Dear Minnesota Mom

Answering a tough question

Inbox flood

I had the pleasure of being featured on The Corbett Report to talk about the

Libre Solutions Network

and the digital ID agenda. James Corbett has a large audience of wonderful and thoughtful people, so it was to be expected that people would reach out after my interview. I’m hoping to get back to many of those who’ve contacted me, but this particular email got top priority.

Weight loss question

My daughter is in a similar situation. It is a subject that is so touchy to her–we barely ever talk about it. I so fear saying or doing the wrong things. My heart is breaking cuz I don’t know really how to help.

Plz, if you could help by telling me what type of things that are the right kind of way to be supportive–type of things to say & do, I would be eternally grateful.

Thank you so much for sharing your journey & allowing people to better understand & ask questions. ❤️

Minnesota Mom

I’ll admit this was a daunting question to receive. I’m certainly no authority on how to help people resolve these problems, but I’ve shared what I think would be helpful based off my experiences.

Dear Minnesota Mom,

I am definitely very sorry to hear about your daughter’s troubles and your dilemma. My hope is that I can give enough context to help you to feel confident that you can help her without any fear. I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of difficult discussions about weight with loved ones and even with well-meaning strangers who feel the need to comment! Unfortunately, I am quite aware that the mother-daughter bond is a very sensitive thing that I don’t have a whole lot of insight into. I will warn you that I can’t imagine how difficult it is to be in your situation, and I fully expect helping her face it to be quite difficult as well. With great sympathy, I’m happy to answer any questions and/or lend my perspective as well as I can. I apologize if much of what I write feels redundant, but I think there’s a “bigger picture” that’s worth seeing. Feel free to reach out for more questions.

To start off I’ll share this. I have a collection of motivational memes that I regularly re-watch to keep me motivated. These are especially worth taking a look at:

• Seeds are made to grow

• Mike needs a plan

• Dreams without goals are just dreams

• Be Judicious - Jordan Peterson

• Mr Rogers - The loving part of you

These have helped me a great deal. It’s not easy to stick through the hard times, sometimes a reminder is enough to keep going. My hope is that these can help you keep an eye out for the kind of encouragement that’s out there.

— Extra info about me detour—

I’ve written about how I got so big which gives the long story about my struggles over the years. My weight gain was primarily driven by these things:

1. Not prioritizing my own health & well-being

2. Emotionally-driven eating & poor food choices

3. Low activity level, eventually degenerating into zero activity as mobility became a problem

4. Denial and fear of facing and correcting these issues

5. Hopelessness that it can’t be changed

Addressing these isn’t easy, and in my experience requires a lot from a person.

I can tell you first-hand that the hardest person on somebody who is overweight is themselves, and especially if they’re severely obese. Based on my experience, I absolutely know there were many moments where I distanced myself from others out of shame. Even worse as one’s self-loathing grows, it becomes second-nature to project that onto those around you. As a millennial, certain challenges in my life made health feel like less of a priority. Due to family circumstances I had a strong desire for independence. Securing that independence required me to make sacrifices and one of the first sacrifices I made was healthy lifestyle choices. I think my generation (and younger) are subject to horrific psyops directly targeted at their emotional, spiritual, and physical destruction. The hardest part of this, is that I’ve found there are serious communication barriers across large age differences that make people feeling heard and understood very challenging. I can’t speculate on what your daughter has faced, but I imagine there are many emotional and lifestyle stressors that are making it harder to prioritize healthier living. There are many things that lead to weight gain, but generally people who end up severely obese end up having many difficulties that are difficult to disentangle.

I’ll also say that turning things around is incredibly challenging. The more dire the situation, the more time real change is going to take. I had to directly face my emotional difficulties, and that was a devastating experience. It’s much easier to avoid how you feel when the alternative is “pushing it off until things are better”. Dr Peter Breggins’ book Guilt, Shame and Anxiety: Overcoming legacy emotions was a huge help to me. I recommend the book generally, but the main benefit I got from it was recognizing that my self-loathing and numbness was something that could change. Dr Peter Breggins recommends the way to overcome these things is to “become a source of love in your life”. This means many things to many people, but to me it helped me recognize that taking care of myself isn’t selfish for so long as I live for others.

