Why Not Lose Debt While Losing Weight?

Years ago, I worked as a high school chemistry teacher.  I was about 26 years old at the time, still somewhat freshly out of college and had no clue about how to manage my finances.  As we all know, teachers make very little money and it didn't take long before my life of trying to live like my friends clashed with the reality of my lack of money, even working a second job during the school year and a job in the summer.  I lost everything.  I was evicted from my apartment, had a car repossessed, and literally sat in tears calling different friends asking if I could spend the night on their couch or on their floor because I had nowhere to go.  Now don't get upset or feel sorry for me because I am a woman of strong faith and that's the one thing that I never lost in all of this! 

God provided me with wonderful friends and family that bounced me around between them helping me with food, housing, and other things until I was able to find a new career and get back on my own two feet and I will be forever thankful for them.  Believe it or not, I'm also incredibly thankful that I went through the whole experience, in retrospect, because I learned what things in life are luxuries versus what things in life are ones we really can't live without.  The list of items in the luxury category is very long.  You would truly be amazed what things you can live without if you had to.

Fast forward to around 2005....I'd been working in my new career field for about 3 years but was still kind of feeling my way around in the dark.  I finally hired on with my current company, a company that sounded almost too good to be true, but luckily, ended up being true to their word. They offered me the opportunity to do some things that I'd always wanted to do as well as a competitive salary package.  It was at that point that I said, "Lord, since you've been so good to me and allowed me to get back on my feet, I want to do everything I can to learn how to manage my money so that I will hopefully never end up where I was again."

I'd already been a fan of Suze Orman, but I started to follow her even more carefully.  I started to read books and follow her advice.  I pulled my credit report, took a deep breath when I saw all of the negative items on it, and vowed that no matter how long it took, I was going to dig my way out of my debts.  I started working my way through them and started to get excited paying off bills because I felt like I was taking care of my responsibilities in an honorable way.  I made this mess and it was up to me to clean it up. 

About a year ago, a friend gave me a book called, The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.  He told me that it would completely change my mindset when it came to money and debt and he got me really excited about reading the book.  I started reading and immediately recognized myself being described in the first few pages.  I learned strategies for really getting out of debt quickly and starting to build my financial future.  The great thing is that there was no get rich quick theme to it.  I didn't have to pay for any plan on CD or DVD, yet I had a concrete easy plan to unburden myself from things like my student loan that has in and of itself added weight to my bathroom scale whenever I allowed myself to stress about it.

I've now become a huge "Dave" fan and I am making huge strides in my finances and will soon be completely debt free.  While sitting in our WLS support group meeting one day, we talked about the fact that we each have to find some way for us to individually flip the switch in our brain when it comes to our weight loss because as the saying goes, "they operate on your stomach, not your brain".  Walking out of that meeting, I figured out how to flip that switch....for me.  I asked myself, after all of the work that I've put into paying off my debts, after becoming debt free, would I then go out and max out a bunch of credit cards and spend money that I didn't have?  The answer to that is easy.....HAAAAAAAAIIIILLLLLLL NO!!

I'm trying to take on the same attitude and intensity with losing my weight.  After I've gone through this long, arduous process to get weight loss surgery, as I go through the process of losing the weight, and all of the special steps that are required to get to a "goal", would it make sense to then go out and binge on Krispy Kremes, Ben & Jerry's and all of my old friends that now sit on my hips?  Again, the answer to that is easy......HAAAAAAAAIIIIIIILLLLLL NO!!

In thinking about my finances, I'm excited about being able to be completely debt free in about the next year or so.  Imagine, with no credit card bills, car payments, student loans, etc. my money will all be my own!  I can save, invest, start a business, take a vacation, whatever I want to do!  Now that I've had surgery the amount of money that I need to budget each month for food is already lower so that's just an increased opportunity to get out of debt sooner!  In order to get to this point, I had to make sacrifices.  I had to make a commitment to myself that yes, I am willing to give up vacationing, purchasing any and everything that I want and learn to simply say, "I can't afford that.", but it's been worth it.  If I could do that with my money, I know that I can do that with my weight.  It's NOT EASY, but it's worth it.

