Love yourself, then lose the love handles

Not long ago, I saw a woman who shared an amazing story with me. On the surface, she lost 60 pounds — and kept it off.

That fact alone is remarkable.

But what I saw is a woman who transformed in the process. Let me share with you some of what I learned from her.

Marsha was in her 50s, single and overweight. After the birth of her daughter, she had gained 40 pounds, and several decades later, the pounds were still there — and counting. In the meantime, she had tried every diet in the book along with a gamut of exercise programs, supplements and even medication. Most of it worked for awhile, but then the pounds would creep back with a vengeance.

"What changed?" I asked her.

"I realized that I was losing weight for the wrong reasons."

"What do you mean?"

"I was losing weight because I hated myself. Nothing ever worked for long because things built out of hate don't last."

"How did you know you hated yourself?" I asked her.

"I was constantly beating myself up. Telling myself what I should and shouldn't be doing; giving myself a hard time for screwing up; thinking that I was a failure because I was fat, ugly, bad etc. I learned to change how I talked to myself."

To my mind, Marsha's experience points out that the reason we do something is often more important than what we do. Marsha knew she could get to her goal weight. The real question was how she got there.

Imagine that you are creating a new, thinner body. You can construct that body in one of two ways. Using the first, your body is created out of self-criticism and judgment. Using the second, your body is made of affirmation and acceptance. Which one do you think is more likely to last?

The irony is that the reason most of us want to lose weight is because we want to feel good about ourselves. But what Marsha's story points out is that we cannot wait until we have a "great body" or "the perfect life" to feel good about ourselves.

We must start by loving ourselves first, not because we have the things we think we need to be loved, but simply because we exist.

Practice also makes perfect. If we have spent an entire year beating ourselves up while we are losing weight, then even when we get to the goal, it will be very hard to turn that self-hate button off. We then have trouble enjoying the fruits of our labor. On the other hand, if we have spent a year learning how to affirm, praise and accept ourselves, then it will be all the easier to do that when we have the body of our dreams.

So next time you go on a diet, think about following one that skips the criticism and serves up large portions of self-love. Enjoy!

Dr. Astrid Pujari is a Seattle M.D. with an additional degree as a medical herbalist; she practices at the Pujari Center and teaches as part of the residency programs at Virginia Mason and Swedish Providence hospitals. Her column is a weekly feature in Sunday Northwest Life. Send questions to apujari@seattletimes.com for possible use in future columns.