Overweight and can't stop eating?

I spent the first half of my life as a svelte size 8 the other half as very obese. In hindsight, unlike many people who have never known what it feels like to be thin, I know what being thin feels like,but I also know what being fat feels like.However what has always remained constant is that I have never felt good enough, even when I was thin I didn't feel thin enough, I guess my becoming fat was only going to be a matter of time.

You see as a woman, there is tremendous pressure to look slim and attractive, but for me this become unimportant after several traumatic things got thrown my way and somewhere along the way being thin because less important. I had no energy to worry about keeping slim, I was in survival mode, losing weight among all the other issues I was dealing with just didn't matter. Strangely losing my gorgeous slim figure and my tiny waist which has always been my trademark, didn't bother me as much as losing my health, my vitality and vigour. I had dieted all my life and that got me nowhere.

The turning point came when I weighed my heaviest and yet despite the fact that I didn't always enjoy eating so much food I just couldn't stop myself. I was eating more every day, I was weighing more day by day. And day by day I was feeling closer to having some terrible disease. That really scared me but it didn't stop me from stuffing my face. I loved the comfort that eating gave me.

Then I started researching why I was having these overwhelming cravings and mostly I discovered that it was because I had vitamin and mineral deficiencies as well as the problem of using food to stuff down feelings that were hard to deal with.None of these articles told me how to get over the cravings, except to take numerous minerals,supplements and vitamins which I had done for many years and they had made no difference. I started therapy and this is when my weight really ballooned. I had been checked out by my doctor, done all the required tests and my health was found to be good, however I was plagued by psychosomatic symptoms that felt very real to me. This was a clear indicator that I needed to give my past and issues a very thorough spring clean, but in doing so in therapy my weight seemed to just blow completely out of control.

And this is when I realized something truly significant:
I needed to "reset" my relationship between myself and food. I needed to understand why every single day of my life I chose to feel physically bloated,nauseous and uncomfortable from eating too much junk food.Did I really dislike myself so much that I couldn't muster the will or energy to take steps to lose the weight?Motivating myself didn't work because I didn't think enough of myself to want to do this for myself. After all taking care of oneself (which is what weight loss is to an obese person)is a loving act towards one self, and this was very alien to me. As a slim person however I would never have chosen the option to stuff myself because feeling good was more important than abusing myself in this way.So that gave me hope. I couldn't lie to myself and say that I never did a loving thing towards myself because that just wasn't true.

So I made a radical decision: I decided to face my demons head on and go on a fast. I could feel my body was overloaded by sugar, salt, fats and caffeine and I just needed to give my body a break. The first day of just drinking water I managed to get to 5pm without eating and then I started to feel light headed and felt panicked, so I had a huge meal. Failure. Next day I tried again and this time I managed the whole day on just water but then next morning I woke up so hungry I ate whatever I could find. I made a decision not to judge myself as a failure but just to keep going until I got it right. I also emptied the house completely of food.

My water fast lasted successfully for 10 days, and the first 5 days were torture, I felt so hungry.I couldn't sleep properly because all I could think about was food. But I decided to just sit with the uncomfortable feelings, and the nasty headaches and the nausea and the chills and just let it pass. I cried for no reason at all: a lot. And then my mind started to think more clearly at about day 6. I realized that I was sick and tired of the constant self loathing. I knew I had to learn to see myself and my life in a different way if I wanted things to be different, because what I had been doing up to now didn't work. It was hard to genuinely love myself if I had never done it. But I wanted to find a way that would start me on the road to genuine acceptance and caring for myself. So I decided to meditate on the concept of surrender and reverence. Surrender because I knew that by myself or my usual resources I couldn't change. I needed to surrender to something higher than me: whether it was my subconscious mind, God or the Universe. What I surrendered to seemed less important than the act of surrendering.

The second part of reverence was trickier. How do I revere myself when I have never loved or accepted myself?So I decided to look for reasons to revere myself, having made the agreement with myself that love and acceptance would not come into it for now.So all I could think of is that I needed to revere myself because I was alive, I had a pulse, and that because there isn't anyone else like me on earth. A part of me really disliked that idea, it felt unnatural.But I stuck with it because they were the only two reasons I could come up with to revere myself. And as I did this I started to understand the importance of gratitude and of not taking anything for granted. And then reverence became much easier to do.

This discovery lead me to do the work I do today, it was also crucial for getting me on track to fulfilling my potential. I now make a daily choice to feel good about myself, so while I still have a long way to go to completely love and accept myself, I have now increased my actions on a daily basis to be more loving towards myself. The good news is that I have lost most of the extra weight I was carrying, I am exercising and I love it and now I look at my body and judge it by how healthy it is and what it does for me. My focus is on eating good food to keep my body strong and healthy. Eating is no longer the main focus in my life, and I still love to eat but I now find that I don't need to eat a lot and the food I eat is healthy 99.9% of the time. I have learnt to honour my feelings no matter how unpleasant they are and not repress or suppress them.

I wanted to share my story with you because I know there are so many people struggling with their weight. But there is hope and while my "kick start" came in the form of fasting, your "kick start" could be whatever you want it to be as long as it's a process that starts you on the way to liberating yourself from the tyranny of your own perceived limitations.

As disclaimer I would like to say that this article was not written in any way to promote water fasting, it is simply my experience and what worked for me. If you are considering water fasting and especially if you are ill please do not fast without supervision and most importantly without seeking the advise of your physician.Fasting is not for everyone, it is not a quick fix to health or weight loss or spiritual clarity, it is in fact a process that might work for some and not for others. I encourage the reader to find their own process and this is as simple as looking within yourself for answers, which if you look for them with earnest intention, you will find them.