Mindset + Emotional Work x Discipline = Weight Loss Success
Having success at weight loss required me to listen to and work with the mental and emotional noise within me and then practice the art of loving discipline daily.
For most of my life, my approach to fitness was one of two things - Completely controlling or completely avoidant and numb.
When I was “on fire” I would become hyper-controlling and take my fitness to extremes. I took on every diet you can think of Whole 30, low calorie, low fat, low carb, Keto, Paleo, and even a potato diet…
When my extreme efforts would inevitably burn me out I would drive the metaphorical health and fitness train off the tracks, over the cliff, and set it on fire on the way down. I would completely go off the rails.
What I didn’t know at the time was I was completely numb to my feelings and avoiding my truth. Finding success in my health and fitness required me to shift my mindset and do some hard emotional work.
My journey to success with weight loss has been a four-step process.
Step #1 - Shift My Mindset
First and foremost I had to let go of my victim mindset.
I had to be willing to give up my story about why I was overweight. Giving up my story required me to start being brutally honest with myself about what I was avoiding when it came to my health and fitness. It also required receiving support, accountability, and honest feedback from other grounded Men in my life.
I had to be open-minded and set the following commitments:
I do not have all the answers, nor do I have to figure them out. I am open to feedback.
Every day is an experiment that informs my next steps, I do not seek perfection, only what works.
When I feel myself clinging to an outcome I commit to bringing awareness to the underlying desire that is causing my suffering.
Step # 2 - Emotional Work
Coming from an opened-minded mindset my next step was to begin the emotional work of surrendering to the truth that I was avoiding.
Truth #1 - I Protect Myself from Pain by Numbing Out with Food.
I developed a protective behavior of numbing out to pain with food at a young age when I experienced abuse and neglect at the hands of my Mom’s alcoholism.
I would dissociate from the pain inflicted on me and the craziness of my Mom’s drinking by sitting in front of the TV and eating.
These protective behaviors I learned in childhood stayed with me into adulthood.
There is a part of me that would love to believe I can just fix the way stress and emotional triggers make me want to eat. However, the truth is there will always be a part of me that wants to respond to overwhelm, chaos, and pain by numbing out with food.
Truth #2 - I Fix the Shame of Numbing Out Through Control and Extreme Behaviors.
It wasn’t long after I learned to numb out with food that I went from being a “skinny” kid to being a “fat” kid - And it didn’t take long after becoming a fat kid for me to experience social rejection and bullying.
I responded to this shame by going on my first diet when I was still in elementary school. I ran my first 10K the summer before the 5th grade.
Attempting to eat healthy and practice physical activity aren’t necessarily bad on their own. However, when they are performed out of self-hatred the intention behind them is destructive and can not be sustained.
As I got older I began to choose more and more extreme, unstainable diets.
When I was in the 8th grade I completed my first super-controlling diet. During the wrestling season, I dropped from the 165-pound weight class to the 135-pound weight class.
All of a sudden girls were interested in me and I got invited to parties. My 14-year-old self was overjoyed - but a much more insidious thing happened.
I made the mental connection that to receive attention and be liked I needed to be skinny.
Truth #3 - I Have a Pattern of Yo-Yoing Between Extremes.
By age 14 I had learned to use looking good and avoiding rejection as the motivation for my dieting and fitness efforts. I learned to bypass and avoid feelings of shame and self-hatred by being controlling.
I began to make unsustainable health choices.
The feelings of self-hatred were painful and the “grind” of my unsustainable health choices where overwhelming. I would reach a point of internal capacity and go off the rails.
My life became a never-ending pattern. A yo-yo of extreme diets and extreme unhealthiness. It felt like a Tug-O-War.
It took me three years of hard healing work to get to the point where I was aware of this internal tug-o-war. I had to surrender to some hard truths and accept that hard work alone was not the solution to my health and fitness problems.
Read about shifting from self-hatred to love in my post Motivation Vs Discipline
Step #3 - Practice Loving Discipline
Ultimately I had to learn to practice loving discipline. The first step of which was letting go of my fantasy that losing weight was a necessary step toward my happiness.
Once I had let go of tying my happiness to my weight loss I began to accept myself where I was at, even when I weighed over 300 pounds.
Read more about letting go of tying happiness to my weight loss in my post
The Myth of Happiness
Self-acceptance created a space for me to practice discipline without going to extremes.
I made the following disciplined commitments:
I push myself to my edge with physical activity every day, no further. I let the fire within come forward and manifest in my physical fitness.
I follow my fasting protocol and only eat within my allotted eating windows. I bring awareness to the emotions and thoughts that come up along the way.
I am compassionate with myself when I slip and fall. I listen to the inner child within. I provide him reassurance and a structure to come back to.
I write every day, be it a sentence or ten pages. I face the resistance that keeps me from my passion and I put ink to paper.
Finding Daily Rituals that Cultivate Love
In the space of self-acceptance and loving discipline, I began to practice rituals that cultivated self-love.
Every night I wrote myself a love note and placed it on the fridge so that I could read it in moments of weakness when I wanted a midnight snack. In the note, I reminded myself what I could do instead of reaching to food for comfort, that “I got this” and that I loved myself.
Finally, I made a conscious effort to take responsibility for my feelings of shame and overwhelm. I worked to create self-trust and safety so I was not compelled to bypass the negative feelings by numbing out with food.
