YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I am 5 feet 10 inches tall, about 210 pounds.

I am a 38 year old male.

There! If we are only as sick as our secrets, then I am a little less sick now. In the near future I'll post more about how I got here, and what my plan is.

For now I want to plainly state the facts. To get them out there.

Hello oak. I hate myself for making everything about myself, but here goes - I feel so sad how closely twisted my ideas of food and managing my constant anxiety are. I learned very young that I could get a little break from the constant anxiety with food. But now there is heightened and heightened anxiety about my weight. It happens so quickly that I over-order at a fast food place, and then I find I eat to the point of discomfort.

Walking helps, and drinking ice water helps. Self-forgiveness after I eat too much is a joy.

Feeling a little bit hungry or bored is so intolerable, so I must eat. I need to practice burning off the stress hormones in those times, and having compassion for myself when I am imperfect at it.

My therapist uses this technique to burn off stress hormones in a way that maximizes the power of the executive control part of the brain that loves to be helpful and help you with your highest goals.

https://www.panicaway.com/word/fear-of- ... wsletter-2

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Number One – The 5-4-3-2-1

Start by doing the 5-4-3-2-1 every five minutes. Then every fifteen minutes. Then every hour. It is nothing more than a focusing exercise, something to intensely occupy your mind so disturbing thoughts can’t take hold.

Sit or recline comfortably.
Focus on some object in front of you.
Keep your focus on that throughout the exercise.
If your eyes drift off, just bring them back. Do the exercise out loud first. Then, try it silently. See if one works better for you than the other.

Say “I see” and name something in your peripheral vision.
Say “I see” and name something else in your peripheral vision.
Continue until you have made five statements.
For example: I see the lamp, I see the table, I see a spot on the lamp shade, I see a book on the table, I see a picture on the table.

Say “I hear” and name something you hear.
Say “I hear” and name something else you hear.
Continue until you have made five statements.
NOTE: you will have to repeat something if there are not five different things you can hear.

Say “I feel” and name something you hear. (not internal, like heart pounding or tension, but external).
Say “I hear” and name something else you hear.
Continue until you have made five statements.For example: I feel the chair under me, I feel my arm against my leg, etc.

That completes one cycle. It takes intense concentration. That is exactly what you want. As you concentrate on non-threatening things, the “fight or flight” hormones in your body when you started the exercise get burned off. As they are, you get more relaxed. You don’t make yourself relax. You use up the stress hormones to let yourself relax.

Start the next cycle, but make one change. If you always made five statements, you soon could do the exercise without intense concentration, and your mind could drift back to “bad” thoughts. You can keep concentration intense by making one change each cycle. Instead of doing five statements again, do four statements. Then, in the following cycle, do three statements. Then, in the next cycle, do two statements. Then, in the next cycle, do one statement.

Stop when you are as relaxed as you want to be. If you want to be more relaxed – or to fall asleep – continue by starting again at five statements. If you lose count, that is a good sign because it means you are getting relaxed, so relaxed that you are losing count.

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The way my therapist used the 5-4-3-2-1 technique is with deep breathe in through nose and exhale out of mouth before and after the technique.

My therapist says to use the 5-4-3-2-1 when [1] you get paralyzed with anxiety or [2] when the executive control loop of "Analyze - Plan - Commit -- towards highest goals" breaks down because of a flood of stress hormones.

Thanks Manuel Moe. This is great.

Oak, I studied nutrition in college so if you need any advice, I will gladly help you out. Also, do you know your body fat percentage? It's much more accurate than BMI (which is the worst thing ever). Send me a message if you feel like you need or want some advice.

Thank you, that is so sweet.

When work settles down after the first of the year, I'll be sure to pm you.

A few more facts, as I continue to be between the contemplation and determination stages:

I was told to lose weight by my kind doctor.

(Backstory: I was in financial chaos and later working poverty for the last ten years. During many of those years, I had enough to eat, on average, 5.5 days a week. I was trying to survive the chaos, so eating healthy was not a priority. I also couldn't afford healthcare, so I didn't go to the doctor for ten years. Things are getting better, giving me emotional air to think about my health.)

He gave a checkup and in general he declared me to be in good health.

So, just like surviving that car wreck in 2004 and quitting drinking in 2008, I skated from disaster. But I don't want to take this clean bill of health for granted. I am humbled.

I work too hard, and have put too much effort into budgeting and planning my finances to work the next 32 years, retire at 70, and drop dead from diet-caused diabetes/heart/cancer. I work too hard.

I have also noticed, for example in a recent Hallmark movie, that the slim and well dressed man gets the beautiful girlfriend and the overweight and unshaven dude is the butt of jokes. I want to date more.

