A client recently asked me to put together a program about weight loss. I had told her that 26 years ago I had let go of 80 pounds and kept it off. Because her Fortune 500 company got requests from their employees about this topic all the time, I agreed. It was the beginning of a very important journey.
First of all, language is so important. The huge diet industry is $61 billion strong in America. I had spent much of my life up to my early thirties gaining and losing hundreds if not thousands of pounds. Like everyone else, my brain used the same language- lose the weight. What happens when you lose your keys, your purse, your wallet? The subconscious, which is a dutiful servant, sends its bloodhound out to find it, and it always does. With weight, not only does it find what you lost, but inevitably a few, or many, pounds more. Mission accomplished. Until the language changed, the cycle never changed. When I released it, it started to go permanently.
As a compulsive eater, like many others in America, my habits derived from the conversation that began in early childhood. As Geneen Roth writes about in Women, Food and God, a Voice (a parent, an authority figure) tells you that you’re subhuman, or worse. And you adopt that Voice as adult. Because it’s painful, you want to dial it down, and to do so, you eat. A lot. Or you develop a compulsive habit.
It’s not about the weight, it was never about the weight. Fact is, you can diet yourself down to 99 pounds and the Voice is still there.
My process was much like the story of Monsters Inc., where the characters Mike and Sully end up helping the human child Boo deal with her scary monster Randall. Boo vanquishes her fear, and they all learn that her laughter is a much more potent power source than screams.
A good comedian takes material from his own life- tragedy+ time=comedy. Like Boo, it was taking what was once scary and awful and seeing it in a completely different light. In my case I asked what Robin Williams would do with this situation. In most cases I nearly fell on the floor. With laughter came healing- and the ability to redirect that powerful energy around food into positive projects.
It’s not about the weight. It never was about the weight. It’s about being able to face the fears that we all have and say to them, “Kitty!”