Shift for Good

Preface

I had battled obesity since childhood, a secret shame that haunted me.

As a regular on Good Morning America, my biggest fear was being called out about my weight. So three years ago, when my ABC News boss said she didn't think I looked my best and wanted me to see a stylist, what I heard was lose weight—or lose your job. Those words never crossed her lips, but that's the message I got loud and clear. Although it was brief, I couldn't wait for our little chat to end. When it was up, I managed to dash from the ABC cafeteria before bursting into tears.

After a good cry at home, I had an honest conversation with myself about my forty-year battle of the bulge. Enough is enough, I thought. It's time to lose weight once and for all. No more gimmicks. No more lies. No more excuses. You're a smart girl. Figure it out.

But my initial bravado aside, I didn't have a clue how to do it. What I did know was that failure was no longer an option, like it had been so many times before. My job was on the line and I was not going to risk a high-profile TV gig simply because of my size. I knew I could fix this, despite having failed at every weight-loss plan ever invented. I told myself: You cannot sentence yourself to a lifetime of whispers: "Tory was good on Good Morning America, but they got rid of her because she's fat."

Besides, I needed to keep my job. Because I was the breadwinner in my family, the salary mattered. But I was also tired of the withering looks that all fat people get—the stares that say you're lazy, weak, and undisciplined. I would prove to everyone that I was none of those things and that what they saw on the outside hardly mirrored the strength I had on the inside.

That's exactly what I did.

Over the course of just one year, armed with a game plan, plenty of support from my family, and grit that I never knew I had, I did the unthinkable: I lost sixty-two pounds—the equivalent, as my son Jake puts it, of two Marlys, our thirty-pound beagle. How did I do it? For the first time, I shifted the way I viewed food—and myself. My story recounting that journey became The Shift, a book that resonated with thousands of women who had struggled forever with their weight. The best part? I haven't gained any of it back. In fact, I've shed a few more pounds. For me, there is no going back, just like a smoker or drinker who decides, finally, that enough is enough.

The response from readers has been my greatest gift: Women email me, stop me on the street, and corner me in shopping malls, supermarkets, and department stores to tell me that my story is their story and we must be sisters from another mother. Why is it, they ask, that so many diet books offer false hope and gimmicks instead of straight talk? They thank me for sharing a struggle that had always humiliated me—an uncomfortable topic that I never expected to share publicly. They say that reading about my challenges gave them the courage to make shifts in their lives, too.

After my Shift, I felt better about myself than I ever had before. I went to my doctor after avoiding having a physical for more than ten years because I hadn't wanted to be lectured about my size. Dressing rooms were no longer frustration destinations but places to explore the new me with clothes I had never thought would fit. I was a better role model for my kids, especially my teenage daughter, Emma. I embraced exercise, had more energy and enjoyed better sex, and became confident about my appearance for the first time ever. I genuinely valued all of the empowering things that came from losing weight.

But I also expected something more to happen.

I couldn't quite articulate what that was, but let me ask you this: Have you ever accomplished a goal only to discover, after all is said and done, that you feel empty? I had always thought if only I could lose weight, everything in my life would be perfect. I pretty quickly discovered that life doesn't work that way. Tackle one area and other stuff pops up. That's just the way life is, one big game of Whac-A-Mole. I didn't expect it, but that's what happened. I began to realize that I had attributed all the challenges in my life to being overweight and had convinced myself that once my weight was under control everything would be perfect. In some ways, everything did feel perfect—for a while. But before long my life began to unravel, or at least that's how it seemed. I had Shifted on the outside—and yes, on the inside too—but looking back, I wasn't really any different on the inside. I think I expected the whole world to stand up and take notice. I wanted some huge prize for losing the weight. Not a Mirror Ball Trophy from Dancing with the Stars or a rose from The Bachelor. But something big. I figured I'd know it when it hit me. Then I waited and waited, but no prize arrived. No chariot pulled up with my reward. Rainbows and unicorns did not appear in the sky and neither did shooting stars and fireworks. Hope and expectation turned to disappointment and restlessness, which puzzled me because I had expected nothing but blue skies from now on. I was no longer obese, so why wasn't everything perfect? Why wasn't I so much happier?

