How A Broken Bathroom, 45 pounds and the Mega Millions Brought Me to My Senses

Like thousands of other Californians, I’ve been having some major fantasies about winning the largest ever Mega Millions jackpot on Friday.

Actually, I started visualizing my winning several weeks ago when the jackpot was still a mere $300 million. To increase my odds of winning, I even taped written affirmations on my bedroom wall declaring, “I AM A LOTTO WINNER” and then read my declaration out loud each morning and each evening. I meticulously selected my winning numbers using the birth dates of both myself and my son as well as my age and his age and whatever remaining number popped into my head. I’ve tried my hardest to send out positive vibes into the universe. I even wrote my predicted Lotto winning amount and put it under my pillow for several nights after hearing a woman swear she won the Lotto doing the same thing.

This may seem like a lot of energy and time to devote to a game expecially given the fact that I don’t normally play the lottery. In fact, I haven’t bought a lottery ticket in years.

Lotto fever? No. My reasons have little to do with the excitement in the air over the half billion prize. My reasons involve my bathroom.

My shower has been unusable for the past three years. The water doesn’t drain, there’s a leak that requires me to empty a full bowl off water every morning into the sink and several contractors have told me that one of the support beams beneath the broken shower pan is water-logged and splitting – hence the reason I have a 3-foot long, 4-inch wide gap at the base of my shower.

The least amount to repair is about $10,000. It’s an insurmountable amount of money for me to imagine saving. I am only now beginning an arduous trek from being a stay-at-home mom dependent on her husband’s income for the last 10 years to a recently divorced woman aiming to earn my own money.

After three years of emptying bowls of leaked water and feeling like a failure at my inability to take care of the problem, I found my fantasies of winning the lottery increasing along with a frenzy to find other solutions that would require only my free thoughts to make my shower again useable. Positive affirmations, prayers and winning the Mega Millions seemed my only hope.

Until today.

This morning I recalled another problem that once seemed equally insurmountable to me at the time.

Eight years ago, I was about 45 pounds overweight. Like my bathroom, I felt unusable. I felt disgusted with my inability to control my eating and to succeed on any of the countless diets. My own support beams beneath my psyche were weighed down by constant internal words of self-hatred, failure and powerlessness. Losing 45 pounds seemed insurmountable.

I fantasized about losing the weight with the same intensity that I’ve been applying to my visions of winning the Mega Millions.

I dreamt about a magic pill, diet program or weight loss drink that would permanently take away my cravings, prevent me from overeating and eradicate my appetite. I intensely envisioned obtaining instantaneous results like I those I’d seen on popular body transformational reality shows like The Swan, Extreme Makeover and Dr. 90210.

One recurring fantasy of mine was winning a coveted spot on The Swan then being locked away for three months with the best plastic surgeons, nutritionists and fitness experts. I would emerge as beautiful swan that would burst into joyous tears as I took my first look in a full length mirror at my toned, tanned and trim body for the first time.

I never did appear on The Swan and though I have a couple lottery tickets for this Friday’s drawing, I don’t foresee me being the lucky winner in this week’s Mega Million drawing.

And that is okay with me.

I realized today that once upon a time I truly believed that I would never be able to lose the extra weight that was causing me such emotional distress and physical discomfort. But I did.

I lost the weight in the same way I am going to fix my bathroom. I did it by ending my fantasies and facing reality. I did it by taking the first step -- walking to a stop sign just down the street from my house. I did it one day at a time. I got support. I stopped looking for instant fixes in diets and weight loss products. And slowly the weight came off.

Today, I opened a “bathroom repair” bank account at my local credit union to start saving the money necessary to fix the problem. I now have $50 saved. It’s my first step.

Once upon a time, losing 45 pounds seemed insurmountable but I did it.

Yesterday, saving $10,000 to repair my bathroom seemed insurmountable but, as of today, I am doing it – without pinning my hopes on the Mega Millions lottery.

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Diet

There’s a moment as I lead my weekly weight loss workshops in which the reactions of heavy sighs and nods of agreement among my participants has become quite predictable.

It is the moment that I grab my weight scale from the floor, fervently raise it above my head and declare that too many of us have turned this square piece of metal into our God.

“We’ve given our weight scales the role of a supreme and perfect deity,” I tell my participants. “We give them the power to determine our moods, our previous week's efforts and how we treat others -- gain a couple pounds and we're grouchy and pissy, lose a couple pounds and suddenly we're kinder to others.”

Sadly, our reverence to our scales is only surpassed by the religious fervor many of us give to whatever diet or weight loss program we are currently following or weight loss product we are ingesting or injecting.

