What part of you is hungry?
A Body-Mind-Spirit Approach to Feeding Yourself
by Sandi Tomlin-Sutker

When Sunny Kruger was only six months old she was already obese. “I was off the charts. I had immigrant parents and it was their culture to work [outside the home] so they left me with a caregiver. And she wasn’t a good one. When my mother came home exhausted and I began crying, she’d just put a bottle of milk in me, and another and another. So I began to gain weight; I went through all those developmental years, a painful adolescence, morbidly obese. When I graduated high school, at age 17, I weighed over 300 pounds.”

It’s a testament to her inner strength and will-power that when she went away to college, Sunny lost all the excess weight, and has kept it off throughout her adult life. But it was at great personal expense: “I went from one eating disorder to another and had a great deal of shame around that. I was always dieting and fearful of gaining the weight back. It turned me into a perfectionist in all areas of my life, but I always had the idea that there was something wrong with me.

“Years ago I began to ask the question, ‘What part of you is hungry?’ I ran a women’s health agency in Chapel Hill and we were seeing a lot of clients with weight issues. There was absolutely no help for them except diets, diets, diets! We saw a lot of women with eating disorders, women who looked perfectly healthy would turn out to be bulimic—they were just consumed with food and weight issues. Then I began to look at my friends: everyone had some kind of dysfunction when it came to eating or diet or self-image.”

Her growing awareness of the pervasiveness of food and weight issues, combined with her own life experience with eating disorders led Sunny to focus her counseling work on those problems. “I found that diet and counseling were not enough; they’d gain the weight back or if not they’d fall into a different addiction (drinking, over-working, promiscuity)—become unbalanced in another area of their lives. I’d see women distressed and upset that they were fat and ugly, when really they were beautiful and feminine but they were listening to some other voice, identifying with some new article out there, following the newest diet, and spending more and more of their time in spas and gyms. The model for women was unattainable, out of focus and out of balance.”

Something was missing for these women (and men) but it took a major physical trauma to show Sunny what it was. In 1989 she had to have orthopedic surgery and was in a body brace for nine months. About the only thing she could do was read and instead of her normal intellectual focus, she began to look at books about Spirit.

“Before my surgery I was lucky enough to attend a workshop with Jon Kabot-Zinn, who ran the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. He has a strong Buddhist orientation and taught me about Mindfulness Meditation and Healing; I had all the time in the world to meditate and heal as I was recovering from my surgeries.

“As a child I didn’t have much of a fantasy life. I didn’t have many dreams. Childhood is a time for Spirit and I missed out on my childhood. I was more concerned with reading people…. figuring out what would please or displease them as a way to distract them from “seeing” me. After all the surgery I had to undergo I was forced to be still. I had time for fantasy and dreaming, too. I realized there was more to me than my face and my nails and my feet and my body and my boobs…and how smart I was…that there was another aspect to me that was not separate from everybody, but belonged. I finally felt connected for the first time in my life—it was when my Spirit emerged that I found out what had been missing.”

Once she got that connection to her Spirit, Sunny realized she had to offer this to others who were suffering from the same kinds of pain she’d experienced in her own life. “When I lost the weight in college it didn’t fill in what was missing. I didn’t have a weight problem for many years but I was still starving . I understood that it was my Spirit that needed nourishment. I started writing poetry; began a meditation practice and experienced a wonderful new creativity. I began to change and find my authenticity. I changed my relationships with my children, my friends and ended some relationships that weren’t healthy and balanced.

“When I sit across from a person who is suffering from something they think has to do with food, I know that it doesn’t and I know where they’re coming from. I’ve had the same frustrations and the same limitations I imposed upon myself.”

She had found the answer to her earlier question: What part of you is hungry? In her work now Sunny uses her own version of the Food Pyramid: at the top, the smallest part is the Body, next is the Mind and finally, the largest part—and the foundation of the pyramid—is Spirit. “Once I recognized the need for Spirit, I became whole and realized this was a tool to teach others to be whole and get away from deathly dieting!”

I mentioned to Sunny a study I’d heard about recently that looked at all of the popular diets: Atkins, Zone, South Beach, Weight Watchers…all of them. The study found that over a period of some years, people on any of the diets only lost and kept off an average of four pounds. Weight Watchers was one of the best but the conclusion was that it was the support element, not the diet itself that worked.

Sunny agrees that support is key. “That’s why my program works. I give my clients unconditional support every step of the way. And there are lots of changes that take place as one takes off a lot of weight. Certainly much is needed in the beginning. The half-way point is critical, too. But people often have a hard time after they have lost a significant amount of weight and they find themselves dealing with all the attention about taking up less space. So many comments and compliments about how they look but what about the more important inner changes? The shifts in attitudes? In self love? The great transitions and transformations that can’t be seen or measured but are very real and new. Much integration needs to take place and this is a very critical time for support and often none is given. My clients know there is nothing they can tell me that would repulse or shock me—I’ve been there.

“Another thing I’ve learned is that when you have a dysfunctional relationship with food, the core issue usually has to do with a sense of abandonment. From others. From self. Now I can literally take someone’s hand and say ‘I will see you through this. You are not out there alone, and you are connected to me and to everyone else. When they feel understood and experience themselves in this way, they can begin to empower themselves. They recognize not only the dysfunction in their eating but the dysfunction in other parts of their lives—work and relationship. That’s what is so important about this kind of work. When people start taking good care of themselves and their lives, the food and weight issues resolve quite naturally.”

Of course, when one starts to take care of themselves-body, mind and spirit—eating healthy food becomes natural. The plan Sunny utilizes is based on the need to balance insulin and serotonin levels. “We do know that insulin levels regulate blood sugar and if you have a rapid drop in blood sugar, cravings and hunger follows. And if you reach for sugar and overly processed foods, that cycle keeps repeating itself...and can lead to excessive weight and illness.” Women (and men over 40) need to maintain adequate serotonin levels Low serotonin levels affects mood and appetite and women are constantly low, that’s why women are depressed more than men, and as they age serotonin drops.

“We have now figured out that we can raise serotonin levels by eating right, and that gets rid of the cravings, levels out the blood sugar. Eating a healthy, organic diet of good greens, good grains, a moderate amount of lean animal protein, “good” fats ( with only a bit of dairy) and legumes—is good for us and good for the planet. Then you don’t have to count calories—you can have some chocolate or some other food treat, but the cravings and the obsession with food is gone.”

Sunny tells me that at some point, everyone she works with tells her, ‘I’m just not hungry!’ “There are no portion controls, or calorie counting because they begin to trust themselves and trust their bodies. Self-esteem returns. Wisdom of the body is restored.”

When the Body, Mind and Spirit are well fed, we have a new answer to What part of you is hungry? And it is none.

The “diet” part of Sunny’s program is based on programs that utilize the concept of the glycemic index of foods and not calorie counting. Plans are individually tailored to meet clients’ life styles, personal tastes and specific health issues (as defined by their health care professionals).

[ allianceforweightloss.com ]