 I'm Wendy Low and I'm excited to journey with you as we learn how to take your health back. Today we have a very dynamic woman warrior of God who was given a challenge early on in her life and who has conquered the challenge and wants to help others along the way. Her name is Becky Samson. Becky's journey to recovery from a binge disorder and into reversing every medical condition she had. Overcoming self-esteem issues and learning to love and honor the woman that she has now become. Let's welcome Becky Samson. Aloha Becky. Aloha. Thank you so much. Well when I met you I knew I had to have you on the show. You have an amazing story and I'm sure one that many of us can resonate with and still probably dealing with. So I want to get us started so you can give us some direction some goals and what to look forward to in life. So thank you for being here Becky. Sure thank you so much Wendy and you too are adorable. I actually you were one of the first people that I when I was looking at Think Tech Hawaii you were the first people that I saw on there so I recognized you when we met again about a month or two ago. So thank you so much. Very good. Thank you Becky. So yeah I just want to know how did you do it? I mean we're going to see some amazing pictures some photos of you and I'm glad that you're sharing them I would be so proud to share them as well. How did you do it and how do you do it? Yeah that's a really really great question because I've struggled my entire life with weight issues with weight as many people can relate to. I know that it's a difficult thing for a lot of us and from my journey with eating overeating and binging started when I was about seven or eight years old. I think there was just a lot going on in my life and food was what I chose to go to. That was my go-to thing to dealing with my emotions and many many years of it going up and down the scales and as I always say it's when my weight went up my self-esteem went down right so and you know I'd have a little bit of successes I'd try different things and my weight would go down and I'd feel a little bit more confident about myself and then I'd slip off the rails and and go back to that cycle go back to what I knew and felt was familiar to me. So that was kind of my journey all the way through high school all the way until a friend of mine and I were walking one morning in a mall and she's this four foot eleven Filipino 83 years old now and she was 130 pounds overweight and she turned to me and she was Becky this was a Thursday and she says I have eaten four cookies and I needed detox and I at the time I was 266 pounds so I was my heaviest weight and she's like I need a detox and there's a conference down in Vegas and I was like and she goes I need to go come with me and I was like what you're so crazy you know like four four cookies is nothing compared to what I can pound down you know and so anyway we went walking the next morning and I didn't really think she was serious but she at that point said to me she goes Becky really seriously we need to go we need to leave within an hour and I was like what like I have to work and she goes you're you're the boss call off work let's go so I did I I went to work that day on a Friday and said I'm sorry my friend has some weird thing I don't know she needs to go down to Vegas which is a five hour drive and we jumped in the car and we walked into this room we were late and we walked in this room and the woman at the front of the room was telling her story and I remember as she was telling her story I turned as I was registering my name for the event I turned up and looked at her and I said she's telling my story and who are these crazy people and this room was full of people who had been in recovery from food addiction and had been had success and kept their weight off lost a bunch of weight but also kept it off for many years which was something I never could do and so story after story after story these these women and men would share their stories and I was like I don't know what this is like I I just came to support my friend but I know that I I want to start and and I turned to my friend I said I need to start right right now and she goes no no no you'll know when you're ready and I'm like no no right now do you understand like I'm compulsive like I need to start right now and I found out that it was later I found the person that lost the most amount of weight she had lost 200 pounds and I thought you're going to have to beat it out of me and she goes Becky that's not how this program works and I started working with a sponsor which you know it's it's totally free program and she offered to take me on as a sponsor and 14 months later of course it's a journey it's not perfect but 14 months later I released 130 pounds and have been a part of recovery for the last I think that's now 12 and a half years since that day back in 2009 well congratulations yeah so can you mention the name of your Filipino friend that dragged you along I actually can't because it's anonymity right so yeah but she's one of my dearest friends and still to this day she I told her all the time I said I swear I'm speaking at your funeral whether you like it or not because you've changed my life you introduced me to something that and she by the way went on to lose 130 pounds as well so and if you see as she's this little short thing and I'm tall I'm five seven so it's kind of a funny kind of a funny thing well you know we all need a buddy I'm gonna talk about that later we all need a buddy and you were her buddy and she was your buddy and so absolutely together I don't know how well you would have done well you wouldn't have known about it without her so to shape for her for dragging you along and for you to go and then for you to have your eyes and heart wide open to receive the information that you will make a change and that's what to me success is all about success is not just being at the right place at the right time which you were but success is being at the right place at the right time and taking action which you both did and you know and I'm really really glad that you said that because I always say to people when they come to me well Becky I've never lost my weight or I've never had real long-term success and I always say well you just haven't lost your weight yet and the yet is holding up the hope that you know let's just try one more time one more time what if I had said no to her that day what if I had not been in that room and said you know what I know this works for everybody else but it doesn't work for me I didn't even know what it was all I knew is my heart was open and I love that you brought that up and I took action