The Inner Change of Losing Weight
I failed at weight loss for 25 years until whole health — body, mind and spirit — became my mantra.
At age 32, I lost 140 pounds after 25 years of yo-yo dieting, and I’ve kept it off for 33 years within 5 pounds of my ideal weight. As a therapist I teach people how to duplicate what I did. I’ve written articles here at Medium about the science and psychology of weight loss, but I haven’t talked about the inner change, a kind of enlightenment that triggered that weight loss success. Here’s that story:
In the early 1980s, I weighed about 330 pounds. I had always been overweight, but it got worse every year until that inner change. I was put on my first diet at the age of 7. That started 25 years of yo-yo dieting, losing some, and then gaining more, until I was 330 pounds at age 32. At that weight, I had become unable to do a lot of the things that people like to do and I started having serious health problems. I was passing kidney stones, had high cholesterol and borderline high blood pressure. Diabetes was in my family and on the horizon. I couldn’t walk far without knee pain and I could not make it up a flight of stairs without stopping to catch my breath.
One would think all that would have been enough to make me change. It made me try, but I just could not get myself to change, no matter how hard I tried. I was hopelessly addicted to my bad habits. My desire and will to lose weight always caved to my other desires.
After so many failures, I decided to stop torturing myself, and I accepted the fact that I would always be fat. I decided that I was an OK person just the way I was, and I gave up the dream of losing weight. That was the end of the constant struggle, either being miserable on a diet, or being miserable about being a big fat failure. After all, aside from being overweight, I liked myself and my life pretty much the way I was.
However, things got worse. The weight kept going up, and a very unpleasant physical exam for life insurance purposes drove home the point that I was killing myself. I didn’t qualify for the insurance. The doctor asked me how long I expected to live. Remembering what I had always heard about life expectancy, I said, “About 72”. He said, “You’ll be lucky to make it to 40, the way you’re going”. I was a smoker too.
Smart people were betting that I would be dead soon, and that was a real wake-up call. I took it seriously, more seriously than ever before, went to work to lose weight with renewed determination, and promptly and repeatedly failed again. Accepting defeat now was the acceptance of a death sentence. That’s a depressing thought, but that’s what was happening. Was I at the end? It causes one to wonder “What’s wrong with me?”
I was not a stupid person, nor was I cavalier about the important things in life. It was important for me to be a decent person, but I was definitely not a spiritual person or a moralist in the conventional sense of the word. I enjoyed eating and drinking and found the holier-than-thou religious people as well as the health-nuts, irritating and foolish. I believed in science and did not believe or value what did not stand up to rational examination. I defined my own morality and lived up to it, but it was based on reason. As far as my understanding of our world and existence, my understanding of reality was based on what can be observed and measured, the material world. I wouldn’t say I was materialistic, but my belief in what was real was limited to what I could see, touch and experience — the material, rather than the immaterial, as in spiritual, world.
I was headed for an early death, and my logical, scientific self could not solve this weight and self-control problem. My out-of-control lifestyle made me fat and unhealthy. It was killing me and I could not get it under control.
Coincidently, I had been training with a variety of people from different disciplines, experts in business as well as mental health and addiction professionals, and the subject of spirituality kept popping up. I always rejected what I thought were the “woo-woo” types with their magical thinking, but some of what they taught was intriguing and had practical value in my “real” world. The healing value of unconditional love and self-love taught by great innovators in psychotherapy, based on their religions, was undeniable. The power of the placebo effect, expectancy and faith, also could not be denied. Some spoke of a spiritual realm we needed to consider. My own science-based belief system about the nature of reality taught me that the material world is not material at all, but made from an invisible energy. Our thought life has no material substance either. There is an immaterial reality that cannot be denied, even by a scientist. I began thinking in ways quite different from my younger days when my thoughts were only about sense experience, having fun, cars, money, pizza, movies and girls, etc. Back then, in my mind, nothing besides the material, visible and sense world really existed.
