As I was developing my new food lifestyle, I learned that one way to find meaning in your life was to get different layers of yourself, of your being, aligned and working together.  Body and mind (and soul, if you can manage that).  If you’re just sitting there, forcing yourself to eat a lettuce-only diet to reach your goal weight, it’s a pretty terrible existence.  I decided that was why dieting didn’t work for me – diets depended on pure willpower, on forcing myself to do things I didn’t want and didn’t find rewarding or meaningful.  Even if I succeeded in losing some weight by force of will, I had no plan to live any differently after the diet ended.  My old life would be there waiting for me, and the old body would come back.  There is no way that I would lose 120 pounds and then have it come back.  It’s more than I could stand, I would really hate myself.  I needed a new way.

I invented a new way of being.  Along with that came a new system of values.  In that hierarchy of things I value, having my body under control was at the top of what I was aiming for in life.  How do you get your weight under control?  Do what thin people do.  Make a lifetime commitment to (1) monitor your weight and (2) regulate your food intake.  If I was successful, I would get my weight under control and keep it where I wanted it.  I decided this should be a joyful way of living.  Force would not be used.  I should be able to find meaning in the journey and the journey should not end with a goal weight.  This is my lifetime goal.  It should be rewarding!

For now, I reward myself for keeping it together, keeping my new values at the top (where they should be).  I reward myself for making this new lifestyle work.  The rewards reinforce my weight loss and are not counterproductive.  I make the promises to myself and then I keep them, so that I trust myself and have an incentive to keep the different parts of myself together willingly. 

-The Doctor