Everybody has a story, and this is mine...at least the part that relates to my overeating. I hope it helps to encourage someone along the way.
For 49 of my 50 years I have either been in the process of overeating and gaining or trying another "last-ditch" effort at dieting. I can't remember a time when I just focused on living and enjoying my LIFE. FOOD had my full attention since about the age of 8 and it has mesmerized and enticed me in a way nothing else on this earth ever has in all these years. Every meal, every snack, every holiday, every birthday... all centered around getting "what I wanted, when I wanted it."
I never thought of myself as someone who had anything more than just a temporary weight issue... and I truly believed that at any moment I "put my mind to it", I could get this weight off and begin living my life. I've missed a thousand events through the years, putting off dates, dances, family reunions or even trips to the mall; essentially anything that I thought might put me in a situation where people would look at me and issue a judgment based on my body size. I was so afraid of failing in others eyes that I made sure I didn’t fail by delaying my life, day after day. I always bought clothes several sizes smaller because that was what I would wear ONE day. I figured up each week how long it would take to lose X amount of pounds and then I would be acceptable both to the world and hopefully to God. I was always waiting for that next diet that would be the one that would work and THEN I could begin living my life. Every Monday was going to be my NEW beginning and I felt SURE that I would get it right this next time. There have been 10,000 next times. To be honest, my weight has literally amputated me from living most of my life because I have lived much of it in the waiting room… believing that my self-made miracle was just around the corner.
Somewhere along the line I started to wake up and see that I had a problem that went much deeper than the number I read on the scale. I knew there were emotional reasons behind why I ate, and had been to a counselor to work through a lot of those problems. Even though a lot of things deeply changed during that time, I kept on overeating. I dealt with a lot of issues that had held me back and started to see how much I needed to trust God for everything. But that was very hard for me because it felt like weakness or failure to not be able to “just DO IT” and then present that hard work before God as an offering of love to Him. I had been a member of a church for years that believed that God’s gift to us was our life and our gift back to God was what we made of it. And to carry that one step further, they taught that your love for God showed up in your ability to be completely self-disciplined on your own. That belief kept me trapped in a cycle of failure for years.
But I just could not seem to maintain any consistency in overcoming the need to overeat and more than that, the fact that no matter how strong my resolve or excellent reasons why I SHOULD stop, I just kept on doing the thing I hated most about myself. To complicate things, I was on two medications that made it even more difficult to stop overeating, a growth hormone and a steroid. Both increased my already gigantic appetite. Until 1995 I was about 120 pounds overweight and when I had to go on these two drugs, I gained another 100 pounds in less than a year. That put me at just a few pounds under 400 by the time I reached my top.
So I joined Weight Watchers as a last attempt at trying to get my eating under control… and even though I lost a few pounds over a period of 6 months, my heart was not in it. I was very aware that I could “white knuckle” this problem and stay on the straight-and-narrow for only a limited amount of time before I would wear out from the struggle and give in to the desire that seemed to plague me both night and day. It never went away, no matter how much I tried to convince myself it would. Thinking back, I can’t remember a day in my life that hasn’t revolved around the incredibly deep need to overeat.
Well, I went faithfully to my WW meetings for 6 months... trudging along slowly with half-hearted efforts. I think I only quit 3 times in those first 6 months, only to go back and try again (of course after every “quit” was a good pity-binge and then I would go back and make a brand new effort). I was losing about 1 1/2 pounds a month during that time. At this rate, I could easily lose all my weight in 13 years. J
I had a couple of doctor appointments back to back one day. The first one was to my primary physician and I had gotten to the point that I could no longer put off getting help for a myriad of health problems, including out-of-control diabetes, high b/p, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, sleep apnea, pitting edema in my legs and ankles, circulation problems, acid reflux, severe arthritis, etc. I dreaded seeing this doctor because I didn't want a lecture on why I should lose weight, even though he had never actually really mentioned my weight in all these years. The second one was my neurologist, so I knew the second one would be a piece of cake. He was my Narcolepsy doc… so my weight was never an issue. All I had to do was get through this first appointment and I was home-free until the next appointment a year later.