— End of detour —

What can you do to help?*

*In my opinion, as a non-expert.

Understand

I would recommend learning whatever you can about the process. It’s a long difficult road, but you never know how what you learn can really help her turn things around. Very often people will suggest simple (and sometimes contradictory) things, which may or may not help resolve things. Weight loss recommendations are very often their own rabbit holes, fads, and trends that I find not very helpful to people in severe situations. The good news is that there are many roads to making significant difference, very often someone just needs to find what works for them. In severe cases, where larger lifestyle changes are required, it’s scary, daunting, and often people don’t necessarily have the time and resources to receive the help they need. I’ll elaborate on eating choices more later, but when I was struggling I wrote a post explaining all the things driving me to over-eat. Everyone is opinionated about particular weight loss strategies, but I would encourage you to recognize that many of them are fairly inter-changeable.

Here’s how weight loss works without all the BS:

To lose weight over time, one must eat less calories than their bodies consume over the same time period. Losing a large amount of weight likely requires tracking calories in one form or another, in addition to tracking weight. Tracking calories sucks, it’s not fun and induces many of the shame responses overweight people generally like to avoid. This is because sticking to eating as little as needed to lose weight is much harder than one would assume. People generally assume that if one eats only healthy foods they’ll naturally revert to a normal body weight and that’s sadly not true. Given my appetite, it wouldn’t be too difficult to maintain my severe obesity eating nuts & fruits, as I have recently discovered. I was used to eating so much that beginning to eat enough to lose weight made me struggle with a lot of hunger and that’s not easy if you don’t have healthy outlets for stress. Foods generally have a certain level of satiety, for example carbs tend to make people more hungry, while fiber and protein tend to make people feel more full. My general recommendation for eating well (as I understand it) is to prioritize “nutrient density” per calorie. For example, the nutrients I want are protein, fiber, and vitamins. Broccoli is a super-food that’s worth going crazy on, but you’ll also want good amounts of protein with it.

Severe obesity (such as in my case) is often rarely a single issue, it’s more likely to be a constellation of troubles that are each difficult to tackle. I wrote about my challenges being large, and how they’ve impacted me. Sleep & stress management may not be as important as calories for weight loss, but they’re really not far behind. When I’m nocturnal, it’s genuinely hard to be productive in any way that doesn’t require sitting at a computer, this makes it much harder to make healthier choices. Fixing sleep is genuinely hard and I certainly can’t claim to have done it yet. I have had a lot of progress out of managing light exposure (sunshine earlier in the day, going for walks, avoiding light in the night).

I will say, stress management is very much the name of the game. It’s relatively easy to become fueled with ambition to make radical changes for them all to collapse the moment life throws a curve ball. Healthy stress outlets are invaluable for being able to withstand the pressure and to maintain long-term goals. Swimming is generally quite accessible. I was still able to do it at my highest, the trouble was just getting to a pool. Taking on an active hobby itself makes a huge difference, especially when it helps you connect with positive people who can help in their own way. Since finding the right gym for me I am regularly surrounded by encouraging people who would be more than happy to answer even simple questions. I would argue the biggest thing most people are missing out on is a large support network. No single person can shoulder the weight of a lifetime of someone else’s pain, nor can they resolve anyone else’s problems. But just as the saying goes “it takes a village to raise a child” building a positive social environment itself can do wonders.

As I understand it, you’re in the difficult position of feeling responsible but not having control. I’m sure if I told you you just had to get her to eat 500g of broccoli and 500g of chicken a day to lose it all, you’d do whatever is in your power to make that happen. When one is struggling with their own body, the last thing we want is to feel even more out of control. In my opinion, this is something that causes a lot of friction. It’s very hard to build up the courage and humility to even let others help even when we want it. Depending on how old she is, how heavy she is, and if you’re still living together these can all complicate matters (to say nothing of stubbornness and shame).

