{"id":97,"date":"2009-05-20T13:01:54","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T13:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/05\/making-peace-with-food-losing-weight-for-keeps.html"},"modified":"2009-05-20T13:01:54","modified_gmt":"2009-05-20T13:01:54","slug":"making-peace-with-food-losing-weight-for-keeps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/05\/making-peace-with-food-losing-weight-for-keeps.html","title":{"rendered":"Making Peace with Food & Losing Weight for Keeps"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Kirstie Ally interview on Oprah<\/span>\u00a0a couple of weeks ago nearly broke my heart. I identified — and not just because Kirstie and I are about the same age and we’re both Midwestern gals with a lot of spunk. Here’s what we really <\/span>have in common: food — too much of it, eaten for the wrong reasons — has made both of us feel sad, ashamed, and less magnificent than we are. For me, it hasn’t been like that for a really long time — twenty-five years. Kirstie, and millions of other Americans, are still in the thick of it. It’s not their fault. It’s an addiction. And there is a way out that starts on the inside.<\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/div>\n

\"LPD<\/span><\/p>\n

To that end: The Love-Powered Diet: Eating for Freedom, Health, and Joy<\/a>. <\/span>Brand new this week from Lantern Books, this is actually the third incarnation of a book I originally wrote in the early 90s. After two nice lives with two earlier publishers (and a mass market paperback for people in airports, like I am now), it’s back again to reach anybody who knows that the weight is only a symptom and one more diet is not going to fix this. Here’s an excerpt:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
“Patterns” <\/span>— from The Love-Powered Diet,<\/div>\n
\u00a0(c) 2009, Victoria Moran; from Lantern Books<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n

Patterns<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

You may eat for a fix in many of the ways that I did.
\nThe pattern may have started early in life or when you got married or after you
\nwere divorced. You may trace it to a pregnancy or the loss of someone you
\nloved, or it may have come upon you subtly and gradually. You may eat enormous
\nmeals or snack all day and not even remember when you had your last real
\nbreakfast, lunch, or dinner. You may only eat unreasonably when it comes to
\nchocolate or other sweets, or salty, crunchy snacks. Perhaps you eat sparingly
\naround other people and binge on the sly so no one can understand why you can’t
\nlose weight. (“She eats like a bird,” you’ve heard them say, “but she’s as big
\nas a house.”)<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, you may be enviably slim and only
\nyou know that you stay that way by throwing up every day or that your
\npreoccupation with fitness long ago shifted from a healthy habit to a
\ntyrannical compulsion. You could be eating quite reasonably and looking fine
\nbut you feel fat, berate yourself, and believe that if only you had a perfect
\nbody, you could live a perfect life. Maybe you’re so devastated by the
\naddiction that you avoid people as much as you can and hardly bother to wash
\nthe one outfit that you can still wear. More likely, though, you seem to
\nfunction flawlessly and keep on top of everything except for a “little problem
\nwith eating.” It’s also possible that you don’t have a serious problem with
\novereating or body image, but it’s been six months since your doctor told you
\nto make some changes in your food choices and you haven’t been able to do it to
\nsave your life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever category you belong in, you’ve probably said,
\n“I guess I just like food too much.” Of course you like food. Everybody does.
\nWe’re supposed to like it so much that we eat it as long as we live and live as
\nlong as we can. That’s nature’s way. It’s only when food seems to choose us
\ninstead of our choosing it that something is wrong. Any time we stuff
\nourselves, starve ourselves, or eat something we know to be harmful, we’re
\nmistreating ourselves in ways that we don’t deserve. When we do any of these
\nthings repeatedly, we establish a self-destructive and self-defeating pattern.
\nWhen we want to stop but can’t , we’re addicted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some would argue with that terminology. That would say
\nthat food is not universally addictive like heroin or even selectively
\naddictive like alcohol. They might argue that food can cause, at worst, a
\nbehavioral dependence. The phenomenon of craving, however, exists in food
\naddiction as in any other kind. It was powerful enough to send me out on foot
\nat midnight in search of caramels. I once had cravings so strong I took
\nleftover cake from an office wastebasket, brushed off the debris, and ate all
\nbut the cardboard plate. <\/span><\/p>\n

I also know that food can be the object of addiction
\nbecause I see others and myself\u00a0
\n<\/span>recovering by using the same principles of transformation that work for
\nother addictions. The only real difference in getting over a food addiction as
\nopposed to an addiction to alcohol or cocaine is one of abstemiousness versus
\nabstinence. Alcoholics stop drinking alcohol. Drug addicts stop using
\nmood-altering drugs. Food addicts can’t give up eating, but we can stop eating
\nfor a fix. Recovery is a delicate balance somewhere between the binge and the
\ndiet. That’s where we abandon the struggle and find sanity and peace of mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

The dictionary defines recovery as “to get back.” For
\nme it has meant getting back some surprising things–the years I lost to
\nbinge-eating, for instance. I spent so much of my earlier life in the disease
\nthat even though I’m well over fifty, I delight in looking and feeling younger
\nthan I am. I’m able to use the nutritional knowledge that I had in abundance
\n(food addicts love learning about food) but could never apply. I’ve even gotten
\nback the joy of eating. What I did before was drugging, and it was seldom
\npleasant to my stomach or my conscience. Eating is a pleasure today–that’s how
\nit should be. But it’s a peripheral pleasure, not the center of my world. And this
\nis not some new, post-diet euphoria: it’s been like this for me, one day
\nfollowing another, for nearly twenty-five years. <\/span><\/p>\n

I once hated the way that I ate but couldn’t change
\nit. The difference started when I gave up willpower for the power of love–love
\nfor myself and from myself, for others and from them, and grounded in the love
\nthat is also power. I’m comfortable calling that God. You can call it whatever
\nyou like. It has, by any name, provided an answer where there seemed to be
\nnone, and a life beyond the fix that’s filled with hope and humor and
\nexpectation. Tapping into this power is essential for addicts to live again,
\nand my hunch is that some of that same power is needed for almost anyone to
\nmake major lifestyle changes that last. If you do not believe in miracles, or
\nif you think that they don’t happen anymore, just come to my house for dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Radio interview on The Love-Powered Diet: yours truly with fab host of \u00a0the “Myth & Logic” show, Steve Murasso:\u00a0<\/span>http:\/\/www.talkshoe.com\/tc\/59174<\/p>\n<\/p>\n


<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Kirstie Ally interview on Oprah\u00a0a couple of weeks ago nearly broke my heart. I identified — and not just because Kirstie and I are about the same age and we’re both Midwestern gals with a lot of spunk. 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