I had no idea what this day held in store for me. I worried about seeing the familiar disappointment on my doctor’s face when he saw what the scale said… but instead of an uncomfortable moment, I walked into a situation that I was not emotionally prepared for. I had been in the week before for routine blood work to precede this visit, so all that was left was weight and my vitals, a short talk with my doc and new medications to help all my growing problems. I’d been through this a hundred times through the years with this doc… and I knew the scene well. Go in smiling, complement the nurse, make a joke as I stood on the scale, try to distract my doctor’s disappointment when he read the chart, avoid eye-contact, get my prescriptions as quickly as I could, and get the heck outta dodge. The last part was easy because I knew it so well… walk to the car feeling like the biggest loser alive, praying to God that these medications would keep me alive a little longer. Oh, one more thing… always hit Baskin-Robbins while I waited for my prescriptions to be filled, to make sure I had a good, hearty dose of my REAL drug-of-choice. No pity-party is complete without one.
But that day, after reading my bloodwork levels and seeing the results of my half-hearted, up and down efforts to lose weight once again, my doctor walked in, sat my medical chart down, looked me dead-square in the eyes and essentially told me that I had a myriad of severe health problems, and that they got worse each time I came to see him. He said I had to make a decision and then to do it or be prepared to die much earlier in life than I needed to. In a very straight-forward manner, he let me know that the time of "playing around" with my weight was over. I remember he used the line "running out of chances" and was the most serious and intense that I had ever seen him in all the years I had been going to him. I mentioned gastric bypass and was SURE he'd say NO because of his background in working with people with addictions, but he quickly jumped on that suggestion and thought it was the way to go for "people like me." He walked out looking very frustrated and angry. That was it... 60 seconds of my life I will never forget. It wasn't what he said as much as the power, hurt, and anger behind it. There was such finality in his voice. It occurred to me as I got dressed, that my last enabler had just written me off.
I was so blown away and so humiliated that I was unable to even speak. I had a lump in my throat so big I thought I was going to choke and getting to my car without bursting into tears was one of the hardest things I've done in a while... but I made it. I sat in that parking lot and cried for the longest time. I'm not sure I've ever felt so much self-loathing or shame as I did in the car that day.
Eventually I had to start my car and drive to doc #2. I walked in and you would have thought they had gotten together that morning and decided to mutually ruin my life. This second doctor walked in, smiling as always, told me a cute joke as he usually did. But then he sat my chart down, scooted his chair up to mine and looked me square in the eyes and said “Shirley, I see you are turning 50 this year. Good for you. I hope you enjoy this birthday because you probably will never live to see 55.” You really could have picked me up off the floor by this point because I was not prepared for that statement coming from him.
The rest of the conversation didn’t even make it through the air into my ear canals because I just kept hearing his first sentence. I got a second lecture that day and will never know all that it included, but I had heard all I could take in. His approach was much more loving and full of genuine concern but the end result was the same… I had to come up with a way to do something I was incapable of doing. I had a 50-year perfect track record in this area.
Many things had preceded those conversations with my 2 doctors that had caused a gradual decline in my ability to function as an overeater and still maintain a semblance of happiness on the outside. I had gone through some counseling with a very humble and Godly man who believed and pounded into my head that God had to be the center of my world. I was given a foundation of faith in that room and left counseling eventually, knowing that God had just begun to change me and that he would continue that change until Christ returned.
I also had a precious friend at my church who was dying from breast cancer and I went to her house to try and encourage her heart. In the midst of trying to say something that would make a difference in the hours and days she had left, she stopped me and said something that still brings me to tears today. My guard was completely down around her and it was impossible to be anything but REAL around someone who was about to go home... so she had my full attention and my heart was, thankfully, open to hear truth. She said "Shirley, I don't want to talk about me, I want to talk about you, because I am not the one with the real problem here, YOU are. Heaven is a very sure reality for me now, and I will be going there soon, but as long as I've known you, you have struggled with being in bondage to gluttony and you need to let go. God WILL give you the grace to GET OVER... but you first have to TRUST Him, really trust him. She talked for another couple of minutes but kept it pretty short and to the point. She squeezed my hand and told me that she loved me. She never brought it up again and a few weeks later she went home to be with Jesus. The thing that made that conversation so significant was the fact that she could speak into my life and call me to repentance because she had lived her life walking in repentance, right before me and everyone else, one day at a time. And she had this peace and understood grace on a level I had only read about at that point. That conversation was definitely "Holy Spirit set-up" and it touched my soul.
There were so many other people that God used to get my attention and now I can look back and clearly see His hand in my life during that period… surrounding me with friends who loved me enough to tell me the truth and supporting and encouraging me in SO many ways.
