Obsessed: America's Food Addiction--And My Own (6 page)

I was devastated, because I needed to get off overnights so badly. But I thought,
My God, she’s right. This is TV. I’ve got to look my best, and I don’t
. The message I sent the second I walked into her office was “Hi, I don’t take care of myself and I am not happy.” The second message, if she cared to take another look, was “I don’t like how I look.” And if she wanted to give me one minute more, you know what that network executive would have seen? That my life was a mess.

When you walk through a door that can change your life, you had better send the message that you have your act together. I did not. So I just sat there, horrified by what she was saying, and equally horrified with myself, because everything she was saying was true.

That network executive may have saved my career. My value was reflected in the visual message I was sending. To pretend I wasn’t sending it would have been my biggest professional mistake. To ignore her would have been mistake number two. I needed to learn from her tough talk and take action to become a healthier person, inside and out.

I went back home and took a hard look at the reality of my life—working overnights, raising two small children, and trying to keep a big house together—and felt a surge of self-pity. I thought,
How am I going to do this? Everything is working against me. I’m exhausted. I don’t sleep. I don’t have enough money for a trainer to help me get in shape or for cosmetic surgery to take care of this double chin. How do I do this
?

And then, suddenly, I had the answer.
You just have to
. It was a pivotal moment in my life. I wasn’t immediately sure
what I had to do, or how to do it, but I knew I was taking the first step in the right direction. I was
done
abusing myself.

It was time for some major changes, starting with making a commitment, no matter what else was going on, to set aside ninety minutes a day for me—to get healthy, eat right, and work out.

It was time for some major changes, starting with making a commitment, no matter what else was going on, to set aside ninety minutes a day for me—to get healthy, eat right, and work out.—
Mika

This was a heavy lift because as an overnight anchor in New York City, I was already away from my kids too much. It meant that I had to let others take over some of my parenting duties while I took time to rebuild myself. Call me selfish if you want, but my feeling better and doing well at work was also going to benefit my family.

I suffered the judgments of stay-at-home moms in my neighborhood who shook their heads and tightened their lips at the plight of my poor babies. That didn’t matter to me. The equation was simple. This would be a tough time for my household, my children, and my husband, but there would be a better mother and wife at the other end. It was going to take a while—I wasn’t sure if it would be six months, a year, or even two—but I was going to change.

It was a tall order for a woman who felt empty at the core,
but I was determined to take control of my life. It began with making significant changes in my eating behavior. I did just what that network executive said. I drank a lot of water—all the time. Water, water, and water. I also started to eat healthy salads, with garbanzo beans and other low-fat protein. I cut out sweet cereals and replaced them with shredded wheat, granola, and Bran Chex. All of that paid off physically, and soon enough I began to look and feel healthier.

The mental and emotional correction took much longer, because true health doesn’t come from the mathematics of eating (counting calories, calculating fat grams, measuring minutes of exercise) but from crafting a complete lifestyle that leads to an overall sense of well-being. My compulsion to overeat was still there. I could still eat an entire box of cereal at one sitting if I allowed myself to. Occasionally, I gave in to that temptation (and I still do).

But I was making progress. I cut out foods that I knew were bad for me and slept as much as I could manage. Even though I was still tired a lot, I made sure to enjoy my family, because they put that sparkle back in my eye.

At times, all of this was very hard to do. I sometimes felt as if I was just going through the motions. I should have put more emphasis on being healthy instead of worrying so much about losing weight, but I didn’t know the way I do now what “healthy” really means. It was a struggle to meet all those demands that come with scrambling to be a wife and a mother holding down a high-pressure job, and I wasn’t looking for the balance I strive for today. I was expected to be Superwoman—at least, I expected it of myself—and now, on top of that, I had
taken on the added commitment of trying to reform bad habits and get healthy.

As imperfect as my efforts were, they were huge steps in the right direction. The pounds fell off. I looked less tired, a little more alive, a little happier. I wasn’t a beauty queen, but I felt there was that something special about me again, something that I remembered as a little girl, before my body began to change and my eating got out of control.

As imperfect as my efforts were, they were huge steps in the right direction. The pounds fell off. I looked less tired, a little more alive, a little happier.

—
Mika

Eight months after beginning my self-improvement program, I sent that vice president at NBC a picture of myself looking fit and confident. It was just for fun, my way of saying thanks for giving me the kick in the pants I needed to start changing my life. I was still so busy being a working mom that I had to grab my daughter’s crayon to address the envelope. I slapped a Post-it on the photo—no time for a real letter—and scrawled “Is this better?”

