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Addressing the Goo

by Lisa Bonnice

You know how you can feel that there is something that you’re supposed to do with your life, but you just don’t know how to get there? I’ve always known that I was to be a writer and a teacher, but it was only recently that I discovered what I was supposed to write and teach about. Everything that has occurred in my life, all the training and experiences that I’ve had, have directed me toward writing Addressing the Goo—the metaphysics of weight loss.

I knew I had a weight problem, but what I didn’t know was why diets had stopped working for me. Gradually, over the years, I had gained an extra 75 pounds and no matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t budge.

I began with holistic approaches, but when they failed me I went ahead and tried more desperate measures—you name it, I tried it. I’d been to countless doctors, weight loss programs, gyms, bookstores (You should see the weight loss library I’ve accumulated.), counted calories and carbs, used starch blockers, potato powder, and ate for my type. I bought supplements, drank diet tea, used laxatives, diuretics—pretty much everything short of bulimia and anorexia. To compound the problem, exercising literally made me ill! But still, the weight remained. Either that, or I’d lose a little and gain it right back.

What was most frustrating was that I had been a student of metaphysics¹ for almost 20 years and I couldn’t find any books written exclusively about using metaphysical theory to lose weight. In the meantime, I had researched mind/body medicine, Reiki, holistic medicine, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, meditation, blah blah blah. I worked as an editor with Future Medicine Publishers and got to play with cutting edge technologies and knowledge. I even entered AIHT’s program to get a degree in metaphysics. I gathered knowledge about how the body and mind work. Even with this focused research, I found that the amount of information available on the specific subject of holistic weight loss was miniscule. Oh sure, books mentioned it, but only as a paragraph or two. That wasn’t enough to help me.

Then one day I had an epiphany. The book I was looking for didn’t exist. I had to write it myself. I was a writer for one of the largest news organizations in the world, but it had never occurred to me that I was going to have to do this work. Problem was, first I had to solve the problem before I could write about it. I couldn’t do it the easy way and just regurgitate what some other writer had come up with.

What I discovered was that there’s more to weight loss than just eating less and exercising more. You have to have nothing to gain by staying heavy. You have to fight societal pressures to overshoot your ideal weight and make yourself miserable until you get there. You have to be able to feel comfortable in a “sexy” body and not be afraid of sexual advances. You have to work through the issues that keep you fat.

...you have to love yourself enough to work toward your healthiest form...

In essence, you have to love yourself enough to work toward your healthiest form, not some phony ideal that shallow, immature marketing people have come up with to sell their products to you.

Losing weight can be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, especially when the attitude of many people is that it’s a snap and you must just be weak if you can’t do it.

Think of it this way. You’ve put on the weight for a reason. This is the way you have chosen to bury your issues. Some people find other ways, like drugs, or obsessions, etc. That’s another reason they are thin and we aren’t.² Instead of resolving an issue or reacting to it in another unhealthy way, we buried it in excess flesh. In order to take it back off, we must resolve those issues. And this can hurt. Your ego has a field day keeping you from this pain. It distracts you with Twinkies.

However, with the use of meditation, affirmations, journaling and a host of other “New Age” tools, I was able to lose over 40 pounds without really changing my diet all that much. Mostly, I just started eating healthier and paying attention to when I was full. That was advice that I’d tried to follow before, but until I used it in tandem with the other methods, I would always fall back into pig-out mode. I had to face my issues first. Those issues were keeping me fat.

As I experimented and lost weight, I wrote. I had setbacks, and it wasn’t easy. But in the end, I’m a whole lot happier and healthier than I was when I started the process. I do still have a ways to go, to lose the rest of the weight, but then again, I may decide that I don’t need to lose anymore. I’m going to stop when I’m feeling my best, not when I look like a swimsuit model. And feeling my best means that I’ve finished with issues that cause me to gain weight.

My hope is that others can learn from my experiences. I feel like I’ve paved a path that hasn’t been trod before and now it will be easier for others to follow. That’s the purpose for my weight gain. So I could learn from it, and then write and teach others. Won’t you come down the path with me?

¹I don’t mean with AIHT. I mean that I spent my life devouring everything I could find on the topic.

²Unless they have drug and weight problems!

Lisa Bonnice has earned her living as a stand-up comedienne, humor columnist, writer and producer for a television variety show, television reporter, editor for Future Medicine Publishers’ Alternative Medicine—The Definitive Guide, and, most recently, spent over five years as an award-winning affiliate writer and producer for MSNBC.com. Oh yeah—she’s also lived a zillion or so times. Addressing the Goo is available in paperback or ebook version at http://www.addressingthegoo.com.