I did this through my daily ritual of breathwork, meditation, and writing about my experience. I used my writing as a tool to process my thoughts and experiences.
Step #4 - Celebrate My Wins & Success
In time the pounds began to fall off and celebrating the wins along the way has been a critical part of my journey.
Sharing my weight loss wins has helped me to tie the actions I am taking to be healthy back into my bigger why. It has fueled my momentum, which has kept me going.
As of today, I have lost 88 pounds, but my weight is not the true measure of my success.
My true measurement of success is the peace, love, and harmony I have achieved within.
I will close today with the writing I shared with the Men in the Alliance after my highest weigh-in of 316 pounds on July 29, 2022.
It was the moment I surrendered to the truth that I could not fix my way to health.
My Moment of Surrender
July 31, 2022
I want to share my current struggle and challenge with my health and fitness.
I've been in the Alliance for nearly two and half years and I've made no progress on my health and fitness, at least that's the story I'm telling myself.
For most of my adult life and in reality my teens and adolescence I yoyoed from super disciplined to super lazy when it came to my health. During my reserve military career and in college it was the semi-annual army "weigh-in" that set my boundaries and edge with how extreme my weight would go. Before that, it was my weight class in wrestling.
When I got out of the military my only boundary forcing me to be in "compliance" and "control" was removed and my weight skyrocketed.
After that, I managed a few times to will myself into shape using a family vacation or event as motivation, in other words using the motivation of looking good and thus being accepted to fuel the controlling disciplined part of me and suppress the lazy part that wants to numb me from feeling by eating and avoiding the uncomfortableness of discipline.
Throughout the years I would take on countless extreme diets, "lifestyles" etc. in an attempt to "fix" my problem. You name it, I've done it, the 75-day hard, Whole 30, low calorie, low carb, fasting, a potato diet, etc., etc...
When I started my healing work I saw the insanity of these efforts. I also saw that I was using acceptance by others as my motivator, and when I saw this, using acceptance as a motivator lost its "oomph". At some point, I decided to set those efforts aside and focus on healing the grief I carried from my mom's death from alcoholism instead.
I'll be honest though, a part of me felt as though once I healed my mind and soul my health would just magically happen, yet another hope for the golden ticket.
At the beginning of 2022 when I reflected I could see in 2020 I had healed my mindset, in 2021 I had healed my relationship with my spirituality, and I thought to myself in 2022 I will heal my relationship with my body.
It has been a confronting year. I realize in taking on this healing I've brought to the surface many wounds...
In all transparency it’s also the place my shadow comes into play here in the Alliance, telling me I don't belong, the shaming part of me telling me most of the guys here are in great shape, and after all my work I'm still fat...
It’s not lost on me that comparison is the thief of joy either. The logical part of me has used that against the shaming part many a time.
What I have come to realize is that the shaming part of me is not a 40-year-old man that can be reasoned with, he is seven or eight, eleven at best and the logical argument of comparison is the thief of joy is lost on him, much as it would be if I tried to explain that to my eight-year-old son.
I've spent much time this past year working with these parts. I have sat with the controlling part of me that wants to push me to fix myself so that I don't have to feel the shame of being undesirable. I've connected with the wounding where that part got his voice... I've felt that pain.
Where I struggle with this part now is my relationship with discipline.
He has a remarkable way of hijacking my efforts to be healthy and taking them too far. Despite this, I've gotten very attuned to recognizing when he is at the wheel. It can be subtle but starts with a feeling of shame that I quickly skip, followed by thoughts of fixing... For example, if I eat badly the day before and in the morning I wake up there is that moment of shame followed by a stream of thoughts of wanting to go on a long fast, or be super strict with my diet to fix... I've learned to become aware of this tendency very fast.
There has been a cost to this newfound awareness though... This part is what kept my lazy part in check. Like a tug of war, these parts have pulled against each other for years... Now that I have learned to become aware of the controlling part and to ground his pull to the extreme there isn't anyone to clean up the mess left by the lazy part of me.
This is where I am now.
I've learned to work with the controlling part of me, to feel the shame, and to set him free of his task of fixing it. Now I'm learning to work with the part of me that wants to burn the house down in order not to feel. The part of me that would rather scroll for hours or shove popcorn in my mouth to avoid what he doesn't want to deal with.
Reasoning with this part doesn't work either. He learned to do this to avoid dealing with the craziness of my mom's alcoholism when I was a young boy. When I sit with this part it occurs to me that what he needs is love, discipline and to be allowed to have fun without worrying about protecting me from the pain the world threatens to give.
This part is very attuned to and sensitive to being pushed and shamed by the controlling part, and when the pushing and shaming become too much he will shut down and protect me from it at all costs. Hence the outcome of all my diets of the past.
While meditating on how to work through this earlier this week the word "harmony" came to mind. My aim is not to suppress or even balance these parts of me, but to create a sense of harmony with them.
So, how do I achieve harmony with these parts?
In the words of Robert Bly, how do I strike a deal with these parts so I can make progress toward my health?
These questions make me think of how I have worked with my eight-year-old son and his commitment to his Taekwondo lessons. We have had to strike a deal so that it is his choice to commit to that discipline and so that it could still be fun. He can not be forced into it.
One thing is certain to me is "I" must be responsible for and feel any shame that comes up. "I" must stop and breathe when overwhelm and worry are present in my body; For these are the emotions that trigger those parts into their endless tug of war.