I also intend to be interviewing soon. I understand that slimmer men are more likely to be hired than overweight men. That to do this overtly is illegal, but it of course happens all the time.

Another reason is that since the beloved metrosexual movement years ago, men's clothes are really gorgeous. Or think of my style icons Oscar Wilde and Steve Buscemi in Boardwalk Empire. Such gorgeous cravats. I love brocades.

Many of the most beautiful sportcoats are "modern": a little slimmer.

From my own experience, there is a correlation between my then-working poverty and obesity. Not causation, but correlation.

A middle class life (which I am currently not at), would afford me a constellation of ways to make it easier.

But I come here not to make excuses or defend my mistakes. Moving forward I want to make better choices, more loving decisions, happier habits.

I feel better getting all this off my chest.

Hey! I am also overweight. I'm a 5'7" woman who weighs about 200 pounds. Ever since I was a child, food has been a thing. My mom and step dad used to obsess about the possibility of me being overweight and would micromanage my food intake, often in ways that would embarrass me immensely (I remember once when I was about 8 or 9, I was at a family birthday party in a park and we all fixed our own plates for lunch. When I sat down to eat mine, my mom took my plate and threw away half of the food, loudly proclaiming that my eating that much would eventually make me fat). The comments on my body have continued to this day. My weight is highly scrutinized. I'm praised profusely when I lose weight and given sad, sympathetic looks and unsolicited advice when I gain weight.

I understand your plight about being the fat person trying to date or get a job, etc. I feel like my body hinders me from feeling comfortable in many social situations because my fatness walks into the room before I do. I don't know how much of this is just perceived on my part and how much of it lives in reality, but I do know this: when I dropped about 50 pounds a few years ago, I wasn't doing anything healthier. I was just too poor to afford to over-eat. When this happened I noticed people being nicer to me before I had even noticed that I had lost weight. That led me to believe that my perception was not entirely wrong that my body hindered me in social situations. People are subconsciously nicer to people they perceive as conventionally attractive; and conventional attractiveness does, in fact, include being thin.

Instead of focusing most of my energy on trying to change my body (because that can be an all-consuming and fruitless venture) I am focusing on trying to love my body for the exact reasons I have been conditioned to hate it. I'm trying to celebrate my belly and my thighs and my thick arms and wide shoulders and my back fat and my multiple chins because I know for a fact that weight loss has not automatically given me self-love and self-acceptance. I think what I need to do is love my body in whatever state it's in and then if I want to change it and pour my time and energy into that venture, that I will do it from a place of love and not resentment. That being said, I don't love my body most of the time. My negative self-talk pervades my mental space. I spend too much time in front of the mirror sucking in my stomach and dreaming of what it might be like to be smaller. I then have to listen to the comments made by my family about what I should be doing to make my body more acceptable. But every so often I look at myself and I can't stop staring and thinking about how gorgeous I am from my hair to my fat rolls, to my oversized feet. And in those moments I don't feel my body like a prison. The more I practice it the better I get at it.

MissPi, good evening and thank you for sharing your lovely post.

There is much to admire in your post, and much I found heartbreaking (especially the abuse from your family).

Let me assure of you of one thing: You are Enough.

There is nothing you need to do that you aren't doing, and nothing you need not do that you are doing.

Since posting that, 3.5 years ago, I totally forgot about this thread. Due to stress and the Standard American Diet, I ended up diagnosed as "obese" by my doctor.

Through EAP nutrition counseling (I work, tangentially, for the Forks Over Knives crowd) and moderate exercise, I've been able to get to 200. Like you, I am astonished at how differently I am treated when I do some cardio and basic resistance/weights.

And if, I may be bold as to say: with my friends and I, together men, consider a woman 5-7 and 200 pounds to be very attractive. Age and weight are just numbers, to good men, in other words.

As best you can, I encourage you to listen to the people who will build you, rather than the naysayers of your family of origin. And besides, something tells me that anyone who has time to criticize another person's weight probably has a number of problems that they themselves aren't willing to face.

I can only speak for myself, but I am glad my problems (alcohol abuse, unemployment, obesity) were all problems I couldn't hide, and therefore had to face. I didn't have to spend any energy hiding them (since I couldn't!), and rather spent said energy on facing these issues, however imperfectly.

Oak:

Thank you for that incredibly kind response. I'm glad to hear that you are having success. It gives me hope. I'm also very grateful for the validation. I couldn't help my smile when I read your words. You are a solid individual. I hope the work you've been doing is bringing you peace and joy.