by Connie Mears

Most diets focus on what we’re consuming. Whether we’re counting points or counting carbs, the focus is on what’s going in. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way (www.theartistsway.com), likes to ask other questions. Not just what’s going in, but what’s going on? Not just what are we eating, but what’s eating us? Her holistic approach digs deep to the taproot of overeating. 
   Her first prescription is morning pages, three handwritten pages of “brain drain” first thing every morning, which gives plenty of time to answer those gnawing questions. What exactly is going on? Some conclude not enough. Others realize too much. The right answers, according to Cameron, spring forth authentically from within us—when we take the time to listen. She likens the daily practice of morning pages to an “effective form of meditation—especially for hyperactive Westerners.” 
   Morning pages help readers work with the fabric of life—thoughts, feelings, choices—to consciously construct a life that fits. Instead of trying to cram our expansive spirits into puny lives—and manifesting that feeling of too bigness in our bodies—we begin to tailor a life that fits our soul.
   Using the tools of her book, The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size, people can expect “a heightened sense of spirituality and intuition,” Cameron says. Tuning into our higher Self on a daily basis, this wise Self dishes generous helpings of ideas on what would be truly nourishing to us, much of which, though sensual, has little to do with food.  
   Cameron connected the dots between blocked creativity—the stagnation of life force—and weight issues while teaching her ultra-catalytic process, The Artist’s Way. Over each 12-week course she noticed a correlation between expanding creativity and shrinking waistlines. 
   “From the front of the classroom the transformation that morning pages cause is almost startling,” Cameron writes in The Writing Diet. “I call the process ‘spiritual chiropractic’ as changes are made in exactly the direction they are needed.”  
   When her own doctor prescribed medicine with weight-gain side effects, Cameron refused to accept his prognosis of plumpness. She knew The Artist’s Way tools were effective in unblocking the flow of creativity and had seen the buoyant effect in her students. In the same vein as The Artist’s Way, The Writing Diet’s chatty tone offers the camaraderie of one who’s been there and back.
 
Connie Mears: You refer to The Writing Diet as a gentle revolution at the same time magazines are screaming, “Lose 15 pounds by Valentine’s Day!” Your book doesn’t make miracle claims. Why’s that?

Julia Cameron: The book was written out of my experience and my observation. I have seen miracles happen, but they are a little bit like time-lapse photography. It helps enormously in losing weight if you take your foot off the accelerator. Somebody came over to me on the subway this week and said, “Are you Julia Cameron?” She was an opera singer who had lost 150 lbs. She did it using my tool kit over a couple of years.

Mears: I’ve been doing it for about three weeks. Each day, every couple of days, I incorporate one more thing, like more water, for instance. Which is different from diets I’ve tried before. Either I was all the way on or all the way off, and this is just about being more mindful when I go to the grocery store.

Cameron: Yes. Your refrigerator’s contents change. The Writing Diet is designed to be used with any diet plan that is working for the reader. It doesn’t say eat this way. It says you probably pretty much know what works, but you sabotage it. So try using these tools and see if the diet actually works. There are people who do South Beach or Weight Watchers or Overeaters Anonymous. The book works as a tool kit with any of those programs.
 
Mears: Yes, it does. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I trusted it. I know The Artist’s Way tools work for creativity issues, and I think these will be as effective to address food issues.

Cameron: I urge people to use the tools from The Artist’s Way in the context of their food. People will come up to me and say, “I did The Artist’s Way, I worked with morning pages for five years, and now I came to see you because I stopped.” And I say, “Well, start again!” A lot of people find the morning pages very effective. Their life changes a lot, and then they give them up. They get sort of re-blocked. When they resume using the morning pages, the wreckage gets cleared away again.
 
Mears: Well, that’s where I am. I did them and they were very effective. I was living the life of an artist. I wasn’t making a lot of money and, discouraged, I put it all away a few years ago. Within two days of starting the morning pages for The Writing Diet, I had pulled out my brushes and paints that had been dormant for three years.

Cameron: Now see, that’s brilliant! That’s so happy.

Mears: It felt like “Ohmigosh, it’s spring!”

Cameron: Each day you come a little closer to being committed to the idea. Your commitment grows to work with the principles. I think a lot of times diet books are scolding in that they treat the readers like naughty children. There isn’t an understanding of relapse as part of the process. The book says look at what you’re doing and start over. Tenacity is what wins through.