Not long afterward, the phone rang. It was the vice president on the line. I had a job on
Home Page
, a new show being created for MSNBC. I was finally off the night shift!

M
Y STORY, WITH
J
OE
S
CARBOROUGH
, B
RIAN
S
TELTER
,

V
IRGINIA
C
HA
, R
EBECCA
P
UHL
, D
ONNY
D
EUTSCH
,

S
USIE
E
SSMAN
, G
OVERNOR
C
HRIS
C
HRISTIE
,

D
R
. N
ANCY
S
NYDERMAN
, S
AM
K
ASS
,

R
EAR
A
DMIRAL
J
AMIE
B
ARNETT (RETIRED)

T
hat experience, and others since then, have taught me that weight and looks affect value. For me, it was literally the difference between “no thanks” and getting a job offer. When I was a little bit overweight and didn’t look quite as good, I struggled, and I could see that people with power just didn’t have much interest in me. But when I looked svelte and fit and put together, those same people pursued me.

Diane fears that her weight has held her back from fulfilling her full professional potential and being adequately recognized for her value. “As a teen in the 1970s I was influenced by the feminist movement, and I believed that women would be judged on their talents and their smarts, not on how they looked,” she admitted to me. “It hasn’t turned out that way entirely, though, has it?”

Diane is a blonde, I’m a blonde. She’s bright, I’m bright. And we’re both skilled journalists. Did her weight tank her dreams of working for a network news program? Is it the reason I succeeded and she lagged behind?

It has been more than fifteen years since I started down the path toward a healthier weight. In the last decade, I have mostly managed to end the binge-and-starve cycle that held me captive for so long. I don’t do that anymore. I can’t. I have kids, and I have a career, and I have too many things on the line to act so foolishly. I feel good now. I try to take care of myself, and I look like I have my act together. My efforts have paid off in an exhilarating career. Today, when cake is served I usually don’t eat it. I have trained myself not to touch it, not to get anywhere near it.

Still, I am far from conquering my problem with food. The attraction remains powerful. I continue to send a lot of contradictory messages to myself. I try to listen to the one that says,
Stay away. This will make me fat. Don’t eat this
. But occasionally I am swayed by the one that says,
God, I want to eat all of that
. That voice is still there, too, and I still have relapses.

I have a tightly regulated way of eating because I simply don’t trust myself to eat reasonable portions of certain foods. Some nutritionists think my diet needs more repair, and I’ll be honest—I am frequently on the edge of hunger. I still exercise to a degree that some people might term compulsive. Achieving a
healthy
thin is a continuing struggle for me, and I expect it always will be. I envy people who are much more comfortable
than I am in their attitudes toward food and body image. I wish I could relax my approach toward food a bit. That’s Diane’s challenge to me, and I’m trying.

But my life is so much better than it once was. My strict approach largely works for me, at least for now. I look at my weight goals this way: I run a business that I know as “Mika, Inc.,” and it runs on the fuel of being thin and healthy and energetic. That’s the juice that inspires me and keeps me going.

In
Knowing Your Value
, I urge women to send a clear and commanding message about who they are and what they are worth. You can’t do that if the message is a lie. For the bulk of my career I thought the only thing that mattered was being thin. I thought that thin equals success. It took me a long time to realize that it’s not enough just to look good. That image won’t last unless you are healthy on every level, and honest and transparent about what it took to get you to that place. That honesty will give you a sense of peace and clarity, along with the confidence you need to do the job before you, and to be recognized for your accomplishments.

For me, it has been a matter of getting the message I send others in sync with the message I send myself. My outward appearance and my internal sense of self are finally coming together. I feel a lot more sure of my value, not only in terms of dollars and cents, but in terms of my own self-worth. What you see now on
Morning Joe
is a woman who isn’t hiding anymore. I know who I am, and I think I look better now than I ever did, because I am more able to be myself.

Virginia Cha, that journalist–beauty queen who took the news anchor job I thought should have been mine, taught me a lesson that has stuck with me to this day: you have to look at
what you have to offer and feel good about it, instead of being consumed by what other people do or have. It took me a long time to figure that out.

Friends of mine in many walks of life agree that when you walk into a room looking good, you are sending a message about yourself that says “I have my act together.” There is research to suggest that carrying extra weight sends an opposite message. Overweight women are generally viewed by their employers as less disciplined, less emotionally stable, and less desirable employees. A study published in the
Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender
showed that 60 percent of overweight women report being discriminated against in the workplace.
¹