I feel so guilty about everything I eat. I thought I would feel happy when I got skinny but I don’t.
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anonymous Asks ...
I have been trying to lose weight for 2 years. I have lost 40 pounds, so obviously I was very unhealthy and overweight before and everyone tells me how great I look now. I am still 10 pounds above my goal weight so obviously it is not as easy to drop pounds as it was in the beginning. The closer I get the harder it is. I understand this intellectually, but when I weigh myself each morning and I see I have not lost any weight or if I have gained weight I feel really panicked and terrible and I try to eat as little as possible all day. When I was losing weight in the beginning it felt great all the time but now I only feel OK if I am losing and to lose I have to be pretty vigilant and when I am not losing I feel like crap and I feel so guilty about everything I eat. I am not sure what to do now. I thought I would feel really happy when I got skinny but I don’t (:
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William Anderson Says ...
Have no fear. You will be OK. Even though you lost weight, you never really learned what the problem is and how to solve it. It was the same for me for 25 years. Eventually, I learned a psychological solution to the problem few people understand, lost 140 pounds 30 years ago, and I have maintained that success without trouble. It was great to lose the weight but what I had to learn has helped me in far more important ways.
The problem is an unhealthy habitual way of thinking and behaving that is so very difficult to change because it is part of an addiction disorder. What's worse is that so many have it that it is not seen as something that needs to be changed. What's even worse, when people want to change it, they don't know how. They think you should just make up your mind to be different, but it doesn't work that way.
Read my book The Anderson Method and it will give you a much better understanding of the problem and what needs to be done. I also have trained therapists all over the country who teach my program and you can find them at my website.
You have done well and you are getting closer to feeling good about things. Here is a preview to things you'll need to learn about and incorporate: 1) Weight loss is the wrong thing to work for. Winning at weight is something that we do everyday, measured by our behavior, not the scale. 2) The scale is the worst way to measure how you are doing. It measures mainly your water content, which changes all the time, as much as 5 pounds a day even when you are perfectly successful. When you believe in the scale, you'll feel lousy even when you are perfectly successful. It's a formula for misery. 3) Success in weight control, just like success in life, is not a goal we reach and then we are done. Success is a matter of finding a way of living each day that we love that also produces the results that we want. You will have to work at your good health every day the rest of your life. You will have to work at your success and happiness everyday the rest of your life. The key to satisfaction in all of those realms is finding work that you love doing everyday that coincidently creates the byproduct result that you want, whether it is a good weight, financial security, peace of mind, good relationships or anything else.
You are on the right track. Keep going. Write again.