Mears: In the book you use the term “clean eating.”

 

Cameron: Nutritionist Sara Ryba uses that phrase. It is low fat, low carbs, and no refined sugar. Just eating sensibly and drinking lots and lots of water.

Mears: What do you consider right-sized, and how does one counter the huge influence that media has on body image in our culture?

Cameron: Well, one of the most radical things suggested in this book, and I hope I suggested it gently, was to try weighing only once a month. That’s been terrific for me. When I started working with these tools I was 40 pounds overweight from taking medicine. To me that was just unbearably huge. Then I got the idea of using the tools to address that. Now I’m down about six sizes. But I don’t know how much I weigh. Only my body buddy knows. All that I ask is, “Am I gaining, staying the same, or losing?”

Mears: So you don’t focus on the number, you focus on the direction you’re headed?

Cameron: That’s it exactly. So I’m headed in the right direction. As long as I’m going in the right direction I feel optimistic. You know one of the things The Artist’s Way says is that if you make a piece of art you lose your sense of age, because as you become immersed in creating you stop thinking you’re too old. When you start using The Writing Diet, you stop saying to yourself, “I’m too fat.” Right size is not a number, it’s a feeling.

Mears: What milestones do you honor to give yourself a sense of momentum and accomplishment?

Cameron: Recently I had to have my suits taken in and that was a milestone. With my body buddy, I set small goals. When I began, my goal was to lose 40 pounds, which seemed impossible. How can I lose that much weight? So instead of going for the 40 pounds, we said, “Let’s set win-points at five-pound increments.”

Mears: Again, so compassionate. Why bludgeon yourself with this horrible number that seems insurmountable?

Cameron: When she says, “You’re down another five,” that is wonderful.

Mears: Do you incorporate exercise? You’re from New York! Of course you’re always walking.

Cameron: I talk about walking because once you get people moving they tend to want more exercise. When people start walking, they say, “Well, I could try the treadmill.” Or “Maybe I could take a yoga class.” Walking and working with the tools tends to create a hunger for more working with the tools. Another way to put it is to say we’re working with our consciousness and this tool kit creates an authentic hunger.
   We’ve all had the experience of blocking our creativity within ourselves, with ice cream, for example. When I teach The Artist’s Way I’m up in front of, say, 100 people for 12 weeks. Sometimes I see somebody who’s really overweight and I think, “Oh, I wonder what she’s blocking?” What I’m saying is if you can use food to block creativity, you can use creativity to block food.

Mears: A lot of the metaphysical storeowners are doing a similar thing as you: They’re trying to help other people on their spiritual path, but they still have to attend to their own practice as well. How do you find that balance?

Cameron: I think if people use the tools themselves they tend to create much healthier boundaries in dealing with others. Very often, people who are blocked creatively have a tendency to be a support for other people. There’s an exercise in The Artist’s Way called “The Virtue Trap.” There, people can take a look at the fact that they don’t look blocked—they look very virtuous—but they’re still missing something essential in their own life. Another term that applies very often is “Shadow Artist.” People in helping professions, for example, some therapists, may find that they are helping other people to blossom but they aren’t being self-nurturing enough themselves. I think my tool kit is profoundly self-nurturing.

Mears: Do you consider yourself New Age?

Cameron: I talk to a Jungian analyst, and she calls it woo-woo. She says, “Julia, woo-woo is where it’s at.” I think what makes my work maybe a little bit different is that it’s so grounded in specificity. I think the danger with New Age interests is that people become sort of ungrounded, and that’s not good for them. That’s why my tools are morning pages and walking, things that get them into their body, as well as in their psyche. I feel people have misconceptions about spirituality. The more grounded we are, the more deeply spiritual we become. The more grounded we are, the more transcendental we become.

Mears: Do you feel you’ve accomplished what you came here to do, and by here, I mean on the planet?

Cameron: I think about that because I’m coming up on 60. I have an opera that I’m working on with my collaborator Emma Lively and a musical we’ve completed that we hope will find its way to the stage, and I’m writing another novel. I clearly don’t feel I’m finished as an artist. And it’s interesting, I never, ever would have expected that I would have written The Writing Diet. When the idea came to me it was so clear that it really felt like guidance. You know, “Write this book, it could help a lot of people.”

Mears: Well, your previous work has helped a lot of people. I’m quite sure this one will, too. Thank you.

Connie Mears is an artist and writer, living her dream on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

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