Connect

Your job, as I understand it, is to break through the pain and sadness to be intimately close with your daughter. This is no easy task, because as I’ve mentioned it’s very easy for us ‘big people’ to want to wall ourselves away from others to avoid the shame and regret. As her mother, you’re very aware of what’s beautiful and good about her and what potential she offers. I would go as far as to argue your most urgent priority is to help her see it too. I will tell you that turning my situation around needed a real “choosing life” decision. All that numbness and pain puts people like me in a situation where we alternate between trying as hard as we can and giving up completely after that fails. The truth is that the moderate and steady approach is what wins the day in the end. Patience on your part is no simple thing to ask for. And for on her part, it may be too much for her at this point in time.

It absolutely sounds corny to say “love the pain away” but being a healthy escape from the world is something almost everyone needs more of. The problem with your situation is that you have to console your child who is pushing you away out of sadness, shame and regret. I can only imagine the pain and frustration that causes, but I promise you it is something that can change. The point is to bring yourselves close enough so that she can open up about this incredibly difficult topic. Anything you can do to help her recognize that things can get better, that you’re there to help without judgement, and that she can rely on you can really make a big difference. This is not the same as enabling or prolonging the difficulties, but it’s important to recognize her situation is something only she can change. Other people can help, lend support and advice but nothing anyone else can do will unilaterally change things. Any heavy-handed approach that reeks of “we’re trying to fix you” is generally going to backfire. Anyone with sufficient self-loathing will internalize that to say that they are the problem.

Your mission is to help her recognize that she isn’t the problem, but rather a prime investment. It’s very easy to spiral into self-loathing when one feels trapped in a downward spiral of self-destruction. In hindsight, I feel absolutely silly for not trying to “protein max” before finding a personal trainer, but one never knows what specific piece of information can tip the scales. The most important thing for her to learn isn’t any particular detail or trivia, but truly beginning to believe she has the power to change her circumstances. There are likely many obstacles. I’ve had to give up a great deal and rely on others to start truly turning around my situation. But once you’re at the point where you can both tackle those obstacles together, you’ll finally be at the point where you both feel like you’re on the same team instead of opposing each other.

Remember, a lot of the sensitivity is that she’s judging herself harshly and projects that onto your words. You can’t change how she interprets what you say, but care, understanding and persistence can help the love peek through the darkness. Because of how individual this whole process is, I genuinely can’t tell you what are good and bad areas to try. I imagine it feels impossible, even in the best case scenario you may not even notice when your efforts are working. I know from my experience I certainly looked like I was floundering when I was beginning to change for the better. The earliest steps are so small and so crucial, do not rush it.

Getting to the point where she can talk about her hopes and struggles with this and other problems is a huge asset. If you can’t talk about healthier living at all, identifying and figuring out how to resolve the lifestyle circumstances that make things harder can be a great place to start. Career and social life can very much be a problem. When I was working nights it was incredibly easy to make all the wrong choices. I feel like my generation was afflicted with despair and hopelessness, finding ways to help her disconnect from those can definitely help. It’s possible that there are seemingly unrelated problems you can help her with, which once handled can snowball into bigger change.

Handle setbacks

Starting out is very difficult. Unfortunately it seems almost nobody (if anyone) makes it all the way without some challenges or another. At the beginning, it feels like nothing is working until it eventually does. It’s very easy to blame and shame when inevitable relapses happen. Accepting failure is a necessary part of the process, which is why my weight loss substack is called “Micro-dosing failure”. The point is for her to begin to accept that she can push through adversity. It’s really not about any single day, but about building consistency and momentum over time.

It took quite a long time for me to truly change things around despite putting a lot of work in. Guidance helps, but also getting enough “small wins” to truly begin trusting oneself. When trying to make progress it’s so easy to fall into the trap of trying to do everything “perfect” to only relapse into disappointment and despair. Building the trust so that she can lean on you when disappointment comes, can really help her bounce back and continue along. I can tell you that when starting out, every setback feels like a crisis. It’s a shock that validates all your worst opinions about yourself, and raises the fear that things will never improve.