and I just did it one day at a time one day so to shape for you you both actually wow so you know we have a slide of you and in this next slide you don't look too happy so please share with us what were you feeling here in this photo yeah you know this is this is um still to this day people ask me you know what do you think about when you look at you know who you were before and I I struggled to be honest with you for a really long time looking at at that girl and that woman because there was a lot of pain there was a lot of um I felt a lot of bondage I felt completely out of control I had a lot of anger I had an angered and resentment towards myself um and of course I had failed so many times so of course there's a lot of beating myself up feeling like I'm never going to be successful and so I look at that woman now today 12 and a half years later and I honor her because she brought me to the place that I'm at now right I had to go through all of that garbage in order to get to where I am today and you know everybody has their weakness like you know I I personally don't like to use the word addiction because addiction people categorize you know oh I'm not an addict or whatever but we all have stuff that we struggle with we all have weakness and that happened to be the weakness that I um that I ended up with when I was very young and it was hard for me to shake that um but the one thing that really made the difference is I found a program that I really didn't really honestly see the power of using God in it and once I found a program that included God or your higher power or whatever it was now I could really plug into literally something way beyond me to be able to overcome something that I've never been able to do by myself and that is a very much a 12 step thing is you know let God do what I can't do for myself and that's exactly what I did I had to learn how to let go and let God well you have two buddies with you and the good thing is you recognize them and then you grab their hands and you journey together and so that's the whole success is um having somebody that you are accountable to and making sure that you took one next step right in front of the next step and that's where you are today 12 years later and so wow what an amazing journey and so for many of our viewers who are not taking that first step yet I'm hoping and praying that their hearts will be open to hearing your heart to guide them through their um recovery and to their the where God really brought them to so they can max out their lives absolutely I know that you're you're did that trip to to San Diego to Vegas you're all up in the mainland and I know you wanted to plan a trip to Hawaii and what was your goal when you were planning that trip you had a goal in mind and did you reach your goal before coming to Hawaii yeah you know that's a that's a great question I think people that struggle with their weight right we're constantly setting goals for ourselves and then failing at reaching them and I swore when I was really young because my family uh didn't travel a lot when I was a kid and so Hawaii was like this really big huge reward for myself and I was always my goal that if I went to Hawaii I was going to be at my goal weight right I was going to be able to wear a swimsuit and feel good about it because that's something that I had never felt like I could ever achieve and in 2006 was the first time I came to Hawaii and I think you guys have a picture of that um but that was I obviously it was at my heaviest weight which is ironic because now living in Hawaii I met my goal weight but that first time I came here um I was very disappointed in myself you know I felt like I couldn't really enjoy it to the full extent that I wanted to because of how I felt inside and that was just something I was talking to someone the other day she says you know culturally a lot of the Polynesian cultures you know they wear full clothes going into into the into the water and I wear I just wear my you know normal swimsuit and I said to her I said you know I think the reason why I do is because I finally feel confident in myself you know I don't have to carry around the shame that I feel anymore I'm I honor the journey that I've been on with God and I honor the woman that I've become um but I can relate very much so is setting goals and not achieving them but that still doesn't have to stop you from setting another goal and having it yet right the yet maybe just not there yet so keep setting the goals is really my point with that wow and what a what a purpose filled life you have now um in the beginning you just you were like in a turmoil you were considered your you considered yourself in a mess but God gave you that mess to make it your message exactly where if you weren't there before and have that struggle and that journey to get to where you are today what would you be doing today I mean now you have such a purpose filled life and and thriving and the glow within you comes out and that's why you were on that journey and you struggled and the struggle made you stronger and more aware of the issues of the day for many many of us so thank you for pursuing the journey and being so successful what what you're doing and sharing the secret or the message behind what we need to do to accomplish our goals right so and to be honest with you Wendy I honestly I believe one of the secret sauces to keeping your success is to give it away you can't keep what you don't give away if that one woman had not told her story that day then I would not have been inspired to do it there's two reasons why people change one is because they get so sick and tired of being sick and tired right where they're at or they see themselves in someone else's story so to be honest with you I could care less if I ever told my story again because my weight loss story doesn't define me but I know that there's people that are still out there struggling and they don't think that there's a solution that's that's the thing that keeps me awake at night and keeps me on these shows and keeps me out in the public and keeps doing the work that I'm doing is because I was so excited to have finally found something that that helped me get out of my head and into my heart in loving myself but also learning to love others as well and being able to have this relationship with God that I've never really been able to have before because the food was standing in the way between me and God and success and I needed to get the food out of the way and so I really believe that we I am going to keep it the more that I share and help other people because I wish I would have known about this earlier but I also believe that everything