Janice: truth teller

Janice’s story is different from the other stories in this collection so I’m going to tell it differently.  I’m going to include some of my own reactions here alongside her story.  

Everyone’s story about living with excess weight holds pain, haunting images and torturous self talk.  Janice’s story has these elements, and it also includes her journey into an eating disorder, one that she’s recovering from, and one that’s still fresh enough to sting in the retelling. 

Her courage in sharing her journey is palpable as she describes her spiral into the throes of her sickness and her subsequent climb back out. 

Why would I include her story here among people who have successfully moved beyond yoyo diets?  Mainly because of the statistic that Janice shared with me: she is the face of a frightening demographic, post 30s women who are developing eating disorders, not as a recurrence but with the initial onset of the disease.   Eating disorders are growing among this population more rapidly than any other (with the exception of young men). 

“I look around the waiting room” in the eating disorders clinic of the St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, says Janice, and “I see women, frail old women who look like they’re 75, but they’re 50.” 

Janice’s story is included here because there’s raw truth in it and because I’ve been up to the line that divides disordered eating and eating disorders.  I’ve never crossed it myself, but it would be easy.  Her story is here because it’s inspiring alongside these other women’s stories.  Yes, of course, there are warnings in here.  There’s pain and there’s very clear “don’t go there” messages.  There’s also amazing inspiration from Janice about saying what’s really going on, about naming it and reaching out for help, and about sharing deeply from her heart, about wading into the muck of our inner thoughts and parsing through the pieces, noticing what works and what doesn’t, and about tenacity and forgiveness (mostly of ourselves) in recovery. 

Janice in 2006.

 

Her story, as most of the other stories do, begins with yoyo dieting.  In 1996, Janice was 27, living at home and weighing 250 pounds.  “I just made a decision,” she remembers. “I did my own thing, exercising, watching what I ate, pretty basic calorie counting, and as things progressed, I just kept going.”  Using a home treadmill for exercise, Janice was down 80 or 90 pounds by the end of the year.  

After moving to her own apartment, Janice started going to a gym.  “I wouldn’t have been caught dead being overweight in a gym,” she says with a smile in her voice.  She got off the last 20 pounds, working out to excess:  three hours a day for five or six days each week.  

Janice still has the photo of herself at her first 5K.  It’s got the date on it:  October 4, 1997.  That marked the beginning of several races that she completed.  “I was really into it.” 

“I started to notice an inability to maintain,” she remembers, and in retrospect, she recognizes how much she was bingeing on food at this point.  From this vantage point, she can also trace this behavior back to her childhood. 

Janice is quick to point out that her upbringing was pretty conventional regarding food.  “I didn’t grow up in a household that had a particularly unhealthy attitude toward food.  I had a normal family, three meals a day with normal amounts.  My mother had her own weight problem, but I never observed bizarre food behaviors.  I was aware of my mother trying to lose weight in a normal way – eating better or exercising more, but never with strange or drastic dieting.” 

“As a young child, I remember craving and feeling comforted by food,” Janice says.  “I don’t know why.  I don’t know where that comes from.  I remember looking for soda cans so that I could return them to the store and get the pennies and getting a chocolate bar or a donut or a bag of chips – trying to amass all of the things I wanted.” 

Now Janice looks back at her weight loss in the late 90s, and she says, “I have no idea how I was able to manage that.  At the time, I think the motivation came from watching the scale, and once a week, I would go out to dinner and have whatever I wanted.  Once I got in the ballpark, near my goal weight, I started really struggling.  I would have uncontrollable binge sessions.  ‘I can’t go back, I can’t regain,’ I would tell myself.”  

Knowing that something was wrong, Janice went to a counselor for the first time then.  “I was a terrible patient,” she remembers.  “I never told the truth.  I was never honest about what I was feeling.” 

Janice’s description of this phase in her journey is worth underlining.  Her obsessive behavior, like exercising with precision (“Whatever I did last week, I had to do this week”) and her food binges really only kicked in when she got close to her goal weight.  “Before I had goals like hanging up my clothes without folding them in on the sides or shopping off the rack, but once I got in the ballpark [with my weight], numbers became everything.” 

“It really fed into what was already a pre-existing perfectionist complex that I had always had.  In everything else I did, I was a real achiever.”  Janice’s understanding of how the perfectionism came into play here is pivotal to her recovery now.  “A perfectionist will always see less than 100 percent as a failure,” she says now.  “99 is the same as 1, and when I say that, I don’t really believe it, but my actions will sometimes follow it.” 