I had been asked to help start a new Wednesday night Bible study group in the area where I lived during this time but was SO resistant because I loved the one I had been in for years and was comfortable there. One thing I worried about was whether the chairs in the new house would actually hold me without breaking. When you are the size I was then, that is on your mind daily… at work, in restaurants, in doctor’s offices, etc.
But I went that first night, half-way committed and scared of humiliating myself like I had in Red Lobster the week before when I sat in one of their chairs and it cracked in half… and found myself on the floor, unable to get up.
The first night I got there late and found that I could not get up the steps to get to the doorbell so I couldn’t get in. I had to go home because I was too fat… and I was so embarrassed. I told them I would come back the next week and did. When I pulled up, the garage door opened and I saw a tiny lady with the sweetest smile standing there, with a door opened into the kitchen from her garage with an easy step inside that they had made just for me. Diana was a Godsend that night, in more ways than I knew. And when I walked into her living room, not just ONE chair held me, but every chair she had in there was one I could sit in.
I kept going to that group and finally one night opened up with them about my struggle with gluttony and they prayed for me and with me. I felt like Diana would never understand because she was so teeny tiny. But she shared with me that night after the meeting that she had been in WW and had lost 60 pounds that year and she would help me if I wanted her to. She shared food plans with me and even though at that point I had already been trying to diet and had lost some, I had no logical plan to what I was doing and zero support. She became my first real source of accountability and continues to be my friend and mentor to this day. God knew what I needed just when I needed it. So I can look back now and see his hand in the spiritual, emotional and PHYSICAL areas of my need.
Also, I had taken a course at my church the previous year called “Sonship” that had exposed a lot of “stuff” in my life that seemed to stand between me and God and even though I knew that… I didn’t know how to let it go or maybe it was just that a part of me didn’t WANT TO. But in that little room for a couple of hours every other Sunday night, something started to change in me. I went in to that first class thinking all I needed to do was lose a little weight, and then God would finally be happy with me. I learned through those months, some very basic principles of the gospel that changed how I approach life now. God exposed a lot of sin in my life during that time and at one point I became so overwhelmed with what I saw that I didn't know if I could continue. A friend of mine who was also co-facilitating the class pulled me aside one day and told me that I needed to keep my focus on Christ while looking at sin and to ONLY view that sin in the light of the cross. From that point until the end of the Sonship course, God started overwhelming me with His love and showing me who I was to Him and what it meant to be His daughter. Sonship taught me to believe the gospel.
I am grateful to God for all the avenues He used to get me to the point of starting this work in my life... and looking back now, there were many.
So, by the time I walked into the first doctor’s office, I knew that my body nor my spirit could not take much more abuse from overeating. My doctor's comments to me that day were just sort of like replacing a long-term comma with a period at the end of a very, long sentence.
Long story made short... I spent the next 48 hours alone and truly at a bottom. I didn't go to work, didn't call anyone or even watch TV. What I did do was reach a bottom unlike anything I had ever experienced before. To this day, I refer to those 48 hours as the "darkest night of my soul". As each hour passed, it was a little more obvious to me that my doctor was right... I couldn't do this. I had tried and failed my entire life, so why did I think this time would be any different? Always in the past I somehow conjured up the willpower to try one more time but this time I had absolutely nothing left inside to pull from.
I spent a lot of time praying during those hours and felt like IF the answer was GOD, then I should have been able to do this many times before because I had been a Christian for years... but that had not changed a thing. During those hours, I felt spiritually desperate and empty inside. I knew God loved me and I did not doubt his existence but I did doubt my ability to do what was before me. I was having a "crisis of belief" and with every minute that passed, it was becoming more and more apparent that what I said I believed about God, and my relationship to Him as his daughter was not matching how I lived. My walk did not match my talk. As much as I had professed to know that it all depends on GOD, I was living as if it all depended on me. My behavior exposed the contents of my heart and to be honest, what I saw made me physically ill. I wished I could be one of those people who decided to write me off and not call me back. But there I was, stuck with me.
In the past, a good binge would have helped me get past the guilt and hurt but this time I knew not even food could help. I knew something that was still intact at 6 am this morning was now completely broken and that I would not be able to “fix” this. I felt a kind of panic at that moment that I’ve never really had before. I wished that God would just take me home to be with him. I was not suicidal but I did NOT want to continue my life like this and saw absolutely no way out this time. Why do you think it is that some of us try every worldly avenue out there to find relief and help and only after nothing else works, we think “Well, I guess I could go to God with this because there's nothing else left.” Shame usually keeps me from doing this… but that night I was so broken, I needed a kind of relief and help I knew no one could offer but God.