happens for a reason in timing right like it happened in the right time for me but there's so many people that come into this program that that are like oh I wish I would have known this 30 years ago you know like no you're it is just right here it's this is the yet moment this is your yet moment wow you know um I have to ask you a question there's a question here from the viewers yeah they're asking you did you have any support groups that held you accountable through the from the beginning to where you ended up at your goal absolutely 110 percent in this that was one of the things that I had tried losing weight on my own this 12-step program that I work is every single person in the program has a sponsor okay so that what that means is that I call someone every day I have not only do I have one person that I talk to every day just for a little bit 10 minutes 15 sometimes it's five minutes just to touch basis right to get out of isolation and to be accountable but I also have meetings that I go to which is larger group and now because of zoom we have people from all over the world that come on these meetings and so when I came to Hawaii we actually when we started this 12 years ago we started it in Utah and we now have I think there's eight meetings maybe even more and there's 150 people doing it there and here we started with one meeting we had three we went and now we're down to two but we've got a bunch of us here in the islands but you don't need there's people from all over the world my sponsor is not here somewhere there's somewhere else so yeah absolutely support is bar none the most one of the most important factors in and this applies to anything in life by the way if you want anything get an accountability partner a good accountability partner that you that you can be accountable to to get that success wow I'm so excited to meet more of the people as I venture into your programs and see actually talk about something we have a surprise at the end where people can actually get more information and and go through the journey as you did so I know you want to keep that to the end but in your next slide you have your finger pointing up what was the significance about this day and your finger pointing up the number one so first of all I wore the wrong shoes that day I remember thinking oh my gosh those are my clogs um but that was the first day that I got into program and into recovery that was that was the moment like moments after I said to my girlfriend I don't know what this is I just know I need to start it and that was outside of the hotel in Las Vegas and I always hold that you know that picture close to me because that reminds me of that moment that I didn't know what I didn't know moments before that and then all of a sudden that was the first day of my journey um and it is a journey it's not perfect I I'm never going to say that but oh you just lose 130 pounds because you had mentioned before you know sometimes it's one journey to lose the weight right and you're getting a lot of accolades from everybody oh my gosh you look amazing but it's a whole other journey to maintain it and that's just and the way that I do that is just with the one day at a time mentality like I can't think about what I'm going to do tomorrow I just for today I have a program and today I'm going to stick to it I don't know tomorrow I'll wake up and make another decision but oh just for today just for today I can and that's how I've been successful for 12 and a half years well so that's the secret right there are a couple gems out yeah he's going to Nuggets first find a buddy I mean oh I mean just what a journey that you've been on you've come a long way and you know I I still resonate with but you're saying um I work with a company and my president of the juice plus companies Jay Martin he always will tell us find a buddy and so from the very get go you find a buddy if you're blessed you find a couple of buddies that hold you accountable that will hold you up and you will hold them up and journey together and hold I mean just being accountable and when you feel that weak moment where you're reaching for something that you shouldn't and by chance or it's a god thing the phone rings and say hey put that donut down or put that third donut down Wendy we can do this so all of these are such gems that we all need even as adults we need we need this accountability and just the feeling that someone cares and is supporting me all the way so well and the thing is is it's got to be in an internal thing right like I mean I have an accountability partner that I speak with every morning on zoom for 15 minutes with my business right this is what I'm committed to doing and this is what I did yesterday here's my wins here's my successes you know here's my declaration so I don't just apply this to my personal food program and I seriously I apply it to all different aspects to them to my life and business coaching as well so if you want something but I always say the accountability partner it's not their job to do it for you it's your job like if I'm somebody else's accountability I always tell him I'm not chasing you I don't have the energy and the time to chase you but I will be here and if you when you call and I always say call on time and I do I sponsor several people in this program and they're really good they honor my time they get on they do what they need to do and they get off and we touch base and and it and it works it really works and that's the thing is is if you can learn that if you're trying to do it on your own it we we talk ourselves out of things all the time but if we have somebody in our lives that is willing to do that for us and we're willing to do it for them yeah that's just it's magic it's a it's it's literally magic yeah it works I know and I know that you've come up with come up with a way to give support to all in need of your experience and knowledge you've created an audio I think it's called sabotage buster and that will be a buddy 24 7 to so many so please tell us about the sabotage buster yeah so you can go to my website creating healthy living calm and on there if you click on free you can download this is this called 11 sabotage busters so these are the things that we tell ourselves right like that really gets stuck you know if something comes up and we we tell ourselves uh the stories that we tell ourselves and I give and every single one of these sabotage ways that we sabotage ourselves I give you nuggets or things that I have done that have helped me kind of burst through that now I don't recommend that you do all of them I always recommend that you just like pick one or two that are like that's totally the my go