.
A skeptic about anything that smacked of the spiritual, I’d have been appalled if I’d known at that time that I was really committing to discovering my true shape – the truth of who and what I am as a female human being. Back then I was pretty convinced that who I was wasn’t all that great, but losing weight would make me better.
After 15 years of dieting, I was coming to terms with the fact that maybe it wasn’t about finding the right diet. From reading Geneen Roth’s Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating, I knew emotions played a part in my behavior with food. My intellectual prowess, which I had relied on to be successful in other areas, wasn’t enough to change my predicament with weight. The only thing I knew for sure was that I did not understand enough to lose weight for good and I deeply wanted to – more than anything.
My commitment to truth came from a much deeper place than my usual awareness – a place that was beckoning me to embody the beauty, love, brilliance, strength, humor, power, and aliveness that is our very nature. But I didn’t know all that. I knew that I was fat, frustrated, and feisty so at the same time I made my commitment to the truth, I started a liquid protein fast at a renowned obesity research program at a major university.
The fast was the perfect choice for me. I genuinely felt if I had to eat something I didn’t like the taste of – like healthy food – I’d rather not eat anything at all. A model patient, I never ate a bite of food, and lost 130 pounds in 10 months. I was even in a television production as one of the program’s success stories.
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