Hello everyone,
My name is Amy. I am 42 years old and have a loving husband, Kevin, and two boys, Jeffrey (6), and Matthew (8). I am a full-time teacher and we have a very busy lifestyle. My current weight is 280 pounds and I’ve just re-ignited my investment in myself in several ways, including getting back to Kimkins.
I have battled being overweight since I was a child. I was always the ‘fat one’ in pretty much every crowd, and often today that is still the case. I grew up the youngest in a family of six kids and often felt that there was a sense of disorganization and being at loose ends. While my parents worked hard and did the best they could, our life seemed to become a mess trying to care for some of my siblings’ children as they developed their own forms of addiction.
I can remember one time in my early twenties after college when I lived alone and devoted myself to ‘me’ time. I walked a lot, enjoyed life, traveled, ate healthfully with no real ‘plan’ and was at the first and last ‘healthy weight’ of my adult life — around 165-170ish pounds. In looking back on that time, the most memorable thing about it was how simple and carefree life was.
As life sped up with career, getting married and having two kids, I found myself slowly gaining weight all over again and trying to find my ‘place’ in my new world. Please don’t misunderstand me — I am happily married and love being a mother more than anything else in my life. My career, while a busy one, is fulfilling to me. I think that when life got busy, I didn’t have the coping skills and reverted to my childhood comfort: food.
Shortly after finding Kimkins in the famous ‘Woman’s World’ magazine article , I joined and throughout that summer lost 40 pounds. I felt fantastic and that I’d finally found ‘my answer’. After I returned to work that fall, some family (my original family) things were coming up and I found that I was ‘at loose ends’ in many ways again. Slowly over that year, I regained my 40 pounds.
For the past three years I have struggled, tried Weight Watchers (twice), tried to diet on my own, bought every diet book imaginable, discussed bariatric surgery with my doctors, and have basically felt VERY defeated and depressed.
With continued depression and anxiety in close competition with increasing weight over the years, I have finally decided to really examine what drives me to eat. Before Easter I started seeing a counselor in hopes of addressing this overeating drive and find some peace in my world.
I have already, in just one month, gained a great deal of insight into how my thought process drives my every decision and action both negative and positive. She uses the ‘cognitive approach’ with me to work on behavior modification.
It has been explained to me that the cycle of behaviors always begins with my thinking, which leads to my feelings, which leads to behaviors, which have a natural consequence that cycles back around to thinking again. Seeing it using this logic, it only makes sense that negative original thoughts will lead to more and more intense negativity as a result.
But, it kind of irritated me to be honest. It’s like saying to someone with a broken arm,“Well, it appears that when you put your hand in that machine it twisted and broke it.” “Gee, thanks. Really? Could we fix it please?”
But now that I am to investing in the process, I am beginning to understand that if I can’t understand the parts of the machine that are dangerous to my thoughts, then my arm (and my world) is going to end up broken a lot. So we are diving into trying to break down some things that create the thoughts that lead me in the destructive behavior direction, namely overeating.
We have discussed my original family A LOT. Through my process with her and via a book I’m reading that she shared with me, I am seeing that my pattern in life has been a lifelong process of trying to please others and in the process have forgotten to do what pleases me. Frankly, I have tried to really think about what does please ME. If you have lost yourself in other people for decades, that’s not an easy thing to do.
Every day I am trying to more conscious of what I’m feeling as I feel it, and be open to the fact it may hurt to process it instead of covering and ignoring it. I have had a few moments of clarity just recently that really surprised me. The most startling realization is that I have been pretty angry with my mother and how not addressing it has really ramped up my tension and anxiety in the wrong ways.
I am back in Kimkins and have been making my thought process the focus of my work right now. I am trying small changes in my eating instead of the ‘all or nothing’ kind of thinking that has been part of my self-sabotage in the past.
Trying to dig up and haul out the bad things in my past and solve what is still solvable and trying to find peace with those that can’t be ‘solved’ is an ongoing task — and I suspect will be for a long time to come. During this process, I’m also finding that I’m slowly organizing my home and weeding out the ‘stuff’ that no longer belongs with me. Sort of a cleansing process for both my house and my mind.
We have also discussed use of realistic goals, written down, to help make daily decisions easier. I often felt in a quandary about what to do or how to handle things, but when I look at my goals (personal, financial, and health) making these decisions is not nearly the stressful situation it had been. It has been a relief to find how that simple step can make so much difference in my daily life.
While I continue this process, I am getting back into walking regularly (one of my small steps) and eating more consciously. Kimkins gave me more hope and success than any program in the past and will be my eating lifestyle goal.
I wish us all luck!
Take care,
Amy Brush :o)
