Books > The Best Life Diet Revised and Updated > Excerpts

FOREWORD

I feel like I've always known Bob Greene, though the truth is, it's only been fourteen years since we first met. My life has not been the same since that meeting; Bob changed my life.

At the time, I was 237 pounds, miserable and so ashamed to have joined the ranks of the perpetually obese that I had trouble maintaining eye contact. I couldn't understand why I was able to triumph over so many other challenges and adversities in life, and yet when it came to losing weight I was a big fat failure.

Before I met Bob, I had spent years bouncing from one diet to another, beginning from the time I was twenty-two. That was the year that I landed a big job as a news coanchor in Baltimore and discovered that food -- and especially corn dogs and six-inch chocolate-chip cookies with macadamia nuts from the mall food stalls -- could provide a great deal of solace. I was naïve, felt very alone, and was having trouble adjusting to my new job.

I had no friends and no furniture, not even curtains on the windows of my new apartment. My coanchor seemed to resent me, and I worried that I was in way over my head. I'd had almost no experience as a writer, but every day I was given news copy to rewrite for my segment of the broadcast. In my previous job I had been more of a newsreader: the copy had been written for me and all I had to do was read it on air. It's an awful feeling when you know you can't make the mark. No matter how hard I tried, I could not bang out the copy fast enough for my superiors. Inevitably, every day as we neared the six o'clock news hour I'd hear John, the copy editor, yell across the room: "WINFREY, WHERE'S THE GODDAMNED COPY!!!!"

I was humiliated but put on a smile and got through the days, reading the news and chitchatting with my fellow anchors on air. But I didn't like my job. I felt blessed to have it, but I truly hated some of the things I was required to do. I always felt like I was chasing bodies, waiting for the worst to happen. The bigger the fire, the more bodies in the collision, the more devastating the natural disaster, the more excited my bosses became.

Working in that environment was an affront to my spirit; the reporter's objectivity I needed to maintain went against everything in my nature. Many times I was an eyewitness to the most devastating moments in people's lives, but I was not allowed to express any emotion. So I ate those emotions, and along with them, just about everything I could buy at the food court. I thought I was just fine; I just had a little weight problem. Now I realize I didn't have a weight problem. I had problems that I was burying by eating, but it wasn't until years later, after many conversations with Bob, that I finally made the connection.

When all those corn dogs and chocolate-chip cookies finally pushed me up to 140 pounds -- a weight I would do the hula in the streets for now -- I went to my first diet doctor. I paid $27 for a consultation and an eating plan that called for 1,200 calories a day. It was my first time counting and cutting calories, so of course my young body responded well. I lost 7 pounds the first week, and in a month I was down to 125. Slim again, I started my old habit of grazing through the food stalls at the mall. My regular dinner plan: a baked potato with all the toppings -- melted cheese, bacon, and chives -- followed by one of those six-inch cookies from the Great American Cookies stand. In my freezer were stacks of Stouffer's macaroni and cheese, my comfort food of choice.

And so it went. I'd gain some, then I'd lose some. It was a cycle I'd end up repeating again and again.

When I first met Bob and he asked me why I was overweight, I thought he was being a smart-ass. I was overweight for the same reason everybody else is, I answered smugly. I loved food.

It took me a while to get to the truth. I didn't love food. I used food to numb my negative feelings. It didn't matter what the feeling was. A phone call from someone I didn't want to talk to; a confrontation of any kind; being late; feeling tired, anxious, or bored. No matter how insignificant the discomfort, my first reaction was to reach for something to eat: a grape, Cheerios, a handful of nuts, chips, popcorn. I'd eat, unaware of how much I was consuming, until I was chewing on the last kernels of corn. That's what it means to live unconsciously.

What I know for sure is that living an unconscious life is like being the walking dead. All my fat years -- my unconscious years -- are a blur to me now. It's only because I have photographs and diaries that I remember them at all. And sometimes even then I don't remember being present, because I wasn't really there.

I grew up believing that people with money didn't have problems. Or certainly none that money couldn't solve. Then, in 1986, my show went national It changed the trajectory of my life. When I'd started my working life in Nashville and Baltimore, paying the rent and the electric bill and making payments on my car left me with just enough to buy groceries and get my hair done. Now I had more money than I'd ever imagined, and everybody wanted some. The first thing I did was to retire my mother and a cousin who helped take care of me when I was growing up. My father let me buy him a new house and a Mercedes, but he refused to quit working in his barbershop. He's still there.

