Winter 2019

INTERMITTENT FASTING

As flexitarians, we all know it’s best to find a food plan and eating style you can actually live with. Since I have been professionally specializing in treating eating disorders since 1976, and treating my own problem way before that, I have seen so many nutritionists and health care professionals offer conflicting advice. They even conflict from year to year with their own advice.

In the early seventies when I was offering lectures on the dangers of sugar addiction and our intolerance to carbohydrates, many medical colleagues differed, claiming vehemently that overeaters SHOULD NOT have reactions to sugars. They didn’t want to help the patient trust their own experience. Now the carb addiction idea is so commonplace with the currently popular Keto diet, claiming that it is not fat, but carbs that are our problem. It’s touted as a new idea.

Another “new/old idea” is intermittent fasting. Some of you who were in my early treatment centers may remember that we often changed hospitals. The main reasons for that was, would you believe it, fights over food. The main problem was the idea about skipping breakfast. I knew that most of us did not feel hungry in the mornings and if we ate breakfast felt sluggish and more hungry all day. We were often not allowed to experiment with skipping breakfast as dietary departments in hospitals had their procedures and would not deviate. I was told I was proposing something illegal. So, I took a look at the actual statutes and found that our eating plan worked just fine. Each night, our patients ate yogurt and fruit, and sometimes sugar free jello. The next day, their first meal was lunch, 12 hours later, then dinner, and late night snack again. It worked fine for most and the weight just melted off. And diabetics stabilized. Many were taken off insulin. We were intermittently fasting.

And now our skipping breakfast idea is gaining merit as trainers and nutritionists are recommending the benefits. Many nutrition and body-building magazines have current articles extolling the new research that skipping breakfast is beneficial to weight loss.

RISK IT

Like all modern Americans, I continue to read about the dangers of overeating and excess weight. Obesity is now seen as a direct causal factor in developing cancer. We’ve been warned about these consequences for years. But, in the throes of obsession, overeaters rarely consider the future ill effects. Instead, we decide “It won’t happen to me, and I’ll make up for this tomorrow.”

I remember during my therapists’ training a professor held up an overflowing medical chart. He said, “We are always warning the patients, showing them their bloodwork and citing statistics. We admonish, ‘don’t you see what this is doing TO you?'”

He continued, “Counsel from a fellow sufferer is better. Instead, they offer compassionately, ‘I know what it does FOR you.’ That starts a conversation.”

Here’s one of the many ways to fend off the obsessional binge. It involves substitution. You can substitute the risky behavior of overeating for living more on the edge of your comfort zone. You can find your edge and lean into it.

IN ORDER TO AVOID THE FAT RISK, WE MUST LIVE AT RISK. We each can find different ways on various days to risk new behaviors. For Henry and I, taking on adventure travel makes us fall back on resources we didn’t know we had. Sometimes risk has meant marching and protesting and speaking up against injustice.

I’ve found that going the step further to reach outside my comfort zone makes me feel great about myself. When I do that, the thought of punishing this body by slapping unhealthy food in her face is out of the question.

Risking expressing new parts of myself is like we’re instructed in yoga class, “to lean into your sweet discomfort and stretch out to your own personal edge.” After those experiences, you will feel a high that keeps you motivated toward life and health.

Surveys show that man’s greatest fear is public speaking. I have been experimenting with storytelling. I competed in San Miguel de Allende’s first storyteller event two years ago. I got some expert guidance from David Fink out of Chicago. Over the past few years, whether during summers in New York City or on overnight trips into Los Angeles, I have put my name in the hat at NPR’s Moth Story Slam to be picked to tell a story. Many times I’ve had the luck of the draw and was picked to tell stories, flying by the seat of my pants.

I’ve gone on to study Improv and Story Telling with Andy Harmon. The staging strategies coupled with mindful breathing and focus have helped me to relax more on stage. As a result of continual training and practice, at January’s story slam in Los Angeles, the three teams of judges gave me top score!

I do it to stay energized and excited and in the life force. When I keep myself alert in training for continuing “peak performance”, a binge is out of the question. As architect Frank Gehry shared before his 90th birthday, “If you start making things, it creates a positive corner of the world where you can feel comfort and solace”. Risking creativity can stave off a binge.

SALON READING
DIVA SEEKING SHIVA

Judi Hollis, Phd.

Sunday, March 24, 2019 | 12pm

Gallery 500
500 S. Palm Canyon Drive
Palm Springs, CA 92264
(same building as Ristretto)

Judi Hollis will be reading Chapter 1 of her new book: DIVA SEEKING SHIVA, a follow-up memoir to FROM BAGELS TO BUDDHA.

A successful media shrink is racing through south Miami with two armed felons hunting down a teenage prostitute. She wonders why she can’t give up her attraction to the dark and dangerous. Finding the answers involves worldwide adventure travel seeking balance between spiritual practice and a lust for life. On a third trip to Bali, she attends a Hindu body-burning funeral before Nyepi , Bali’s New Year’s celebration when the entire island goes silent. From that silence comes insight about aging and surrender. An exciting and noteworthy story as told first hand by the Diva who lived it.

Dr. Hollis will also have available for purchase three previous self-help books about the psychology of weight loss, including the best seller, FAT IS A FAMILY AFFAIR.

www.judihollis.com
1-800-8-ENOUGH