This post follows up on my recent posts about wanting to be less fat: How do I stop the pain and Waiting for weight to wane.
Since I became fat, I’ve known that losing this fat will not happen with dieting or eating in any way that I can’t sustain for the rest of my life. It also won’t come off with exercise if it’s not exercise I can comfortably do for the rest of my life. I’ve known that if I’m going to go back to not being fat, it will have to be an effortless path, although I didn’t know what that would be.
I now believe that effortless weight loss only happens when you’ve worked through any and all emotional reasons for keeping the weight on, and healed all contributing physiological problems. American culture actually does better on the emotional part. You might identify and clear out the subconscious reasons you’re fat using one of dozens of therapy modalities. But to get down to what’s going on physically, you might have to find someone outside of Western allopathic medicine.
Since 2016 I’ve been seeing a Nutrition Response Testing℠ (NRT) practitioner. NRT accesses the autonomic nervous system and uses it to diagnose (the autonomic nervous system controls things like digestion speed and heart rate and other things we don’t consciously control). NRT is better explained here, so I’ll just say my practitioner has used it with me to diagnose weak organ function, toxic load, hormone imbalance, the presence of viruses and parasites, and other subtle changes in my body that regular Western medicine doesn’t have the diagnostic skills or technology for.
With her, in three years I’ve worked my way through digestion problems, low blood iron, major depression, joint pain, overactive bladder, things I thought were flu symptoms but weren’t, and countless complaints. There is no symptom too small or too strange for her. I tell her what’s bothering me and she uses it to find out what my body needs (usually a dietary adjustment, supplement or essential oil).
Welp! Back in January 2016 I told her I definitely wanted to work on my fatness and she assured me that’s one thing she has helped many people with. She said most people need about six months of intensive treatment during which they clear their problems and start dropping weight. Perfect!
And then it didn’t happen. Six months later I was just as fat. Since then, we have worked diligently to give my body everything it needs (and I’ve had therapy for the emotional part), but three years later, I’m fatter than ever. Why have I kept putting on weight when this was supposed to go in the other direction? Why am I still hooked on sugar?
One theory is that if you work directly with the body, you can’t dictate everything that happens. The body will release what it’s ready to release. Unlike most people who only require six months of intensive healing, my body and brain were so f###-ed up they needed lots of attention for three years and counting. We have removed layer after layer of toxins, viruses, emotions and organ dysfunction and we’re still going and that’s just how it is.
I’ve been whining about how fat I am, but in that time NRT has helped with other problems, including helping to lift a major depressive episode that had me in a psychiatric ward in 2017. It’s also helped shift my lifelong dysthymic mood so that I’ve felt genuinely good since last spring. With my history of depression, I didn’t think that was possible!
And the latest incredible healing has been my…uh…well, my sweatiness. Since 2010 I’ve been the person who always wants to turn up the air conditioning or turn off the car heater or open some windows or stand outside with my coat open, even on Chicago’s freezing days. I’m increasingly uncomfortable in normally heated rooms. I carry a handheld fan in my purse, plus a bandana to wipe off the sweat, and I use one or the other all day long, every day. It’s damn aggravating! And it’s been worsening over the past eight years.
On December 6, 2018 I had an NRT appointment and I said that this was it. The sweatiness was getting even worse and it had to stop. My practitioner identified a hormonal problem caused by my low-functioning spleen and some other things that I didn’t even try to memorize. She told me to apply three essential oils to three different places on my body, blah blah blah.
And it worked.
Since December 6th, I’ve spent time in warm rooms without sweat pouring down my face. I’ve been zipping up my jacket when I go outside. I’ve hosted parties in my home without freezing my guests with open windows. I sometimes put on a sweater! And one day while sitting at my desk in my apartment, my feet felt uncomfortably cold, so I put on socks. I haven’t worn socks in my apartment in years. It’s a gradual dialing down of my inner thermostat — I’m still too warm too much of time — but it’s finally going in the right direction.The chronic depression and sweatiness felt intractable and were things any allopathic Western doctor would have told me I’d just have to live with. But NRT helped, so I think there’s still hope for my fatness.And here’s the latest on that. I have been working on eliminating my sugar cravings for years, but I recently added working with therapist Kerry Ito of Reclaim Your Joy on weight loss. Kerry and I discussed my emotional eating, and then she gave me guided visualization recordings. Some of what these recordings have me visualize feels like bulls###. Certain this wouldn’t work, I’ve dutifully used them for about a month now, just so I could tell Kerry I had done it. And shockingly I’m starting to feel a change.This is the change: I no longer crave sugar, but a part of me keeps pushing to eat it. So I’ll eat a meal, feel absolutely no desire for sweets, but then get up and find some sweets and eat them anyway. It’s a real competition. Sugar Slurper is working hard to keep the sweets habit in place, but Satisfied Me really doesn’t want them. For now the compromise is that I’m eating fewer sweets than I have in the past, especially for December, our national sugar-binge month.One response I could have is to jump in there and support Satisfied Me by telling Sugar Slurper that sweets are off limits from now on! Or I could start shopping for substitutes like carob-covered raisins or dried apricots and try to get Sugar Slurper to accept that stuff. But I’ve tried those things so many times that I’ve decided that this time I’ll just sit back and let the two of them work it out. Maybe if I don’t focus so hard on trying to find the solution, the opposing parts of me will settle it. Maybe this is a subconscious process that I need to keep my meddling, conscious hands off of.So I’ll keep using Kerry’s recordings and the NRT supplements and see what happens. At five feet, two inches tall, I’ve been carrying 50-plus extra pounds for five years. Carrying it for five more won’t kill me. Wait…carrying this much weight might very well kill me. Well, if it does, then all my problems will be over. Next update on fatness here.