Janice’s weight came back beginning in 1999.  “Losing weight and gaining it back again is devastating.  If you didn’t feel like a failure before, you sure do now.  You had it in your grasp.  You blew it, not just overnight, but you blew it one pound at a time in strange, weird dynamic that you don’t really understand yourself.” 

“I sat there for a number of years with my weight,” says Janice. 

About five years ago, Janice went back to Weight Watchers.  “I had had good success with them in the past (“I used them to lose those last 20 pounds or so back in 1996-97”), and I decided to go back there and just take it one step at a time and slowly work away at it.”  Janice went from a high of 267 to just over 200 pounds during this time.  

Then, in 2007, “thing really started to go haywire.”  Janice’s bingeing problems had continued but she hadn’t yet crossed into purging. 

Janice ran into a life-long close friend who told her about her experience with Dr. Bernstein’s diet.  “I had heard about them.  I had a lot of reservations, it seemed near starvation, it seemed so strict.”  Janice shared her concerns with her friend.  “You know, it’s strict,” said her friend, “but it works.” 

Desperate, Janice tried it.  For $600 per month (Canadian), she went three times each week to the clinic where she was weighed, she got B6 and B12 injections, and she met with a nurse, and every two or three weeks, she would meet with the doctor. 

Janice describes the approach there as very medical, and she’s careful about her words when she talks about her experience there.  “It’s exactly as they advertise on TV.  I can recite the commercial word for word.  It’s medically supervised rapid weight loss.  It’s a very strict diet, very low calorie, very low carb.  There’s a fixed yes/no list.  They check your urine when you come in so there’s no room for lying.” 

“It was my choice to go there, and it was working,” says Janice.  She started in late 2007 and by her birthday in early March, Janice was down to 160.  

Around this time, Janice travelled to San Francisco for a conference.  “I felt just like before, when I got close to the ballpark of my goal weight, things fell apart.”  Janice talked to herself then, “’I can’t sustain this because of the bingeing.’” In holiday mode during her trip to San Francisco, Janice overate and purged for the first time. 

“I had eaten so much, I could have almost been sick without even trying,” she remembers.  “But I did try, and it gave me some physical relief.  I remember thinking it wasn’t that hard.” 

That was the beginning of her cycle.  “The bingeing and purging would go in cycles,” Janice says.  “Once I knew how to do it, it became a way to deal with it. It was like I had this technique in my back pocket – if I couldn’t keep the bingeing under control, I could use it.” 

“It’s very bizarre,” she says now.  “The whole time it’s like you’re a split personality.  There’s a rational, intellectual self that’s looking down on the irrational self pushing a grocery cart in the store.  It’s very strange.” 

“Most people might not know that you actually end up gaining weight in the long run with this cycle.  With the bingeing, some of that food stays in your system, and it’s very high sugar, very high fat.  You also start to learn the rules of the game – some things purge better than others, the logistics of the purge itself, and you start to get quite expert at it, you plan how to binge.” 

For most of that year, Janice continued to suffer.  “I was in bad shape,” she says.  “I was gaining weight, I had a lot of water retention and bloating, and I had this strange and warped mind.  It was the worst of all possible worlds:  I was gaining weight and now I had this other problem.” 

Having left Dr. Bernstein’s weight loss clinic, Janice was forced to go to her general practitioner to “come clean.”  She needed medical validation about why she had to extend her leave of absence from her PhD program.  “It was the only way to get a year of medical leave.  That was the impetus at the time.” 

“Getting help from my doctor set me on a path that was helpful.” Janice started an outpatient program in an eating disorders clinic at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.  

“Things were up and down in 2009. I had to come clean to my boyfriend (who lives in London).  He’d actually suspected some things.  I thought I was really good at hiding it, but I probably purged in every restaurant bathroom in Vancouver.  He saw things, but he didn’t know how to broach the subject.” 

“That was my lowest point,” says Janice.  “My nerves were shot.  I couldn’t handle anything.  I was on autopilot. All of my work got done on schedule, and I got awesome reviews.  In fact, I was teaching at three different universities on probably a 200% work schedule – this would be considered insane by any university/college instructor. But no one had any idea that my life was literally in the toilet.” 

After Janice started therapy and started talking to her boyfriend, “things got better.  We actually ended up connecting much better, and I started to see what a big support he was.  He didn’t profess to understand.  He just wanted to help.” 

Janice is now over a year into her recovery.  “I’ve learned to understand the disorder.  It’s like a lot of recovery. The chance for relapse is always there, like alcoholism. You can have 10 years of sobriety and tomorrow have a drink.  The amount of time that goes by is irrelevant.  You can’t let your guard down.” 

