Dr. Brehm’s Story

I had always been thin, but during my late forties, my weight became out of control. I gained twenty-five pounds, and I became a serious, conscientious dieter. I went through much despair about ever reaching a weight that I would consider acceptable. I thought I would never have a slender body again. I was not obese, but to me I might as well have weighed 300 pounds. The bottom line is the perception of how you see yourself.. This perception diminishes self-esteem, and changes the way your body relates to the food it consumes. There is no longer a love affair between the food you eat and the body you hate.

During the time I was overweight, many new diets came on the scene - the low protein, high carbohydrate; the high protein, low carbohydrate; Eating in the Zone; the 30-30-20 Balance. Every time I would go to the bookstore, I would head to the diet section with the hope of finding something that would change my body. There must be a secret method that would work to help my body lose weight. I hoped to become slender again, a wish unfulfilled with ensuing disappointment. I would follow the concepts religiously. I was terrified to get on the scale every morning, but always hoping against hope that something would work. Nothing did, or maybe I would lose two pounds, and I would think - thank God - maybe something is happening. Then it would stop, and I would plummet! What kind of magic was going on? Maybe if I took one chromium instead of two or two DHEA instead of one. That was the answer. My kitchen shelves bulged with vitamins, herbs, and secret potions. I became very superstitious - if I ate this or didn't eat that - or walked three miles a day, or worked out more than an hour, that was the secret.. My whole pattern of shopping for clothes changed. I would look at skinny tight clothes and feel horrible, and gradually shifted to loose clothing, and feeling miserable.

I've always had the intuitive sense that something was out of balance in my body, but I didn't know what. My belief was I was stuck. The cold reality of each morning's dawn showed no change on the scale. One day when I was out jogging, I had an idea. I had done my dissertation on the effect of the mind on healing the body, and intuitively I sensed that the techniques of relaxation and visualization that I had used in my research in addition to healthy eating, might work on my weight loss problem. So I implemented them. Slowly, but permanently, my body shed its excess weight and I was overjoyed to reach the weight of my twenties and to maintain it.