Then everybody came out of the woodwork. Distant family members, who I barely knew, wanted me to completely take care of them or wanted to work for me. Relatives I hadn't seen since I was ten years old showed up demanding thousands of dollars "because we're family." Helping my family was something I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to handle the total strangers who came to Chicago claiming to have spent their last dime leaving a battering spouse, or the teenagers who'd run away from home.

The first year I helped almost everyone who asked me, family and strangers alike. It was stressful trying to figure out how much to give to whom, and before I knew it, they'd return for more. I was overwhelmed, but I never felt it. Once again, I just ate until I couldn't feel. By the end of the year I was 200 pounds.

In 1988, totally frustrated and up to 212 pounds, I turned to Optifast, a liquid diet supplement program. For four months, I ate not a single grape, nut, or other morsel of food. I lost fat -- and muscle -- and I dropped to 145 pounds.

Now I know that it's impossible to starve your body for four months, then feed it, and not expect to regain the weight. Your body doesn't want to starve, so it holds on to every ounce of fat in case you do another crazy thing like consuming only about 400 calories a day!

It would take seven more years of gaining, gaining, and countless attempts to follow diets that I wasn't really prepared to stick to before I discovered the truth. In the meantime, I was racing through two hundred shows a year. My entire life was work. I was leaving my apartment at six A.M. and getting home at ten at night. Eating. Sleeping. Repeating the cycle five days a week. My friends were my staff, and even when we weren't working, our lives still revolved around the show.

In 1992, I won another Emmy for Best Talk Show Host. I had prayed that Phil Donahue would win so that I wouldn't have to embarrass myself by rolling my fat butt out of my seat and walking down the aisle to the stage. By now I'd reached the end of believing I could be thin, though I was scheduled to leave for Colorado the next day to visit yet another spa. I was so depressed about my weight, I had little hope that I would be successful this time around. Every time the number on the scale went higher, it seemed even more hopeless. And 237 pounds was the heaviest I'd ever been. I had journals filled with prayers to God to help me conquer my weight demon.

Bob Greene was the answer to my prayers. When I first met Bob at that last-ditch-effort spa in Colorado, I thought for sure he was judging and labeling me as I had already judged and labeled myself: fat and out of control. Bob, it turned out, wasn't judging me at all. He really understood.

But he did have some tough questions for me. One of them was the hardest question that anyone has ever asked me: What is the best life possible for you? I remember one conversation in particular.

"You of all the people in the world can have your life be what you want; why don't you do it? What do you really want?" he asked.

"I want to be happy," I replied.

" 'Happy' isn't a good-enough answer. What does that mean? Break it down for me. When was the last time you were really happy?"

"When I was filming The Color Purple, seven years ago."

"What about filming The Color Purple made you happy?"

I didn't have to think to answer. "Doing that work filled me up. I was playing a character that was meaningful to me, surrounded by the brilliance of Alice Walker, Quincy Jones, and Steven Spielberg. I was so charged and stimulated every day, I just wanted to do better and be better."

"So what would it take for you to have that feeling again?"

In answering that question, I realized the show had gotten away from me. In order to stay competitive, we had become more and more salacious, covering topics like "My sister slept with my husband" and "Is my husband or my boss my baby's father?" I didn't want to put junk on the air that perpetuated dysfunction instead of resolving it. It wasn't who I wanted to be.

And so, while I worked out and changed what and how much I ate, managing the rest of my life became my real focus. I started asking myself the same questions Bob had asked me. For every circumstance, I asked myself:

"What do I want?"

"What kind of show do I want?"

"What kind of body do I want?"

"What do I want to give to all the people who are asking me for my money, my attention, my time?"

I finally made a decision about that last one. I set up trust funds with a finite amount of cash for the people to whom I wanted to give money. And to those with whom I had no connection, I said no, and meant it. And just to be sure, I changed my home number. I've never visited a psychiatrist, but working with Bob has been priceless therapy.

Another thing I know for sure now is that you've got to ask yourself: What kind of life do I want and how close am I to living it? You cannot ever live the life of your dreams without coming face-to-face with the truth. Every unwanted pound creates another layer of lies. It's only when you peel back those layers that you will be set free: free to work out, free to eat responsibly, free to live the life you want and deserve to live. Tell the truth and you'll learn to eat to satisfy your physical hunger as opposed to your emotional hunger and to stop burying your hopes and dreams beneath layers of fat.

A young woman on my show who had been struggling with her weight once said to me she'd learned to challenge the pain and not the peanut butter. I thought that was brilliant. Once you work on what's eating you, you won't want to eat so much.

