Discover Your Hungers: 9 Keys to : Release Weight,Create Health, Wealth and Have the Life You Want!

By Dr. Dana Schroeder and Margherita Crystal Lotus

Dr. Dana Schroeder personally battled extreme obesity for over twenty years until she elected to have life-transforming weight loss surgery in 2001. Since then, she has seen the surgery transform many more lives as well. Still, why are some so unhappy with their results?

Dr. Schroeder relies on both her experiences as a Bariatric Nurse Practitioner, Life and Success coach as well as a Bariatric Surgery Graduate to provide a roadmap that invites others to look deep within and explore the core issues and limiting beliefs that prevent us from attaining the weight, health, and life we all deserve. In a comprehensive guide that addresses the root causes of the disease of obesity and how to overcome them, Dr. Schroeder shares heartwarming stories of actual clients and others as well as her own story; the nine keys to understanding personal desires, wants, needs, creating a plan, and taking action steps; discovery tools and tips; and wisdom coaching questions that will guide anyone to permanently release excess weight, stop living life on the sidelines, and ultimately realize complete personal fulfillment.

Discover Your Hungers offers practical advice, personal stories, and proven tools that will help those challenged with weight issues to release the pounds, reconnect to their dreams, and revive their energy to pursue their ideal life. Wisdom questions for the purpose of self-discovery and self-coaching uses the 9 keys as a guide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982215231

Dr. Dana Schroeder

Dr. Dana Schroeder, PhD is a Bariatric Nurse Practitioner and CEO of Bariatric Wisdom. She has worked with thousands of people in the weight loss and weight loss surgery community over the past 18 years. Not only is she a Bariatric Professional, she is also a Bariatric Surgery Graduate, having had a Gastric Bypass in 2001. The collective wisdom gathered from those who have experienced this life transformation is what fuels her passion for life and success coaching. Dr. Dana resides in the San Francisco Bay area.

Book preview

CHAPTER

1

Why Are You Here? Discover Your Hungers

Y ou may be looking for hope again. You may want answers: Just tell me what to do, and I will do it! You may be looking for the answers within and are not sure how to hear or tap into the responses. Like the rest of us, you have real needs that you may not have been able to identify, and sometimes you do not know what you need to solve your situation. When it comes to facing a new diet plan, exercise plan, or even weight-loss surgery, a common belief is that it will keep our weight off forever. However, after we lose a lot of weight, something may still not be right. We may face the pain of not losing all the weight we had wanted to or the shame of regain.

I will share with you in bits and pieces throughout the book what I went through after my weight-loss surgery. I found many common stories with thousands of my patients and coaching clients over many years that gave me insight into lasting weight release and an overall feeling of success. The struggles I experienced made me realize that a critical piece of the puzzle was the way I saw myself, how I handled stress and anxiety, and even more importantly, how my thoughts were making and keeping me fat. I was brought up using diets to deal with excess weight and get healthy. The focus was always on just the food and then some exercise. The number-one obstacle I had in reaching any long-term weight loss success was my belief that if I was not slim enough, it meant I was not good enough, and if I wasn’t good enough, then I was failing myself. It became a vicious circle, up and down, right through my childhood and into young adulthood.

You may have had similar experiences. Our beliefs control our minds and, in turn, our actions. And sabotaging yourself like this does not help get you the life you desire. It is a temporary solution to a long-term issue.

I am not slim enough to attract a partner/find love; I am not good enough, smart enough, rich enough, confident enough, fit enough, popular enough …

In my case, I felt shame about my appearance; I did everything to hide my body by dressing up well, acting confident, getting degrees at school, and being nice to everyone. Not many people could see it at first, but after my pregnancies, I could not lose my excess weight of more than 150 pounds. No matter what I did, I could not change it, even though I went on all kinds of diets and weight loss programs—Weight Watchers multiple times, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, VLCD (very low calorie diet, physician supervised). I lost two pounds a week over eight months on four hundred calories per day and lost seventy pounds. And then, after the program ended, I gained it back, plus more.