I opened my Bible and read for the longest time. At some point early in the morning, I read the following scripture:
"Therefore since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress. Let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish." Hebrews 12: 1, 2
As I read this scripture over and over, I knew that my problem was not a weight problem or even having or not having the ability to go on a diet and stay on one. My weight was just a symptom that I had a much deeper problem. The truth was that I longed for food more than I longed for God. The truth was that I trusted what food could do for me emotionally more than I trusted that God was enough to meet my needs. Food was how I made myself feel loved and cared for instead of running to God for the kind of love that only He can give. I had this hole in my soul and for 50 years I had tried to fill that emptiness with food. It had been a companion after my husband left me, a comfort and sedative when hard times came. It was how I celebrated, how I grieved, how I kept from being lonely or feeling cheated by life.
You see, I talked a good talk, but my life and behavior showed what was really true about what was in my heart of hearts. It's hard to admit these things... but how I lived and the choices I made spoke volumes about what I really believed. I lived a very selfish and self-serving life centered around getting what I wanted to eat, when I wanted it and having as much as I needed to feel satisfied. Everyone that loved me had suffered as a result of my choices through the years, probably much more than I will ever know. Realizing that broke my heart. Overeating made me very self-centered and focused on ME, no matter what the cost to others. Reading this scripture in Hebrews opened my eyes and I was able to admit for the first time how much hopelessness I felt inside. I knew that my problem was deeply spiritual in nature... and that the answer was God, and God alone. The problem wasn't that I didn't believe He existed but I had not believed that He was enough.
My love affair with food all these years had cost me everything... and to be honest, I was not sure I really knew how much until that day. But with that said, as horrific as it was, I still did not know how to make today be any different than all my yesterdays.
In the past when I read that scripture in Hebrews, I always loved the part about running the race with endurance that God has set before us. It was always a challenge for me and I would read it and get all "pumped up" for a new diet. But you know the rest of the story...I had tried and tried to run that race and had failed hundreds of times.
But early on that Saturday morning, I kept rereading that scripture, and I finally saw what the last line said. "We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish." Even when I had said in the past that I was "doing the diet for God", my eyes were still firmly fixed on me and my efforts to impress God with my distorted sense of self-discipline. The TRUTH was totally the opposite... I had to keep my eyes FIRMLY fixed on JESUS and not just at the beginning of the diet, or at the start & end of the day when I prayed and talked to Him... but from the start to the finish. And the part that hit me the hardest was realizing that even my faith comes as a gift from Him.
I sat there a little blown away by the power of that scripture, and then knelt down and asked God to "HELP ME". At this point, I didn't even know what to ask for but I knew that God knew and I trusted Him. He had given me that scripture to give my heart hope... not hope in being able to finally be strong enough to lose the weight without a gastric bypass or by a miracle diet, but HOPE in Christ Jesus for everything I needed for life and Godliness for that one day. You see, I always thought that you conjured up willpower and then asked God to come along and give you help when you needed it. This scripture showed me that you fix your eyes COMPLETELY on Jesus, who is the author and finisher of our faith. Period. It simply wasn't about me, nor did it depend on me. He doesn't come along and help if I am not strong enough... He IS my strength. I can do all things through CHRIST who is my strength. Why didn't I get this before? I said I KNEW these things before… but the only thing that made a difference this time was that it was the first time I’ve ever admitted to myself that I could not do this and felt completely helpless before God. For the first time in my life I believed that if God did not help me, I could not be helped. There was no hidden agenda left by that point.
The next day I got up and asked for help again and asked God also to help me not to forget how I felt during those 48 hours at my bottom so that I would not have to go back there again.
That's been 18 months ago and because of God's grace and his sweet, tender mercies, I have lost 132 pounds so far. I am reminded almost on a daily basis that when we get to the point that all we have is God... we find that He is MORE than enough. But the weight loss is very secondary to me now, because I know that my heart naturally wants to stray and go back to what was once familiar... which is "too much food." So I spend time in God's Word and on my knees daily so that I am reminded of truth constantly... and so my eyes can stay fixed on HIM. I constantly preach the gospel to myself because I am VERY aware of how quickly I want to take credit for everything good that happens to me. J But God has been faithful to remind me where my help comes from through his Word, through people who hold me accountable, including a couple of close friends who love me enough to tell me the truth even when it's hard to hear... and point me to the cross and to Christ when I start to waver.