As we continue our search for the Holy Grail of weight loss, a large majority have come to view many weight loss programs with the same devotion as the religions we entrust to guide our souls toward eternal salvation. Whether we’re counting calories, restricting our intake of carbohydrates or enrolling the aid of any one of our nation’s plethora of diet products or programs, we have become a nation riddled with angst about every crumb we put into our mouths. We look to weight loss programs and products to deliver us from this hell.

As the nation's obesity problems continue to rise, we increasingly look to the diet industry to ease our food obsessions and rid us of our sinful gluttony. We zealously follow their commandments – attending weekly meetings with other devotees, eating tasteless freeze-dried meals, whipping out our bibles of permissible foods, depriving ourselves of the foods we love or that our body desires, driving gallons of juices or even injecting ourselves with hormone shots while severely restricting out daily food intake.

“Foods are often described in moralistic terms, independent of dieting: decadent, sinful, tempting – all the words of food fundamentalism and eating morality,” writes Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in their book, “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works.” “Since we are a nation that worships the lean body, it easily becomes virtuous to be eating foods associated with slimness and guiltlessness.”

And while the forbidden fruit may have been the source of temptation that led to the downfall of man in the biblical story about Adam and Eve, eating an apple nowadays may just be the key to Heaven’s gate in the hopeful minds of many yo-yo dieters.

As a former yo-yo dieter, I lived nearly two decades in a state of guilt, dividing my food into “good and “bad” and labeling myself either a “saint” or a “sinner.” And our nation’s multi-billion dollar diet and food industries were the choirs in the loft of my desperate mind – singing the attributes of fat-free foods, of product dependency and of fervently counting my daily calories or points while enticing me with product labels that played on my desire to remain pious – “guilt free temptations,” “sinfully delicious” and “heavenly indulgence” to name a few.

I often allowed my scale to determine my mood, my disposition and how I related to others for the day. Like many women, I gave my scale the power to determine if I'd been “good” or “bad.” I allowed this voiceless measuring device to become the supreme ruler over my previous day’s indiscretions –giving it the power to instantaneously fill my head with verbal self-flagellation if the numbers have risen.

It was hell.

So how did I finally find salvation and freedom? I turned my back to diets. I took back the power I’d given my scale and placed my faith back into God and into myself. I learned to follow my own hunger cues and to trust in my body. It wasn’t easy. Like a cult follower, I felt brainwashed and it took time, education and patience for me to understand the falsity of the beliefs that I had placed upon diets, scales and food.

I would never have imagined eight years ago when I turned my back to the beliefs that I had followed with such religious fervor that during the next two years I would lose nearly 50 pounds without dieting, deprivation or product dependency.

And that, my friends, is a miracle.

Hungry for Less Video: STOP DIETING

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Nitty gritty truth behind my overeating

Here’s the raw truth about why I overate…

Despite loathing over the growing mounds of fat on my body and the loneliness I felt as strangers walked by me as if I was invisible, I ate those bowls of Moose Track ice-cream because I was miserable in my marriage, powerless over what I could do to improve it and ashamed that I allowed such rage to be expressed between my ex and I in front of my son.

I ate those bag of tortilla chips with the container of salsa as I watched Desperate Housewives because I was so deeply angry and blaming of everyone who I believed to have done me wrong – my father for abusing me; my mother for abandoning me; all the guys in my past who had “used” me, my ex-husband for demeaning me and my God for creating the whole damn mess.

I inhaled Cheetos, Chips A-Hoy cookies and my kids Halloween, Christmas and Easter candies, as I lay in bed drinking a few glasses of wine and reading my 127th self-help book, because I was terrified of being on my own. I knew I was hiding behind my role as a mom to avoid having to get back into the work world. I even wanted to adopt a little girl so I could give my son a sibling but also (mainly) to allow me more time to remain within the secure walls of my home. I was so deeply terrified that I would fail in anything outside of being a mom.

And so day after day, year after year, I hid behind food and found safety in the sweets, the crunchiness, the saltiness, the creaminess, the forbiddingness of it all. I hated my life but was too afraid to take a step.

This is the nitty gritty of why I overate. How about you?

Getting out of my funk

DONE! I just ran 3.42 miles. What makes this run particularly satisfying is that less than 24 hours ago I was curled up in bed feeling fearful of the future and doubtful of my abilities.

I knew the tools to get me out of my funk but I was too consumed with my fears and insecurities to use them. It happens to the best of us. It used to happen frequently in my life.

My fetal-position curl in bed lasted two hours yesterday. Several years ago, it lasted for days. Back then I was prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depressants.

Today, I allow myself to feel the fear (not easy) and continue to hang tight to my faith and my tools (even when I don't use them). Today, i started my morning by simply looking at my bedroom wall.

My wall of affirmations. The affirmations that remind me that I am enough, that I am strong. And I read my wall... albeit begrudgingly at first. My wall of affirmations is one of my most powerful tools to keep on track. It works. 3.42 miles today!! Woot!!