Bob Greene's Webcast Transcript

 

Jill: Definitely.

Oprah: Okay.

Jill: I think, you know, for me, I have always been very success oriented that, you know, to get out of the town I grew up in I needed to get the grades and be the best and I always did that. I mean, I—you know, I barely had fun in high school. But I got terrific grades and at age 33, you know, cookies make you feel good and, like, I totally get that.

Oprah: Yeah.

Jill: And I would never have thought it. I would have thought it was a failure of will. I would have thought that it was, you know, something else that I wasn't doing right, but I would not at all have thought that it had anything to do with pleasure.

Oprah: Wow.

Bob: Well, Jill, the next step for you, if I might, is to take the leap. You recognized it. That's great. But obviously you're seeing you get a temporary pleasure from food. This whole process is really about taking that same energy and putting it into those other areas that have the negative sign. In fact, when you're pulled to a refrigerator is a golden moment. "Golden" in that it's an opportunity to change your choices, and you're the closest at that opportunity when it's late at night, you're restless, you want to go to the refrigerator, that's when you're closest to identifying these areas that need attention and you have two options. One, have that food, medicate yourself, and get by that slight discomforting moment of something missing in your life or something that's in your life that you don't want, or you can make a plan write in a journal and decide, "Well, you know, it's intimacy that I'm missing and this is what I'm going to do" instead of having that Boston cream pie that's sitting in the refrigerator.

Oprah: Yeah, it's interesting, too—thank you, Jill. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Jill: Thank you.

Oprah: Wearing green too. It's interesting. Marianne Williamson, who is also a friend of mine, and Marianne has been writing me a lot about this, and she was saying that, "Actually, your weight is an invitation to your best life," which is exactly what you're saying about that, you know, feeling irritated and going to the alcohol or going to the food which is, you know, my drug of choice and probably Jill's and everybody else who's on this webcast. And in that moment, there's the sacred moment that you have a choice.

Bob: It's very similar. I call it—in some ways if you can say that your excess weight is a blessing because it is a sign that something needs to change in your life and giving you the opportunity to identify what that is and make an impactful change in your life. In that respect, it is a blessing.

Oprah: And that is if it's really excessive. You know, not if it's 5 pounds. I guess they didn't get Linda on the phone. Could they just call Linda and ask her if she's 5 pounds or 50 pounds? Because she can't be writing this if she's 5 pounds. Nobody writes this if they're 5 pounds.

Bob: That's right. And the fact that she says she's lazy, that's a very important fact that people get pleasure in confirming a core belief. And believe it or not, they'll get more pleasure confirming, "See, I'm not worthy or I am lazy, see?"

Oprah: "I'm just lazy." Okay.

Bob: In a way it's its own cop-out.

Oprah: So we have Barbara from Texas on the line with a question for Bob. Barbara?  

Barbara: Hi.

Oprah: Hi, Barbara.

Barbara: Hi, Bob.

Bob: Hi, Barbara.

Barbara: My question is this: I know, I know in my head that I'm worth it. I'm worth the efforts, that sort of thing. But I don't know on a spiritual level. And I can't get to the point where—I can do it for a day, a couple of days, but I can't—see I haven't been successful sticking to it. And I know—I know what I want and I know it has nothing to do with food, and what I want in itself scares me. I've been divorced for 19 years, and I know it's all about I really do on a spiritual level, on the soul level, want that companionship, but that does scare me. And I distinctly remember in 1998 telling my boss that I was just going to get ugly because I wasn't having success with men, and so in 1999 I started packing on the pounds. Now I'm 40 pounds overweight and—

Oprah: Forty seems to be the wake-up call number. Go ahead, I'm sorry.

Barbara: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it is for me. But I don't know—I don't know how to convince myself, what I need to do to get to that point where I'm serious enough about it where I make a spiritual commitment to doing this and that I am worth the relationship and worth the love of another human being.

Oprah: Yeah.

Barbara: Because that's what it's about. I know I've insulated myself. I know I've gained the weight so that I'm not so attractive.

Oprah: So really you're trying to get to the point where you really have a—connect with the fact that you matter. That you, Barbara, matter.

Bob: Well, if I could go a little deeper. Your words say that, "Oh, I know"—we weren't convinced when you were saying, "Oh, I know that I'm worth X, Y, and Z or to be the weight that I feel I should be."

Oprah: She's just saying that intellectually. She's saying intellectually—

Bob: Well—

Barbara: Maybe what I'm really saying is I know I should feel this way. But I don't.

Oprah: Oh, okay.

Bob: See your conscious mind can easily do that and you can call it your "spiritual self" or some people will make the leap that that is your unconscious self that processes everything, knows everything. On that level, obviously you haven't done that. And what I do, that's the toughest journey of all. People think, "Oh, I don't like exercise and getting on the treadmill is the hard part or giving up your foods." Those are so much the easy part. The hard part is making a change to how you view yourself. That's what this whole process is. It's really a self-esteem issue. And when you go back—and you might start by replaying child.

Oprah: Yeah.

Bob: Your first—