I was a nurse teaching health and wellness; I felt like a total fraud!

Diets lower your metabolism and cause feelings of deprivation. I began to ruminate on the foods I was not allowed to have. Weight is a symptom and not the real issue. My thinking was keeping me fat, frustrated, and frumpy. I was programmed to believe certain things about myself, and that was a major contributing factor to my massive weight gain over the years. I also had not really understood how refined carbohydrates and sugars were lighting up the pleasure centers in my brain. They were also causing brain fog!

Weight-loss surgery reset my hormones and my thinking for the short time of six to nine months, and then I had to work on my thinking and my beliefs about everything in my life. I continue to work on this daily, to remind myself that my body is not a direct reflection of who I am as a human being.

You may have different beliefs that create the same result. In this book, you will learn and begin to understand that diets and exercise alone don’t work! If you change your thinking, your mind-set, and your habits, the weight-release process will become much easier. The types of food we eat, of course, have an influence on how we think. Junk food leads to junk thinking, junk mind-sets, and junk habits.

Alyssa’s story:

I have struggled with my weight since about second grade. I can barely remember a time when I was not teased and bullied for my size. I wanted to do something to fix my situation, but was unsure how to go about it. Every year a new dieting fad would emerge and I could never keep up. One minute nonfat foods are the way to go and the next minute high-fat, low-carb diets are the only sure path to success.

Inadvertently my parents exacerbated my struggle. They raised me vegetarian and, while I empathize with the moral reasons for this choice, this does not negate the fact that they never served enough protein for a growing child. I always felt hungry and I could not understand why. You just ate a whole bag of potato chips, I would tell myself, how can you not be full?

In my quest to lose weight, I eventually wandered into dangerous territory. I started restricting to the point of anorexia, binging on junk food when the hunger overwhelmed me, and purging when guilt overtook hunger.

Through therapy and the love and support of friends and family, I overcame my bulimia. Unfortunately, my stomach was still a bottomless pit and I still did not know how to properly nourish myself.

I ballooned up to 247 pounds. I was on the verge of becoming diabetic and the high weight plus the years of bulimia caused me painful, persistent acid reflux. My boyfriend told me that he could not imagine building a life with me if I were so unhealthy that he worried about me dying young. He told me to talk to a friend of his, someone who had gone through the bariatric process and now coached others in it.

So I spoke with Dana Schroeder.

I had heard of bariatric surgery before, but never thought I was big enough for it. What I learned was that with a high BMI as well as the comorbidities of being prediabetic and having GERD, I was an excellent candidate for a gastric bypass.

Attending Dana’s support groups, I saw clearly that this procedure wasn’t some quick fix or miracle cure. It took work. You had to relearn everything you thought you knew about food. You had to change your whole lifestyle forever. You had to commit.

I worried most about the protein. Protein first, protein most I was told over and over again. I had never thought of protein as being that big a deal; I was still vegetarian at the time and did not see protein as an essential diet component. You get enough from that sprinkling of parmesan on your pasta, right? Going to the groups and classes, I learned what I wish I had known all along: protein is what keeps you full.

Four years ago I went in for my roux-en-y. I lost 90 pounds and have kept most of it off; I fluctuate up and down but it is no longer the wild yo-yo swings of my old dieting days. I gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl a year and a half ago and I credit my surgery with the fact that I did not gain too much pregnancy weight and the fact that I got back down to my pre-baby size without much effort. I am not at all diabetic anymore and my gastroesophageal reflux disease is now entirely manageable. Getting the gastric bypass was the best decision I ever made for my health and well-being and I will be forever grateful to Dana and all of the wonderful bariatric graduates who shared with me their stories and advice and made the whole process much less daunting.

***

What are the main pieces of the weight-release puzzle for you? Write down three things you think they might be, and then let’s take a look at them in the next chapter.