The Best Life Diet plan on the following pages mirrors the way I eat and live now. (You'll find a full week of my menus and some of my favorite foods on pages 168-72.) There is no secret to losing weight. It's simple physics: what you put in versus what you put out.

I lost weight in stages. First I became active: I still work out even though I really hate it, but I know if I don't, I will end up at 200 pounds again. Then I started working on my eating. First I stopped eating past 7:30 at night. When Bob told me it would make a big difference in my weight, I resisted. I thought it was going to be too hard. It was at first, but it gradually got easier. I rearranged my life so I wasn't rushing to make the 7:30 P.M. eating cutoff time. Not eating after 7:30 P.M. turned out to be one of the most effective changes I've made.

I've now taken most of the unhealthy foods out of my diet and replaced them with better choices. I eat smaller portions and healthful foods as a way of life, not as a diet to go on and off. I've even started a garden, and one of the most delightful moments for me these days is seeing a basket of just-picked green beans, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, and corn sitting on my kitchen counter. And I'm always working on getting better. My diet is a work in progress.

Maybe what's most different now is that I think about why I eat, not just about what and how much. The truth is, most people -- like me -- have to keep watch on all three: why, what, and how we eat. We have to manage it daily. If you turn on the TV and see that I've picked up a few pounds, you will know that I'm not managing and balancing my life as well as I should.

I accept that mine is a very public life, although the pain and frustration I experience when I gain weight is just as individual and difficult as your own. I still work constantly at not repressing my feelings with food.

One day I was leaving Santa Barbara, heading for Chicago. I was unable to fly due to bad weather, and I left the airport craving cake. I didn't process my feelings about being delayed; I just wanted cake. In particular, the coconut cake sold at the Montecito Café. Mind you, it was three years ago that I had my first and last bite of that cake, but the memory was so strong I could taste it. All the way home I thought about that cake.

I knew the café was closed, but I was still obsessing about it. I got would substitute for the cake and satisfy my craving. I got out some pancake mix and a can of pineapple. I can make pineapple pancakes, add syrup, and it can taste kind of like the cake, I thought. I vowed to make a giant pancake right after I took my dogs for a walk.

While the dogs and I went for a long walk, I got really calm. I wasn't anxious about missing appointments and having to rearrange schedules anymore. I returned home and didn't even think about cake or pancakes, pineapple or syrup.

I started a new book, and went to sleep in peace.

Pausing is something I do more often now.

And I pray or meditate -- or do both -- every day. I start my day with a prayer that Marianne Williamson shared in her book Illuminata: A Return to Prayer.

Dear God,

I give this day to You.

May my mind stay centered on the things of spirit.

May I not be tempted to stray from love.

As I begin this day, I open to receive You.

Please enter where You already abide.

May my mind and heart be pure and true, and may I not deviate from the things of goodness.

May I see the love and innocence in all mankind, behind the masks we all wear and the illusions of this worldly plane.

I surrender to You my doings this day.

I ask only that they serve You and the healing of the world.

May I bring Your love and goodness with me, to give unto others wherever I go.

Make me the person You would have me be.

Direct my footsteps, and show me what You would have me do.

Make the world a safer, more beautiful place.

Bless all Your creatures.

Heal us all, and use me, dear Lord, that I might know the joy of being used by You.

Amen.

I pray to be used by a power greater than myself. It takes consistent effort to live my best life.

The mistake I've made in the past is not realizing how constant a struggle it really is not to turn to food for comfort. It comes down to another question Bob asked me years ago: "How much do you love yourself ?"

"Of course I love myself," I'd snapped. "It's the first law of selfpreservation. I firmly believe in it."

"You may believe it, but you don't practice it," he said. "Otherwise you couldn't let yourself be two hundred and thirty-seven pounds."

I wanted to cry, and later I did. He was so right. I cared more about everyone else's feelings than my own. I'd overextend myself to do anything anyone asked, to honor his or her feelings. I didn't want anyone to think I wasn't "nice" or, worse, that "the money has gone to her head."

This, too, I know for sure: Loving yourself means honoring yourself and your own feelings first. When I was 237 pounds, I didn't even know what I felt. It was like living behind a veil of fat.

My hope is that you can learn from my mistakes and liberate yourself from this struggle. I finally know it doesn't have to be so hard. Make a decision. Know that you deserve the best life possible. It's there for the asking, the answering, the taking. Go out and get it!!!!!

-Oprah

Copyright © 2006, 2009 by the Bestlife Corporation