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Sarasota Hearld Tribune MIND MATTERS

By: Patty Allen-Jones

Sarasota resident Rena Greenberg changed her approach to her diet and her life. She wants to show others how they can change, too.

The one thing that Rena Greenberg craved as she was growing up in New Jersey become her addiction in college. It contributed to serious health problems in her early 20′s that could have been fatal.

Greenberg loved sugar.

But with her family on a tight budget, her father’s diabetes and his religious dietary restrictions, Greenberg’s mother bought limited quantities of snacks, which the three daughters had to share.

The family never ate out. Greenberg’s mother prepared foods that were kosher and bland, and the girls weren’t allowed to trick-or-treat at Halloween.

On those rare occasions when her mother made a crumb cake for guests, Greenberg said she would surreptitiously eat most of the crumbs, and then would try to rearrange the few that remained in an attempt to disguise her intent.

Greenberg said she became hooked on foods rich in carbohydrates and a virtually unlimited supply of coffee when she began college at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York . She indulged in alcoholic beverages (high in sugar) during her early career.

“Junk food…I loved it,” said Greenberg, 44, who now teach people how they can naturally become attracted to healthy and nutritious foods.

“As soon as I got out of the house, I was able to eat junk food, and I did,” the Siesta Key resident said. “I had a strong sweet tooth. I ate lots of pizza, ice cream and drank coffee to stay up studying for exams. I didn’t think anything of it.”

Greenberg’s favorites: coffee ice cream or praline ice cream, covered in hot caramel sauce, and Captain Crunch cereal. She admitted a three-times-a-day ice cream habit.

She described herself as an average girl, but not thin. Greenberg said she gained about 20 pounds in college—it could have been more had she not exercised excessively.

Suddenly, in her early 20′s she began feeling chronically exhausted. Greenberg, who worked for entertainer Ben Vereen in New York and later at Club Med resorts in Tahiti and on the Caribbean isles of Guadeloupe, was 25 when she walked into an emergency room in Brooklyn feeling dizzy and “deathly ill.” She was discharged weeks later with a pacemaker. It was 9887.

Doctors told her that she had the heart of an 80-year old person and the only thing keeping her alive was her young age.

“I think I was just shocked,” Greenberg said. “I never thought I was close to death. Before that, all the doctors said there was nothing wrong with me, it was imaginary.”

Before getting the pacemaker, she had tried different diets and exercise routines to regain her energy and “will myself back to being healthy.” First was the macrobiotic diet, a vegetarian plan that prohibits dairy and animal protein while allowing a combination of whole grains, legumes and fresh root and green vegetables. Soy, nuts and seeds, healthy fats from olive oil and sesame seed oil also are permitted.

“After a month, I had gained weight and was never satisfied,” Greenberg said. “I was just hungry all the time.”

She turned to the Atkins Diet, which advocates staying away from carbohydrates and eating only animal protein and fat. Again, she gained weight.

But after an acupuncturist and physical education teacher detected an irregular heartbeat, Greenberg said she wound up in the hospital. Doctors could not give her an exact cause for her condition, but she feels the extreme diets and unhealthy eating habits may have had some connection.

Greenberg said she believes what saved her were her prayers in the hospital and that God allow her to live because she didn’t want her mother, a German Jew who survived the Holocaust, to suffer another loss.

What’s keeping her alive today is that she was motivated after leaving the hospital to change her focus from an obsession with losing weight to becoming mentally, spiritually and physically healthy.

Greenberg began studying psychology, hypnosis, biofeedback and neurolingistic programming—all ways of developing and relying on inner strengths—for reaching and maintaining an ideal weight.

“It was really fascinating to me how I’m relating to myself”, said the founder and chief executive office of Wellness Seminars, Inc. “We have the power within our mind to change our perceptions, then change our behavior.”

Hypnosis is characterized by relaxation and focused concentration, which enables suggestions to have a lasting impact.

In biofeedback, sensors monitor breathing, blood flow, muscle tension, temperature and perspiration at rest and after a stress test.

After determining how people respond to different stressors, they are taught how to control conditions that occur during stress.

Hypnosis is included in a listing of “diverse medical and health care systems, practices and products that are not presently considered to be a part of conventional medicine,” according to the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s Website, nccam.nih.gov.

Although the government agency takes no position on hypnosis or other complementary and alternative medicines, it does caution the public to be informed by reading the scientific research or government reports if available.

Elizabeth Bohorquez—a nurse, hypnotherapist and president and program designer of the Sarasota Medical & Sports Hypnosis Institute – cautioned that hypnosis should not be viewed as a miracle weight-loss program. She said people need to be taught correct eating habits that are appropriate for them to remain healthy, burn fat and not bring about diabetes or other diseases. Then, hypnosis could be used to enforce or reinforce that plan.

Family and personal medical histories must be considered. People typically don’t eat right, she said. Hypnosis can further boost those bad habits.

“Hypnosis is not something to take lightly,” Bohorquez said. “Hypnosis is very powerful. We don’t want to be reinforcing anything that’s taking the patient in the wrong direction.”

Greenberg said she has an associate degree from the Fashion Institute, and she graduated in 1989 from City University of New York with a degree in biopsychology. She’s a certified hypnotherapist and biofeedback therapist.

The book Greenberg has written on the subject, “The Right Weigh: Six Steps to Permanent Weight Loss” (available Jan. 1) outlines a practical and spiritual approach on deep-seated behavior problems.