So.....what's the point of all of this?  While you're working to lose your weight, why not also work to lose those pounds of debt too?  How many times have you eaten because of financial stress?  If you could get a "financial weight loss surgery" to help you get a jump start, would you do it if you knew that it had the same likelihood for success as your RNY, Lap-band, gastric sleeve, or duodenal switch? 

No matter what your financial picture looks like today, you too can build a plan toward a more secure future, and Dave Ramsey's book, The Total Money Makeover can help you just like it helped me.  I'm not being paid to say this and I get no kickbacks from Dave or Suze.  I just know that financial stress can be just as deadly to people as our obesity can be.  The Total Money Makeover is available at the above link on sale currently for $10!!!  Buy two, one to keep and one to give!!

** Amazing, as I'm writing this, I'm watching The Suze Orman Show and you simply must watch this coming Tuesday's episode of  The Biggest Loser on NBC at 8pm EST/7pm CST.  Suze gives the contestants some financial lessons related to their obesity.  She showed a clip from Tuesday's episode where the contestants learned that obese employees earn on average $7,000 LESS per year than their non-obese coworkers!

**Suze Orman's TV show airs on CNBC on Saturday nights at 9pm EST and re-airs again at 12am EST.

**Dave Ramsey's TV show airs on digital cable channel FBN (Fox Business News) Monday-Friday at 8pm EST and 11pm EST.  He can also be heard on the radio. 

Click here to find a local radio station, or click here to listen online.

Weight Loss Saboteurs

It's no secret that I'm a big tv addict. It has contributed to my obesity and there's no question about that. I was never a fan of The Biggest Loser because I always thought, "how can they exploit these people by having them standing in front of America in their sports bras or bare chests with all of their fat out to be judged and criticized? And I won't even mention watching them get yelled and sworn at by the trainers. How humiliating!" But, I found myself flipping through the channels last season and something on the show caught my eye so I decided to watch it.

I watched the tail end of last season and have started to watch this season from the beginning 3 weeks ago. I can see that some of the yelling during the training sessions really does have to do with challenging the contestants to go beyond what they think their own capabilities are, but I can see that in some ways it also helps them to release the frustrations of their emotional issues too.

I was watching tonight's episode where the theme for the challenges was "Would You Rather?". Basically, would you rather stick to your plan of losing weight and use all of your resources here, or would you rather advance yourself in the game by other means, including at the peril of your fellow contestants. While it is a competition, at this stage of the game it is, or should be, more of a support group because everyone is just starting out and trying to lose the bulk of their excess weight.

Tonight, there was a contestant, Tracey, that opted for the advancement of herself in the game during each of the challenges, even at the chagrin of her partner who she never consulted in her decision making. She basically took the fate of the other contestants in her hands and made some decisions about who she thought should be able to stay or go....a pretty gutsy move for someone who spent the first entire week in the hospital because of her exertion during the very first challenge!!



Luckily by the end of the night, the person who most needed to stay got to stay, but two other people were still sacrificed because of Tracey's actions. It made me think of the people in my life who have tried to sabotage my efforts at losing weight over time, or simply contributed heavily to my gaining. No, of course I didn't have to put the food into my mouth, but you don't set a pile of cocaine in front of a drug addict as a gift and think that they won't use. It's tough enough trying to resist temptation on my own, but when you buy me 10 pints of Ben & Jerry's Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream, you might as well stick a needle in my arm and shoot me up with it!

Only time will really tell how much support I have from my family and friends following my surgery. I will admit that outside of my support group, I feel pretty alone in this. I'm thankful for my support group and all that I've learned from them and I hope that I've built some lifelong friendships there. I know that many people say that their friendships and sometimes family relationships change post-surgery and it will be interesting to see if anything does change. I have a unique situation with my job where I actually move every few months so I have no friends that I see on a regular basis. Most of our communication is through Facebook or emails. I guess the biggest change then would be in relationships with my family. Who knows, maybe I can be an inspiration or a motivation for them. One can only hope.