CHAPTER

2

Pieces-of-the-Puzzle Discovery

The%20puzzle%20pieces%20of%20your%20life.jpg

T here are many ways to deal with your condition of excess weight or obesity. To make it easier to understand, I created a mind puzzle with twelve pieces:

Childhood, young adult, or adult emotional or physical trauma—or both—that precipitated a massive weight gain

Getting in touch with what might have caused your weight gain and then doing what you need to do to release or let go of that cause so you can begin to move forward is a major piece of the puzzle. In my early twenties, a woman in my extended family tried to choke me; two large men had to pull her off me. I was stunned in the moment. I called my parents to remove me from the situation, which they did. And then I did not even think of it for five years. Then one day, I was with my new husband and my parents, and we drove past the location of the choking event. My father said, Dana, you must remember this place?

I honestly said no.

Really? he responded, surprised.

He proceeded to tell me about the incident, and then I remembered it. But I was now in a safe place with people who loved me, and it felt safe to remember. I was amazed at how my brain had protected me from that event.

I had a similar experience with the rape I suffered at age nineteen in a public pool at a swim party, surrounded by friends. They had seen the threat and asked me if I needed help. I said no because I never imagined the man who assaulted me would do that to me in a public place! I was wrong. I was humiliated and shocked and stunned in the moment. I cried and left the party immediately. Why didn’t I ask for help? Why didn’t I say, "No!"? Well, the truth is I didn’t do it then, and I forgive myself now. I was painfully shy and socially awkward.

Many of my patients and clients have experienced significant childhood emotional and sexual abuse. I have recommended therapy or counseling. Do what you need to take care of your past hurts; they can be holding you back from the health and life you want.

Habits developed as you grew up based on the situation at the time and your parents’ or caregivers’ beliefs

What beliefs can you remember about food, eating, and being in a family? One of my clients, whom I will call Sarah, had an emotionally and sexually traumatic childhood. She was sexually abused by her father from the age of eleven, and she believed her mother knew and never did anything about it. Sarah is in her fifties today and has never gone to serious therapy of any kind. She believed she could fix herself. The symptoms she experiences today relate to food, include eating an entire cake and then going to the gym for a four-hour workout. Mealtimes in her family of origin were never together but more of a get-your-own-food kind of setup. There was plenty of junk food and snack food around for her to choose from, and so she ate to comfort herself and dull the pain.

Some food traumas are not as significant. One of mine was that my parents would make me sit at the dinner table for hours, starting at age seven or so, until I finished my green beans. I don’t like green beans; the texture and taste are not appealing to me at all. However, I was always the good girl—little did they know that our dog, Buddy, loved green beans, especially after I pre-chewed them. This pre-chewing process was painful and disgusting for me. My parent’s belief was that you ate whatever was served and you had to clean your plate. Years later, my mother shared with me that my favorite food at age six was iceberg lettuce, and so she let me have as much as I wanted. I was not a sickly child. Sometime in those early years, when I was around six, my aunt said to my mother that I looked malnourished. Of course I wasn’t, but soon after, the clean-plate club started at our home. The irony of the situation is that my mother was a nurse, and I believe my aunt may have been jealous of my mother and our family; who knows why people say the things they do? What people say is more a reflection of themselves than who they are saying it about. We always ate together as a family, and when I was six, I picked at everything on my plate. I tried things, and then if I didn’t like them, I stopped eating them. Imagine that kind of self-control around food at age six. My aunt’s comment had nothing to do with me and my nutrition. That changed after my seventh year.

What are your food habits from childhood?