to sabotage um and and then work on that just one day at a time to say you know I'm going to work on that I'm going to implement that tool and work to improve every single day you just need 1% of improvement right and if you have a bad day shake it off and step up and keep going so yeah that's that's definitely a free gift that I can give to you to everybody so awesome a free gift yes well what a blessing I mean I know you've been blessed and so you're turning it around and paying it forward by blessing so many with all your great experiences your your nuggets and yeah so thank you thank you so much Becky for having that heart and the servant's hard to share and give and it does take work on your part to continue to be a sponsor or you know and to continue to serve in that regard so I know that your life will be continued continually blessed as you bless others so thank you so much you know um as I was growing up um I always had an insatiable appetite myself and I and it was beyond binge eating I just could not get full and I would just eat everything in sight and the joke is that when I was in dating age I used to have dinner at home with my family before my date picked me up because I would be so embarrassed that um he would think he couldn't afford me because when I ate one dinner it wasn't enough I needed to have at least two or three and um then I would be okay and so if I went on a date without eating before I went I'd be starving and I wouldn't be happy and so I would always make it a point to eat and eat and then get picked up and then go on the date and then as my life became more professional and I was very busily sitting on you know different boards at one time I would have two or three lunches and two or three dinners and I was the happiest girl ever and the weight kept coming on and on and in my 40s I was praying I said hey god I need to I need to get this under control and for my situation I think it was a medical issue that was going wrong with me because I was a heart patient I had been under a lot of antibiotics and so the antibiotics did some you know it tweaked my body in a different way and so it kind of damaged some signals and so that's why the appetite was never satisfied and so understanding my problem and just talking to myself all the time and praying for help um it helped with me uh and then I surrounded myself with more people like you more like minded people that were on a journey to you know just steward their bodies the way god intended us to and that has in my body and my secret to my success all this time and now that I find you I'm gonna jump on on board and and learn more of the sabotage of buster secrets and tips and and follow you from there on if you don't mind oh absolutely I look I look that's what I always say is I'm from heaven and I work for god so you know whoever god puts in my way in my path and by the way I mean whoever he puts in front of me I'm gonna finish my thought there is I'm just gonna serve them right because again if I have the mentality that the more you give you know the more I receive and so I do just keep giving it away just keep giving it away and I'm I through the surface you know for taking my phone calls in the morning from the ladies that I work with um you know they inspire me every single day they keep me going the meetings keep me going keeping connected to recovery keeps me going and uh oftentimes I get more from the call than than I give to them right so and again again it's all free that's the thing is that we don't we don't get paid for what we do in this particular program just because it's a community service well that's very important especially in times as we are in now where it's full of darkness you bring the light to a lot of people who who didn't have a way to find an answer or a resource and so I'm praying that the one that needs to hear your talk and your story will be listening and that they can find the answers through you and your your outreach of love I'm just praying for that right now absolutely yeah so that would be so wonderful and I know I know that you want to reach more people and I know that you have a great retreat that you've been working so hard on and I think it's scheduled for sometime in May of 2022 so please let the cat out of the bag and share some details about this amazing retreat yeah this is you know since I've came to the island uh throughout almost three years ago um I I really have wanted to serve as many people as I can and I had this idea that the be about a year ago of putting on a retreat and having people come here and be exposed to what recovery looks like so I have a partner over in the Maui island and we put this together for next May we I I looked for a venue specifically that was going to be big enough for me to be able to do an outreach uh meeting so we're going to have an open meeting for the community so anyone that's interested uh that's going to be on the 5th of May so the evening of the 5th and we're on the North Shore in Haula and this is a wedding venue so this is a really really beautiful place so if you want to go to ceahawaii.com it will tell you if you want to come as a participant come for the four days it's it's all inclusive we're going to be doing all really good healthy food but people are coming from all over the world for this or if you want to just come for a day thing then you can come for the day and the food's included in that and the activities included it but the big thing is is that we're going to be opening it up for Thursday night on the 5th for a community service so for you to come and meet other people who have had a lot of success in this program and long-term success right we can all lose weight but it's the recovery from the thoughts the negative thoughts that we have the the negative thoughts that we have about ourselves and around food like I call it the emotional hunger versus the physical hunger there's two different things you know learning about that and allowing having the help of God in a spiritual program helped you heal from your struggles from wow basically wow well Becky we'll have to leave it there for now you've been watching taking your health back on think tecawaii and we just want to say mahalo to you Becky Samson life and business leadership coach which you are wonderful at and you're calling and you've met it thank you for talking story with us and for for sharing your gift of health from the north shore of Hawaii I look forward to attending your retreat in May of 2022 and mahalo to all of our viewers for watching I'm Wendy Lowe we'll be back in two weeks with another edition of Taking Your Health Back so aloha for now and mahalo to you Becky Samson aloha