Janice has had relapses.  She travelled to London to spend six weeks with her boyfriend, and she had cycles of bingeing and purging.  “I don’t even know the answer to why.  It’s completely irrational.  I have to stop trying to solve an irrational problem with a rational solution.  I’m a ‘to do’ list person.  I’m task oriented.  I’m an organizer, and to be told that this doesn’t work that way, it’s much more organic, I’ve only recently started to get underneath all that.” 

“I have gained some weight.  I want to approach this in a normal way.  I use Weight Watchers. The accountability is helpful, but I still have the yes/no lists in my head.” 

“It’s not deep, dark things.  It’s a combination of my basic personality and how I deal with emotions.  Even at the level of recognition, even having my feelings, I’m a real minimizer.  I allow it for everyone else, but not for myself.  I have always skipped over the contemplation to the moving on part.  Through therapy and talking – I’ve learned that those are necessary steps.  Sooner or later, things erupt.  If you don’t deal with your crap, whatever it is, it’s going to come out, it’s going to force its way out.” 

Janice is incredulous that she was told that residential care would be best for her.  Even having someone suggest this option to her horrified her.  “It’s not what you want, it’s what you need.  You need something that’s going to jolt you.  It’s not like in the movies, it’s a real process.  It’s really, really hard.  Real change is really hard.”  While Janice has not gone to residential treatment, “it’s something that’s always looming out there, and more than one of my counselors have (and continue to) recommend it, insisting that I’m a good candidate for that kind of program (mature, rational, motivated).” 

Even now, Janice sees that she’s got a journey in front of her.  “I can have 100 rational thoughts, and the one irrational thought can win.” 

“I can see them for what they are now,” she says.  “I still have a scale.  I look at it as a tool.  I get on it if I want to get on it.  This is going to take a while.” 

“My goal is to be a lot kinder to myself when I get there,” she says. 

Janice in 2008.

 

Now 41, Janice is also reaching for sustainability in her eating.  “I want to eat in a way that’s sustainable.  I want to manage it myself.” 

“My biggest goal is learning to accept myself.  What if I never lost another pound?  Would that be okay?  I’m still grappling with that one.  If this were someone else’s story, I’d say, ‘That’s great, you should be proud of yourself, you’ve come a long way both on the scale and in life.’ But when it’s you, it’s just a negative.  When I was this weight coming down, I was happy.  What’s the difference between 170 pounds now and 170 pounds then?” 

In the weeks since I interviewed Janice, she sent me this update as we sent edits back and forth on this post:  “I’m down to about 160 and working on getting to a comfortable 150, where I intend to maintain for the rest of my life!  Weight Watchers is going well, and I haven’t relapsed in 6 weeks (today).  I’m feeling positive and learning to live with food, which means all food.” 

Near the end of our interview, Janice said something that wraps up her story well: “You’re only as sick as your secrets.”  She’s liberated herself from her secrets, and she’s shared them here with stark courage and grace.  And I extend my gratitude to her.  Thanks, Janice.

rachel: health revolution

Almost two years ago, Rachel moved halfway across the US and seized the opportunity to reinvent herself.  “I just decided to put into practice all of the things that I already knew,” she says.  

At 39, Rachel has spent a life time on self-study, delving into health and wellness, the food industry, storytelling and myth, women’s issues, and spirituality.  Until she hit the turning point two years ago that came with her cross-country move, she often chastised herself for not acting on what she had learned over the years.  “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this?” she repeatedly berated herself.  “Then, all of sudden, it just clicked,” she recalls, “And I said to myself, today I am just going to start living my life again… I guess I finally just reached that turning point, and got sick and tired of being depressed and feeling lifeless; I realized how hard I was being on myself and decided it was time to forgive myself and move forward.”  Rachel is much gentler with herself now as she continues on her journey. “I just realized I had to get there and it was going to take time to heal.”  

Rachel at her peak weight.

 

 Rachel doesn’t pinpoint one particular moment or even one specific piece of information that precipitated her shift.  She likens her transformation to a seed sprouting.  “I wasn’t really living my life,” she says.  “I had just checked out and let depression take over.”  When she moved and decided to make some big changes in her eating and activity, it was a reclaiming of her life:  “I had to decide that I wanted to live my life. I don’t want to just survive any more, I want to start living a full life and thrive,” she told herself, and she turned toward filling those spaces in her life that had become vacant.  

The convergence of Rachel’s self-study materials resulted in a “lifestyle, a journey of being in touch with me, a spiritual healing and rebirth.”  Some people point to behavior modification when they hear Rachel describe her shift, but she bristles at that description.  “It was an emotional and spiritual shift in the way I think and exist.  It wasn’t behavior modification at all, but a complete transformation in the way that I interact with the world, the way I see and feel about myself.  My behavior changed merely as a result of these internal shifts.  They were gradual, but over the course of two years, I changed the way I eat, the way I move – everything – even sleeping.”  

