Michelle McKinney Hammond - The Real Skinny on Losing It: True Confessions and Divine Revelations of a Former Yo-Yo Dieter

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The Real Skinny on Losing It: True Confessions and Divine Revelations of a Former Yo-Yo Dieter

Copyright 2010 by Michelle McKinney Hammond. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration by Ruth Berg, copyright by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Author photograph taken by Stephen Vosloo. Copyright by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Designed by Jennifer Ghionzoli

Edited by Katara Washington Patton

Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920,

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McKinney Hammond, Michelle, date.

The real skinny on losing it : true confessions and divine revelations of a former

yo-yo dieter / Michelle McKinney Hammond.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4143-3383-0 (sc)

1. Christian womenReligious life. 2. Self-perception in womenReligious aspects. 3. Reducing diets. I. Title. II. Title: True confessions and divine revelations of a former yo-yo dieter.

BV4527.M423 2010

248.843dc22 2010036327

Acknowledgments

To all those who love food as much as I do and more...

Ah well, heres to making a peace treaty with our hips and our lips. Ladies, pass the salad, please, and lift a water toast to totally losing it and living to see the dream of a svelter you come to life!

Carol Traver, I havent decided if I should hug you or get you for sending me on this journey. :-) Katara Patton, you are a bad mamma jamma. Thanks for making me read well. Thank you to my Tyndale family for allowing me to spread my wings and discover new territory. But most of all thank you for supporting my efforts.

Introduction

I believe there is a hormone specifically in women that scientists havent discovered yet that has everything to do with our weight issues and our inability to resist temptation. I also believe that a crafty serpent in a lovely Garden long ago was smart enough to recognize this issue and capitalize on it. Small wonder that the first sin had to do with eating. Yup, from the time Eve took a chunk out of that piece of fruit (no one knows what it really wasapple, pear, grapes, figs, whatever the fruit), humans have struggled with what goes in and comes out of their mouths.

Sigh! It is true I am a blatant offender; even as I watch my hips spread, I struggle with this thing inside of me crying out for moremore cream puffs, more cupcakes loaded with frosting, more of anything that will fight against my desire to be a perfect size eight.

Oh, rest assured, Ive done the size-two thing and still wasnt satisfied. Nooo, I couldnt leave well enough alone. I had to gain weight. Twiggy hadnt made thin fashionable in my neighborhood when I was a teenager and in my early twenties. Back then, I wanted curves like my peers. So I ate. And ate. And ate. To no avail. I gained nothing. Nothing but a voracious appetite! And now, decades later when size two is only a memory, I am still battling that appetite I developed. (Oops, I just spilled ice cream on my keyboard.)

Anyway, as I was sharing, girlfriend, this whole diet thing is more than a notion. When my cute little svelte publisher approached me about doing a diet book, I didnt know if I should be offended or not. I mean, what was she trying to say? Was she suggesting I needed to lose weight or something? I talked the idea over with my mentor, who said, You know, if you write that book, youre going to have to live it! Aaargh! Would I be biting off more than I could really chew?

As you begin this book, I want to make sure you understand that I am not a nutritionist, okay? At the end of the list of all that I doauthor, speaker, television cohost, relationship expert, empowerment coach, singer, blah, blah, blahI am simply a woman who has called everyone from Jenny to Nutrisystem, joined the Weight Watchers of the world, been to South Beach and back. When it comes to diets, Ive done them all. Ive had successes and failures in various numbers and dress sizes. I, probably like you, have at least three sizes hanging in my closet for whichever direction I swing, but frankly Im exhausted from the constant volleyingand I need more closet space.

So I decided to rise to the challenge to share with you what Ive learned about the D word. Mm-hmm, it could be called the most maddening thing next to mendieting. Im going to share with you the real skinny on losing it, how to deal with whatever it may be that is keeping you away from the size you want to be, and how to win the battle with your hips and other body parts you dont like once and for all. Some of my observations may surprise you. This is more about getting to the heart of the matter than experimenting with temporary tricks. We are going to settle this weight thing for good. Tackle it to the floor and kill it. Free at last, free at last, yes, you are going to be free at last! Trust meIm going to push some buttons you may not want me to push. But if youll be honest with me, Ill be honest with you, and well master this struggle together. Who knows, we may make it to the Oprah show (before she goes off the air) or one of those new you shows yet!

Michelle McKinney Hammond

Looking in the Mirror

I was in crisis, and I knew it. Pure envy and a smidge of hatred (did I say pure?) had filled my heart. There is nothing like being in a changing room filled with skinny little models to highlight your cellulite and take what your thighs really look like to a whole other level.

Here I was, modeling for a fund-raiser for my girlfriend, renowned designer Barbara Bates, and having a weight crisis before hitting the runway. I was one of the celebrity models. Meanwhile, the real models, little waifs with absolutely no body fat, paraded around in their thong underwear with no bras, naked and unashamed, while I bolted to the darkest corner I could find to try on my ensemble. Yes, I admit it: I looked. I stared. I swallowed the lump in my throat and thought back to when I had been that size. Then I headed for the table laden with a spread of hors doeuvres and reached for something with cream in it. Hey, my motto is If you cant join them, eat something.

The words from one of the millions of diet books Id read came back to me: Observe how skinny people eat and imitate them. Those skinny little nymphs never went near the table of hors doeuvres. The one that finally sidled over to peruse the spread settled for one pitiful little grape. One grape! What was that supposed to do? One grape wouldnt know what to do in my system; it would have too much room to float around. It is a horrible thing to feel trapped in ones own body and not know how to get out. Watching what skinny people ate was not working for me; it only made me frustrated. And yes, observing thin peoples eating habits made me eat more while my body image plummeted to even greater depths.