From Bagels to Buddha. Judi Hollis
encouragement and support from someone slightly ahead of you on the path, to show you how to “keep on keepin’ on.” In addition to advice from experts, you need modeling and direction from those who’ve walked before you. They can help you to forgive yourself as well as others. That’s why I encouraged attendance at twelve-step groups. I know how much people need help further down the line after the initial zeal and firm resolve wanes.
My whole purpose in developing eating-disorder units along the lines of addiction treatment was to offer overeaters an opportunity to get off their own backs. I saw that helping people acknowledge and accept that they had already tried their best would make them available to receive help from others. They weren’t bad people trying to get good, but rather sick people trying to get well. I also saw the similar psychological makeup between overeaters and alcoholics/addicts, and realized that they needed similar types of group and family therapy and similar spiritual interventions. But all needed an initial surrender, and each individual must find his or her own way.
Maturity is the ability to live with unresolved problems. Living with fewer answers can help you to open up to the wonder of life. If you want to heal and grow, you must become a spiritual adult. Whether you had a battered childhood or not, whether you grew up in poverty or not, even if you were “disadvantaged” in every way, you can begin a brand-new life today. Surrender allows you to be master of your own fate.
Even if life is risky, you can walk more gently and positively, as if the outcome is already written. You do the best you can to direct your intentions toward the outcome you’d like, and then gratefully hold the results with a loose hand.
Eventually you might even be grateful for your struggles with food. Sir William Osler, an early teacher in American medicine, advised that the key to longevity was to develop a lifelong, chronic illness and focus on taking care of it. That is the purpose your food obsession serves. It keeps you awake, keeps you paying attention, and keeps you motivated for self-care—that is, if you keep paying attention. According to the National Weight Loss Registry, which accumulates data on those who’ve maintained large weight losses over time, two important behaviors show up across the board: people who weighed themselves regularly and kept some form of food journal were most successful. They remained conscious and awake.
Those of you who struggle in your relationship with food have an extremely persistent problem. You are prone to relapse and will probably revert back to compulsive eating. The only constant principle will be: get back on the horse. No matter what, each day, every day requires saddling up and getting back on that horse. Day after day after day, get back in the race. It is best to make sure you are riding in the direction the horse is going. If not, don’t complain about a saddle horn up your rump.
A great spiritual leader once said, “You be the change you want to see in the world.” It is when you take on acts of loving kindness, like saving a spider or doing your job without ego just because it needs to be done, that your actions change you. You get the feeling of peace and responsibility because that’s what you outwardly project. You become what you want to be. What three things could you do differently this week in order to demonstrate the way you would like to be treated? Try it and see if you don’t get back what you give out.
You may balk at my proposition that overeating represents a crisis in spiritual development. You may be like many of my patients who were avid churchgoers, organizers of many charities, dedicated to helping others, behaving in what they felt was a spiritual manner. They all looked the part, even the 600-pound father of eight who told me he could not adhere to my recommendations because he had to devote most of his free time to the church. He died in a pew.
He and many others were not able to balance self-care with overly zealous caring for others. They didn’t adhere to the airline instructions to grab for your own oxygen mask before attending to your babies. They didn’t honor the sacredness of their own bodies and psyches. They gave and gave and gave, then felt depleted, and filled themselves with excess. Is this you?
Or are you a person who takes on self-care as a spiritual quest? An essential part of you seeks your own lightness. You have probably spent years talking about seeking a lighter body weight. I’m suggesting a different lightness (spirituality), which, once found, will help your body contour to its proper size and heft and stay there. As my lecture career moves into its fourth decade, I meet up with people who’ve heard me speak many years before. Though they note that my body is still slim and healthy, they comment, “You were really hellfire and brimstone in the old days. Now, you seem so much softer.” Taking an honest look at yourself and seeking compassionate understanding can often help you to soften up as well.
Please use this book as your personal fabric softener. When I initially proposed the disease concept for overeaters, it gave them permission to accept themselves and soften a little. This offered a justification to take time out of a busy life to attend self-help meetings, or a license to ask the waitress to take back the tossed salad and bring one with the dressing on the side, or a way to say “no” to a demanding family member piling on more work, or even as permission to take a legitimate thirty-minute lunch break. Attending to their malady made them stronger people. When you accept that you have a disease, you take yourself seriously, and you ask for the same consideration from others.
Walking the planet more softly and developing openness and lightness and a more inquiring mind is a fundamental, but long-neglected, part of treating your food obsession. On this walk, you will meet and greet a lost essential self. This meeting is absolutely necessary to achieve permanent weight loss. Whether you need professional mentors, friendly support, or travels to distant lands, stay awake and pay attention.
How will you know when you meet your Buddha on the road? What does your spiritual self look like? What does “spiritual” mean? Could a gutsy, tough, and headstrong New Yorker be spiritual? Or does being spiritual mean giving up to become a dishrag? Can you just wave a white flag and be zapped thin? How would a person know if he or she actually surrendered?
You’ll know you’ve surrendered when you notice the following:
Symptoms of a Spiritual Awakening
1. Acting spontaneously without past fears.
2. Loss of interest in judging people.
3. A tendency to let things happen, giving up control.
4. Praying toward heaven while rowing toward shore.
5. Loss of interest in conflict.
6. Appreciating the body’s function rather than its form.
7. Loss of the ability to worry.
8. Frequent reminders that “if you spot it, you got it.”
9. Understanding that “they do it not to you, but for them.”
10. Trusting of your instincts, others, and nature.
11. Attitude of gratitude and abundance.
12. Personal acceptance, warts and all.
•••
“If you are willing
to serenely bear the trial
of being displeasing to yourself,
then you will be for all
a pleasant place of shelter.”
St. Thérèse of Lisi eux
Part one
1983
Jewish girls don’t bow, kneel, or genuflect . . . except in bed, of course.
So what’s a nice Jewish girl like me doing in a place like this?
A