Rachel draws on some key influences in her self-study, including:  

• Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationship with Food Through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling by Anita Johnson.  “If people have issues with food,” says Rachel, “I tell them, ‘Here, you need to read this.’”  The powerful mechanisms of storytelling, myths and archetypes that this book reveal were instrumental for Rachel.  “I have reread it like six times,” she says.  “It’s one of those books that speak to the very core of my essence.”  Rachel recently taught a class at her fellowship to guide people to the same transformation that she has created for herself, and she used bits and pieces of this book for the class. “I hope I’m planting the seed for transformation the way it was planted for me,” she says.
• The Hungry Self: Women, Eating and Identity by Kim Chernin.  The fundamental guiding question of this book really spoke to Rachel, as she too asked herself the question:“What’s the name of my hunger?” This book helped her realize that what she was missing in her life was “love;” until she started to love herself, she couldn’t give or receive the love she needed to heal her life.
•  Diet for a New World by John Robbins.  A very powerful statement of the sad state of affairs in the US, while Rachel found this book “preachy” in spots, it was also very educational and eye-opening for her.  “It talks about the differences between ‘real’ food and the processed junk that’s mostly found in grocery stores.  My mom gave me that book a long time ago, and it’s stayed with me as I’ve grown and matured.”
• Eat, Drink And Be Healthy -The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating – by Walter C. Willett, M.D. Rachel refers to the new and improved “Healthy Food Pyramid” published in this book as her primary guide for nutritional values. As a vegetarian, she has had to alter the contents somewhat. Shifting “Nuts and Legumes” down into the bottom category with “Whole Grains” and eliminating most of the top half of the pyramid, including “Fish and Poultry” and “Red Meat.” While she still consumes eggs and dairy, she continues to contemplate adopting a full fledged vegan lifestyle for its long term health benefits.
• Body for Life by Bill Phillips.  Although, she actually prefers the just for women’s edition Body for Life for Women by Dr. Pamela Peeke. “At the recommendation of a friend from the gym, I checked out these books from the library and have implemented many of the strategies in my own weight lifting routine.  While Phillips can seem a bit arrogant and has a rather haughty attitude, I find his tools to be quite effective. In the alternate version however, Peeke uses virtually the exact same information, but tailors it to women in a much more accessible way, which is why I prefer her approach. All in all, I find the advice for this program to be streamlined and highly effective.”
•  Healthy Weighs: A Non-Dieting Approach to Weight Management.  Through this in-person class, which is sponsored by the Health District of Northern Larimer County (Colorado), Rachel was introduced to many nutrient-dense “super foods” in the class.  “I eat kale all the time now, and I had never had it before that class.  Quinoa?  I have to admit that even as educated as I already was about food and nutrition prior to taking the class, I had never even heard of it before.  The class got me started on trying new things, and now when something new comes along, I have a ‘let’s try it’ attitude.”
• Counseling and support groups at the university where Rachel was in graduate school a few years ago.  “I participated in an eating disorder support group just before my mom passed away, and it was helpful,” recalls Rachel.  “The counselor I was seeing suggested that I go even though I do not have a formally diagnosed eating disorder. ‘You’ve got something going on with food,’ she said.”

Rachel’s habits now tend toward healthy food.  “My relationship with food is totally different now.  I try to have super foods like leafy greens and rich anti-oxidant foods every day.  I need very little food because I’m eating such rich food.  I used to eat more unhealthy ‘non’ food, and I was never satisfied so I’d eat too much and then feel so sick my stomach would get upset and I couldn’t sleep at night from the discomfort.”  Rachel often looks at the foods she used to eat, and she rarely feels drawn to them.  “To me, it’s not food.  It’s empty calories.  I go for food that isn’t processed or chemically modified.”  

Rachel last August. I love that she sent a picture of herself in progress. It makes it seem less like she took a magic pill, more real.

 

She’s not a perfectionist, though.  “If I feel like having something, I will.”  She’ll have an inner dialog with herself if she’s drawn to empty calories.  “’It’s okay,’ I tell myself.  I realize it won’t fill me up.  I go with the ‘everything in moderation’ approach.  I give myself permission to not be perfect.  Before, it was all or nothing with me and food.  I would label things ‘good’ or ‘bad.’  Now, I say, ‘This is not really food, it’s not nutritionally healthy, but I can enjoy it and forgive myself.”  She’ll also ask herself, “’Do I really want to sabotage myself today?’  But then she realizes that it isn’t sabotage at all because it’s ok to have a little splurge now and then.  