My spiritual awakening began with a science-based acceptance that whatever I was, I was made of and by the energy that forms everything in the reality I believed in. I, everyone else and everything else in the universe was formed of and by this one thing, the energy of E=MC², which can neither be created nor destroyed, per the first law of thermodynamics. That scientific precept coincided with some of the teachings of the spiritual traditions, and it made me curious about the truths that these different religions and belief systems, including science, shared. Some claimed to know what the true nature of this one thing was. Some called it God and proceeded to claim things that were, frankly, unbelievable. But I was not satisfied to say I knew it was energy, and stop there. What is it, really? What are its properties and how does it operate? Were the people who spoke of God on to something? Was there a Higher Power or consciousness with intelligence and will that we could somehow connect with?
Some people have the arrogance to assume that we, humanity, are the supreme form of intelligence and being in existence, that nothing else in existence could possibly be as sophisticated and intelligent as us. The energy we are made from is just dumb stuff, they said. They said it could not possibly possess the genius that we can exhibit. Fortunately, I had enough humility to realize how arrogant such an assumption was. Could this one thing we are made of be greater than us? Could it have more intelligence and greater properties and power than us? My enlightenment came with the acceptance that whatever I am, I came from it, I am made of it, it is in me and I am in it, and that when I am done in this form, whatever energy is contained in my body and mind will transform into the energy it always was and will be. I am and will always be part of the big energy field. I have no say in the matter.
These revelations sounded a lot like the things some of the religions and holy men said, and I began to wonder what else they said. So, I began studying them, not necessarily to buy into them, but to see what else coincided with what I knew to be true. More importantly, I stopped seeing myself as an individual ego, apart from everything else. I decided I wanted to be in harmony with whatever this one thing was, let go of the ego and give my loyalty, my self, to this one thing. After all, when I’m done here, it’s got me. Why fight it? In some of the religions, even some of the therapies, this is called surrender.
Still, I wasn’t sure what it was, it’s nature and how it operated. Science had very little to say, except quantum physics. So, I became open to entertain the possibilities offered by different religions, philosophies and thinkers.
Part of this path of study led me to the concept of wholeness and whole health. Wholeness was being one with the one thing, not separate. It meant being in harmony with it rather than in conflict. Whole health meant attending to the needs of the whole self, body, mind and spirit, not just the body and material needs.
Is it a coincidence that shortly after this enlightenment and surrender, I was able to experience success with weight loss and self-control? They did happen at almost the same time.
When my mission became whole health and wholeness, I was able to succeed with permanent weight loss. In the past, when I was oblivious to these other matters and only attended to the material world and the sciences, I was unable to succeed in solving my weight problem.
In my work training clients in my weight loss method, I initially teach them that they have to focus on their weight loss work and prioritize it to be successful, make it number one in their life. This is true with any difficult-to-master discipline, like a challenging new job, a competitive sports championship, or reaching the top in a musical career. If you want to excel, it can’t be a casual, wishy-washy, half-hearted commitment. Success requires focus, prioritization and effort. You have to concentrate on that one thing and make it the most important thing in your life. But before the training is finished, I tell clients about the most important thing I learned in order to be successful at weight loss: Weight loss had to be a part of the greater mission to establish whole health and wholeness. That’s what I needed to make number one in my life. Only then did I tap into the power to succeed.
The desire for whole health, not simply weight loss, preceded my success in permanent weight loss. Success would not have been possible without my knowledge of behavioral therapy and addictions, but I had that knowledge before this awakening and by themselves, they failed me. Only when I made my priority wholeness rather that weight loss did I succeed.
The science and psychology of my approach gives it power no diet approach comes close to. However, I believe that it was the awakening and focusing on wholeness and whole health rather than weight alone, that was the missing ingredient before, when I was unable to succeed.
Make whole health your priority. Attend to those needs first. When you do, it will take care of the rest.
William Anderson is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, the author of “The Anderson Method of Permanent Weight Loss” (paperback and Kindle at Amazon, audiobook at Audible). He was obese until his early thirties when he found the solution. He lost 140 pounds, has kept it off for 35 years, and has taught thousands to successfully manage their weight.