Anything you can do to help her overcome hopelessness and despair in even the tiniest of ways can help let the light of hope in. There’s a meme I have where it describes the process as:

0. Realize that we were all born for something

1. Cover yourself in hopes and dreams

2. Face your fears and your problems

3. Fight!

And that’s really it. Your daughter isn’t just starting a weight loss journey, but a personal development lifestyle. Learning to encourage her to stay in a “growth mindset”, or at least be a positive example of it can do wonders. Obesity is an ugly, horrible monster, but it’s something that I believe anyone can overcome it as long as they begin to understand that they are not it. Recognizing the problem does not mean that people have to see her as a problem. Anything that gives her the space to try new things to make improvements can snowball into real action.

Find assistance

The previous section is so important because once she is receptive to help, there’s a great deal that can be done. Anything you can do to help her connect with positive encouraging influences in the meantime can go a long way. Maybe there are good clubs you can join together, classes or even just hosting more family time to bond together can really help. Finding an encouraging environment of good people can make so many things much easier.

Hiring a personal trainer certainly helped me regain my mobility and guided me through so many of the important basics. While I had read a great deal on my own, spending time regularly seeing a person who is incredibly knowledgeable about this problem made a huge difference. She may not be at the point where this is an option she would consider. If mobility is a concern, I would absolutely recommend finding a trainer who has been with heavy clients before and your daughter can connect with. This alone is a non-trivial investment but is the single thing I can think of that would make the biggest difference. The right gym and the right community is a priceless treasure I am thankful to have found in my situation. In your situation, I imagine it could even be worth signing up yourself to meet people and get a sense for it.
Once your daughter is taking charge of her lifestyle as a whole, that’s the best “go time” for you and others to help her make the best of it.

Relatively simple things can help a lot:

• Devoting time to regularly walk and talk together (talking about things other than weight if still touchy)

• Devoting time to activities both you enjoy together and she enjoys solo (a previous hobby she may want to take back up)

• Fitting active wear and clothes (you may need to find a “big and tall” store, feeling comfortable in your clothes is a relief)

• Memberships & sports equipment (buy used or share with a neighbour)

• Spending time cooking together to “meal prep” food to invest in making the journey easier

• Farm shares (healthy food and support your local farmer)

• Relevant books (it’s necessary to be choosy here)

• Fitness gadgets (I use a waterproof mp3 player while swimming)

• Any assistance with travel to help (gym, pool, yoga, etc)

• Home gym equipment (kettlebells are great!)

(I’m probably forgetting a bunch, so I’ll probably write a post on that sometime in the near future.)

Have fun

It’s a long journey, you may as well find ways to make it pleasant! There’s no reason it all has to be a joyless slog. Finding ways to (healthily) celebrate successes and comfort in the hard times makes everything so much easier. Not everything should be just about her weight loss, connecting over other shared interests or discovering new ones can help bring you closer. I can personally attest that getting stronger and being able to do more things makes life a lot more fun. Before she’s ready to tackle the weight or other problems, you have an opportunity to help her recognize that what’s hard in her life isn’t a reflection of her character or worth. Once she’s ready to take it all on, there will be many opportunities to share the journey in fun and exciting ways. If she does decide to get into weight lifting, you could even try it out together!

I am confident that all this can be improved. I have no doubt that this is something your daughter would love to change deep down. There’s just likely a lot of pain, regret, and/or hopelessness making her feel trapped. It’s no simple thing to turn around, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. Being able to be there for her when the wins really start is going to feel wonderful. Celebrate every small win. You can look forward to her being in a much better place to connect once she does begin resolving her troubles. There will be much to rejoice over, and I really look forward to you being able to experience that.

Additional Resources

Since I wholeheartedly recommend absorbing as much (decent) health and fitness information as you can, I’ll share what I’ve found useful:

• Becoming a Mentally Tough Motherf*cker: How Elite Powerlifting Made Me a Better Person, Parent (and Partner)

• Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions

• Mike Pridgen

• Picture Fit

• Flow High Performance

• Steve Shaw - Massive Iron

• The Latest Kate

---