Now, don't get me wrong. I lost all this weight and I continue to be thrilled with the results. I'm happy that I did it my way, that my willpower and determination paid off and that I didn't revert to old habits. But looking back, I put too much emphasis on the fictitious notion that a lower number on a scale would fix everything. If only I could lose forty, fifty pounds, I would get the recognition I deserved, phenomenal job opportunities would open up, motivational speaking engagements would pour in, and I'd be a kinder, gentler, less stressed-out version of Tory Johnson. Instead, I discovered that weight loss alone is not the be-all and end-all; size does not determine inner happiness. That was a massive letdown. I was clearly in a funk and I needed to figure out how to feel as good on the inside as I did on the outside. I wanted to experience the kind of inner satisfaction and contentment that couldn't be measured in numbers. I wanted to Shift the way I viewed and lived other parts of my life with the same determination I had used to lose weight.

I wanted to Shift for Good.

But that's easier said than done because Shifting the way you approach your life—and the way you feel about yourself, way down deep inside—is far different from Shifting the way you eat. I wasn't sure how I'd tackle it. I didn't have the luxury of taking a year off to travel—I can't even remember my last two-week vacation—and I certainly couldn't skip off to a Zen monastery to find myself. And while my curiosity is piqued when people ditch corporate careers to head to Caribbean islands to bartend on a beach, I have no interest in abandoning my life or the people in it.

I wasn't about to pack my bags, but I did want to explore this whole mind-body connection with the goal of becoming more content and even more familiar with who I am. My experiments in search of contentment had to be realistic for a working mom, a busy girl on the go, and they needed to be cost-effective. Low-or no-cost would be even better: I'm not known as the "Deals & Steals" lady on Good Morning America for nothing.

I wanted to build what I think is best described as a portable sense of self-esteem, one that would stay with me wherever I went, so that no matter what issues I faced, I wouldn't get rattled. My goal was to find ways to make me feel good about myself, the right tools and tactics to face challenges like job loss, financial hits, aging spouse, empty nest, or death, to name a few. I was desperate to calm the incessant chaos inside me. I yearned to be happy and healthy, inside and out.

So for the second time in my life, I had an honest conversation with myself. Enough is enough, I thought. No more gimmicks. No more lies. No more excuses. You're a smart girl. Figure it out.

And I did. I stepped out of my comfort zone and tried a bunch of new things with the same grit and determination that had served me well during my initial Shift. This time, I focused on what was happening on the inside, with an eye toward rethinking and re-imagining myself and how I wanted to lead my life going forward. Shift for Good is the story of how I learned to ride more waves instead of crashing onto the rocks—and how you can, too.

The Shift was a pretty straightforward journey for me: I went from fat to (fairly) fit. Initially I wrote that I had gone from "fat to fit," but changed it to include "fairly" because, truth by told, I am a work in progress. My friend Linda chastised me because we're all works in progress and that doesn't mean we can't celebrate who we are and our accomplishments, at this very moment, without apology or caveats. I will try to keep that reminder front and center.

Shift for Good takes a more circuitous path, and I experienced some hiccups along the way. Being more present, finding peace and joy and sharing them with people I love, continue to evolve. Appearing on Good Morning America each week makes me a familiar face to viewers. But I'm not a self-help guru, psychologist, or shrink. I'm just a woman with a happy family and a good career who found herself in a jam and needed to find a way out. As I did in The Shift, I embarked on a mission to figure it out for myself. In the following pages, I share candidly what I did. It's up to you to decide which parts might work for you. All I ask is that you keep an open mind, which is the one promise I made to myself going into this.