Cravings for love, acceptance, support, shopping, gambling, sugar, or something else

My mother did the grocery shopping every Wednesday, and that meant some kind of treat. We would often consume it on Wednesday night, and then there were no more treats for seven days. I began a life of sneaking sweet treats, stealing a piece or two and hiding them for later consumption. I feared not getting the treat. How might this be related to craving love, acceptance, or support? My brother always had difficulty in school and I was the ‘A’ Student, so he got attention from both of my parents every night in the form of help with homework. I did not know how to ask for the love, the acceptance, or the support I needed. The truth was that I was incredibly insecure and somehow I took my family situation as reinforcement of that insecurity. Looking back as an adult I realize my parents were doing the best that they knew how to do and I did my best with my children, who also might say they did not have all of their emotional needs met at home. Sugar or treats became the comfort; it filled the time in the evening when Dad was with my brother, Mom was at work, and I was by myself. In my early tween years my dad began to distance himself from me emotionally and physically. I was not allowed to sit on his lap any longer or have loving hugs, so I began to isolate myself even more. There was never any explanation, that is just the way it was. I felt alone and lonely. Later as an adult I asked him about this rejection of me, he cried and I was stunned. He said he had always loved me but was overly worried about sexual and societal impropriety! My mom worked three evenings a week and he was alone with my brother and me. WOW! Seriously you must be kidding! I thought it was me as a person and then I found out it was me because I was a girl. This did not make me feel any better, so much damage had been done to my psyche. So I found a way to get his attention negatively, I stole wine from the grocery with two accomplices at age 13 and was arrested. Yes, me the ‘A’ student in the back of a police car going to the police station where Mom and Dad had to pick me up. I then had to appear in juvenile court, this incident was on my sealed record until I turned 18. I sure got dad’s attention but not really in the way I wanted.

Not loved means lack of self-Love as an adult

So it seems feeling unloved can also cause a lack of self-love as an adult. How do you then begin to re-parent your inner child? It is a process in forgiveness of those that did not have enough of their own self-love to then show it to you as a child. Forgiveness is more for you than for those that have harmed or injured you physically or emotionally in the past. I use this technique in my support groups and with patients and clients when they are being self-critical. If you were speaking to a beloved child what would you say to them regarding this issue? Sometimes the look of surprise and the sensations are palpable. Can you now say that to yourself? You are a precious child deep inside even if you weigh over 200, 300 or 400 pounds.

Addictive behaviors

Have you noticed that sometimes or even often you eat when you are not hungry? I sure did, but I just could not seem to stop myself. I ate when I was happy, sad, bored, lonely, tired, mad, confused, you name it I ate over it! I rarely allowed myself to get hungry! My dad used to call it preventative eating, have a snack before we go out to dinner. Seriously? He barely had weight issues until maybe age 50 when he was about 30-40 pounds overweight. If you use things, behaviors, or people to fill a hole in your soul then you have addictive behavior. I have noticed how hard my clients fight for their addictions by saying things like I just love food! Are you the only one in the home who just loves food? or It’s my culture, we always celebrate with food. I ask them, Is everyone in your culture suffering from obesity? We talk a lot about addiction transfer after weight loss or bariatric surgery; alcohol is the major culprit but certainly not the only one. High risk sexual behavior, gambling, workaholism, shopping, porn, you name it. Often you may be looking for something to fill the holes inside and when food no longer can hold this role then you may find something else that will. If you can discover your hunger in other areas of your life then no replacements is needed.

Beliefs about you

This is a powerful piece of the puzzle. Some beliefs you hold about yourself began when you were a child. Given to you by parents, siblings, and caretakers by what they said to you and how they treated you. You began to form these beliefs because you believed what they said! They were older, smarter and must know all about you, right? Wrong! They saw you in relation to themselves. You can explore this area in more depth if you believe it may be holding you back in some aspect of your life. Discover what your hungers are in relation to your beliefs and ask if your beliefs are holding you back from making progress in some area of your desired life?

Anger, Frustration and Fear

Can these powerful feelings really block you from getting what you want? Absolutely they can, especially if you allow them to run your life. Instead you get to be in charge of how long you stay in a feeling state. You are a feeling human being, just like the rest of us, hopefully! That is not a bad thing, but feelings can change in a heartbeat depending on circumstances and how you think. Try it, think of something really sad and now think of something happy, start laughing. What happens in your body? What position are you in? Sitting?