Another dramatic change that Rachel has made is her level of activity.  She exercises so frequently now that she can absorb little blips like kettle corn at the movies.  “I move all the time.  It’s a really big thing for me.  I was always physically active as a kid, but it gradually eroded for me as I got older.  I’ve reclaimed that.  If I don’t go to the gym, I get stiff and uncomfortable really fast.”   

When Rachel moved to her new town, she joined a gym and told herself to give it a try and go every day.  Gradually, she noticed her strength changing.  “Before joining the gym, I had lost 15 pounds just by changing my interactions with food.  After I started working out regularly, I started to really feel good.  If I’d miss a day, I’d feel it, but I would go the next day, and it would totally change the way I felt.  It has become a habit.  I can’t envision not going.  It’s part of my daily routine.”  

Rachel’s ultimate goal is to return to dance.  “I haven’t found a studio yet – that requires peak physical condition.  I’m working toward that peak.  That’s my ultimate goal.”  

Rachel started her journey at 233 pounds.  She’s down to 173.  “I’m about three-quarters of the way there,” she says.  “I’m happy with my results overall; but, I still get really frustrated with my belly.  The rest of me is where I want to be.  I can do crunches like you wouldn’t believe.  I’ve gone from over 40 inches around my waist to 34 inches.”  

Now a size 8, Rachel will laugh when her teenage daughter suggests that Rachel try on her daughter’s clothes, thinking they might fit.  “I’m a size 8.  She’s like a 0!  My goal is to get down to a 4/6.  For dance, I want to lose another 30-40 pounds, but I’m flexible.  If I lose another 20, and I can do everything I want to do, that’s fine.”  

Another habit that Rachel has acquired in her transformation has been spending time on her own, journaling, “just doing my own thing, me time.”  Her journaling has helped her recognize her old pattern of bottling up emotions and letting them “eat at me.”  Now journaling and meditation are part of her routine.  “It’s a good way of checking in with myself.”  Tarot cards are another tool that Rachel uses.  “I find it very therapeutic; it unlocks the psyche, and brings up stuff I didn’t necessarily know was going on deep down.”  

People often ask Rachel about her health revolution, and she’s eager to share her journey.  The class she taught at her fellowship gave her the chance to outline her tools, and she often shares them with people who ask.  “As an educator, I’m driven to want to help people.”  People ask her “What’s your secret?”  She responds:  “I don’t diet ever!  I have made a lifestyle commitment to change my relationship with food and heal myself.”   

When Rachel sent this photo (taken just a few days ago), she said, "Please bear in mind that I have lost 60 pounds thus far, but still have about 30-40 left to reach my final goal."

 

As she explains where she’s been and what freed her from the yo-yo dieting, she is sometimes stunned that people continue to resistant her ideas so vehemently.  “I think our culture is incredibly disordered around food.  I had to personally work through this process.  It takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of shifting.  For me, the intellectual part was there, but the spiritual was missing.  I had to come to it on my own.  When I was ready, I knew how to make it happen.  I had all of these tools in place.”  

And make it happen, she did.

giving up perfect

Perfectionism is a thread that runs through yoyo diets.  We’ve got to get it RIGHT!  Follow the rules.  Be good.      

I’ve had some poignant conversations this week about giving up perfectionism for the sake of healing, for the sake of finding what’s underneath (our own souls), for the sake of being real.      

I’ll use Oprah’s famous “what I know for sure” lead-in here:  I know for sure that perfectionism rots the insides.  It chews us up and spits us out.  There’s no surviving it.  It’s gotta go.     

To move beyond yoyo dieting, we have to declare perfectionism dead.       

And many of the women profiled her have done just that.  Sometimes they’ve done it with grace, and sometimes they’ve done it kicking and screaming so that their fingernails got ripped off when they tried to grip the perfectionism really, really hard.  But they did it.  They learned to forgive themselves.  They learned to dust themselves off and get back up and be themselves again.  They learned to take the long-range view and hold solidly to who they know themselves to be.       

  

Anna Quindlen, a supreme writer!

Anna Quindlen wasn’t talking about food and eating when she wrote her powerful commencement speech for Mount Holyoke College in 1999 (link here for the text — it’s well worth the read — it was later adapted to become a book called Being Perfect, one of my favorite books of all time!).  Here’s a quote that I treasure:    

But nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.     

I forget this idea all the time.  Mercifully, these fine people whom I’ve interviewed remind me of it.