In a sense, an eating-disordered person can be emotionally “color-blind.” When a bulimic feels angry-when the red light flashes-she plugs into the wrong socket. Instead of dealing directly with her anger, the signal gets diverted and triggers a binge. Similarly, an anorexic may fear intimacy, but her mind reroutes that feeling into a fear of fatness. The feelings are there, but the disorder causes them to short-circuit.

For years these people have denied or suppressed their feelings-”Angry? Me? Impossible.” Why does this happen? There are many reasons. Perhaps these people come from families that forbade emotional expression. They thus have no role models to follow when it comes to showing joy or pain. Or perhaps they were punished in some way for being emotional-”Don’t cry. Only babies cry. Go to your room.” They may think that a feeling such as anger, once it grabs hold, will hurl them out of control, and make them dangerous or bad.

Feelings become strangers, provoking strangely twisted responses. Recently I brought a seventeen-year-old bulimic and her parents into my office. I told them that she had to be hospitalized because, despite intense outpatient treatment, her severe bingeing and purging had put her in medical danger. “No!” she cried, throwing herself down, sobbing and pounding the floor with her fists. “I don’t want to go to the hospital! It’s not fair!” Despite her protests, the parents agreed to the plan and she was admitted. The next day, however, she was much calmer. She said, “To be honest, I’m kind of relieved you put me in here. I felt really terrible at home. Yesterday I thought that coming into the hospital meant leaving my mother to cope at home all by herself. I couldn’t let her know that I actually wanted to come into the hospital. She would think I was deserting her. I realize now that’s why I put on that little show in your office.”

Even a physical sensation such as hunger gets garbled in transmission. An anorexic says to herself, “Hungry? That’s not hunger, that’s, uh, nervous energy. I need to exercise more-exercise, yeah, that’s the ticket.” For a bulimic, the inner monologue might be: “Lonely? Nah. I’m just hungry, that’s what I am.”

*84/35/5*

The San Jose, California, resident meticulously plans out every detail of every day—from when and what she eats to where and how she exercises, from trips to the grocery store to trips out of town.

That may seem like a lot of work. But Sharon, 51, doesn’t want to leave anything to chance, especially in terms of maintaining a healthy weight.

What spurred this painstaking attention to detail? As her fiftieth birthday approached, Sharon noticed that her weight had crept up to 161 pounds—too much for her 5-foot-3 frame. She had been gaining a couple of pounds every year since her mid-forties. Because she ate healthfully and exercised regularly, she didn’t think that her lifestyle was to blame for the 35 extra pounds. Instead, she suspected that the combination of advancing age and menopause were stalling her metabolism.

Sharon decided that she’d have to be even more vigilant about her healthy lifestyle if she wanted to bring back her slim and shapely figure. “At the time, my health club was offering a 6-week nutrition-awareness class, so I signed up,” Sharon recalls. “I discovered that even though I was making good food choices, I was eating far too much. That’s what got me started on planning ahead.”

If she had a business lunch with colleagues, she found out in advance where they intended to eat and chose her meal beforehand. “I’d call the restaurant and ask if they offered a chef’s salad with grilled chicken, or a fruit salad,” she says. “If they didn’t have what I wanted, I’d eat before we went out, then just order a side salad at the restaurant.”

When her job required her to travel out of town, she called restaurants near where she was staying and inquire about their menus. “If I couldn’t find one with suitable menu items, I’d go to a grocery store and pick up some food to take back to my room,” she says.

Sharon applied her plan-ahead strategy to her exercise pro-•£ I gram, too. Before she traveled, she called the hotel to find out whether it had exercise equipment or if there was a gym nearby. If ^ \ not, during her hotel stay she got up early to take a 2-mile walk or she climbed stairs at the hotel.

Once she started mapping out her daily routine, Sharon lost the extra 35 pounds within 6 months. She has maintained her weight at 126 pounds since 1998.

WINNING ACTION

Prepare a daily plan. If you find yourself struggling to stick with your weight-loss program, Sharon’s strategy may work for you, too. You may even want to keep a daily planner, which you can buy in any office-supply store. Then each night, spend 15 minutes or so mapping out the next day. Include as much detail as you can, especially in terms of mealtimes ajid workout time. Of course, you can’t always anticipate what will happen every moment of every day. But a daily plan gives you a better chance of keeping your weight-loss efforts on track.

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