There is nothing magical about what happened to me during those 48 hours… it was just part of being changed to “look more like Jesus” or sanctification. God allows us to be broken and see our sin so that we will come to Him who is the giver of all good things. He had a plan in store for my life and He knew what it would take that day to get my attention. A hug from him or a love note from His Word did not get my attention where overeating was concerned… it took a spiritual 2 by 4 across the head and deep into my heart. I see that day as a huge gift of love from the Father to me. In the Bible it says that nothing can separate me from His love. I realized during those hours that I am very, very precious to Him.
One other thing that has helped me a lot is coming to truly understand that FAITH is not a feeling. A new friend reminded me of that again this week. I have been moving through most of my life based on following my heart. I got married for that reason and my husband left me for the same. Feelings change like the wind and have nothing to do with truth. I learned through Sonship and from a very Godly Christian counselor that you have to believe what the Word says and if your feelings don't match the truth found in the Word, you can quickly know that your feelings are based in deception. I've learned to follow the truth even if I feel nothing and am in a desert spiritually, because the same promise land is right ahead whether I feel it, see it, taste it or sense it in any way. I relearn this just about every day. When I hear someone say "just trust your feelings", I have to smile. My "feelings" got me up to almost 400 pounds. I trust Christ alone and I am finding that as I grow in Him, my feelings are matching the truth that I find in His Word more each day.
With all that said, how did I stop overeating? I can't really explain it except I stopped relying on my own ability to change. I count on God to give me what I need each day to make it through the day without having to binge or overeat.
I still STRUGGLE with the desire... it did not go away. But there are days that I feel very free, and days that I struggle with wanting to "medicate" with food. And then there are those days occasionally that I want to binge so much that all I can do is stay in constant prayer, asking God to help me make it until time to go to bed. Those are the LONGEST days. But in every situation, even the days where I wake up feeling deeply discouraged and overwhelmed, God always meets me at the point of my need... right where I am. He is faithful. Nothing can come that is bigger than God's ability.
But even in the middle of knowing that I have to count on God 100%, I still have to get up and make out my food plan, call someone and make myself accountable to them each day, attend my WW meeting, weigh in and then exercise my body. What I'm trying to say is that I can't just pray and then kick back and expect God to zap the weight off my body. I just know that when I get up and count on Him to give me everything I need to make it through the day, He is faithful. When I feel shaky, I know that where I go to get "full" is no longer the refrigerator or Burger King. What I get when I choose Jesus over a cheap imitation is something that will last... and truly satisfy. Jesus is no longer the last place I run to get help. When I see red flags that tell me I am close to trouble, I run to Him THEN, counting on Him to be faithful and meet me each time to go him in prayer. And he does. So I do the practical things that help bring about weight loss but know that the power to do that comes from God alone, so my diet and exercise is only a tool that He uses to change me from the inside-out.
Different web pages and stories online helped encourage me in the beginning of my weight loss journey, and I hope this website encourages someone else now. One person that really made me feel like I had some hope after I read his story was Dr. Nick Yphantides who had lost from 467 down to a normal size. He was just a regular person whose life was very out of control but something huge changed inside of him... and he was able to do something he had never been able to do before. I knew when I read his story that I could do that too. The same GOD created us and we were both made in His image, and I knew while reading it that the same grace was available for me that had been given to him. I will always be grateful to Dr. Nick and the courage that it took to write that story and even more to lose his weight. I am not to my healthy weight yet but will keep updating this site as I go along. My choice to not have a gastric bypass had nothing to do with the fact that I think the surgery is wrong. That is a very personal decision. All I can do is share with you what happened to me, and what helped. My problem was and is a heart issue that has all kinds of emotional and physical implications attached to it and the answer is only found in Christ, who is the healer of all things. I get up daily and ask for GRACE and then BELIEVE. I don't count or believe in MY abilities or strength, but in the one who took my sin, my shame and my failure to the grave with Him and then came OUT of that grave offering me a more abundant life.
In that same chapter of Hebrews there is another verse that is my motivation for putting this page together. It says:
“So take a new grip with your tired hands and stand firm on your shaky legs. Mark out a straight path for your feet. Then those who follow you, though they are weak and lame, will not stumble and fall but will become strong.” Hebrews 12: 12, 13
A day at a time, GOD is faithful to continue that good work in us that He has started, until the day of Christ Jesus. To HIM be the glory! Thanks for reading my story. I hope in some small way it encourages you.
Counting on Jesus,
Shirley Jean
