Julia Cameron - The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size

Please note: The names of people discussed and quoted in The Writing Diet have been changed to protect their privacy. In some cases composite characters have been used. All such alterations have been made for the purpose of simply condensing concepts I have often observed. It is my hope that this book will help you lead a healthier and more creative life.

Part One
THE TOOLS

Part Two
SITUATIONS AND SOLUTIONS

THE WRITING DIET

Im a creativity expert, not a diet expert. So why am I writing a book about weight loss? Because I have accidentally stumbled upon a weight-loss secret that works. For twenty-five years Ive taught creative unblocking, a twelve-week process based on my book The Artists Way. From the front of the classroom Ive seen lives transformedand, to my astonishment, bodies transformed as well. It took me a while to recognize what was going on, but sure enough, students who began the course on the plump side ended up visibly leaner and more fit. Whats going on here? I asked myself. Was it my imagination, or was there truly a before and an after? There was!

To my seasoned eye, weight loss is a frequent by-product of creative recovery. Overeating blocks our creativity. The flip side is also true: we can use creativity to block our overeating. That is what we will be doing with this book, using creativity tools to attack our overweight, altering our weight through altering our consciousness. Believe it or not, writing is a weight-loss tooloverlooked, underused, and extremely powerful.

Its not as if Ive never tried traditional dieting. On the contraryIm an amateur expert. Over the years Ive tried Atkins, but my cholesterol zooms; South Beach, but I gain back everything the minute I veer away from phase one; the Gray Sheet from Overeaters Anonymous, but deprivation makes me crazy and crazy is what I am trying to avoid as well as fat. Ive turned myself in to Weight Watchers, but counting points seems to be its own form of craziness. What I know how to count is words. In building twenty-plus books, I have learned that each word counts, just like each calorie. SuddenlyliterallyI have food for thought. What if words can be consumed instead of calories? What if I can write my way right-size? As soon as the idea hits me, I know in my marrow that it is true.

Everyone knows that we overeat because something is eating us. What if that question got asked directly, routinely, every time we ate? What if, struck by a Snack Attack, I said to myself, Whats eating me that I have a sudden craving to eat? What if I took a moment and jotted down my feelings? What if I gave myself food for thought instead of food itself? Since we can use food to block feelings, why cant we use words to block food? Calories, after all, are units of energy, and so are words.

This idea excites me. Long experience as a writer has taught me that writing is a way to metabolize life. If I can write about something, I can handle itand often with grace. Might writing be a way to metabolize the ebb and flow of my very metabolism? I think it might. I was never thin, nor was I ever fatnot until I had to take a medication that lists weight gain as a possible side effect. The medication is a necessity. The weight gain is, to my doctors eye, a small price to pay for mental stability. Surely, I think, there must be some way out. Could it be writing?

In the twenty-five years I have taught creative unblocking, one of the tools I routinely teach is daily morning writing. How often have I seen my students use their Morning Pages to shed pounds as well as creative inhibitions? Although in an Artists Way class what we are after is a creative renaissance, a physical renaissance often goes with it, hand in glove. Students often come to me pudgy and depressed. I tell them to write. A steady diet of self-reflection soon regulates their overeating. Pounds begin to drop away. As their Morning Pages work to metabolize their lives, they no longer overeat to block their difficult feelings. Their creativity soars while their weight drops. From the front of the classroom, the transformation is often startling.