Mending but Impatient
I am tired.
So very tired.
As many of you know, I have been battling with my weight for most of my life. If you can relate, today I want to speak directly to you.
I know how exhausting it is to have mixed, conflicting messages hurled at you from every corner of your world. Scrolling through social media, you see one post touting the latest “health” craze, which is just a restriction diet disguised as a health plan, followed by a post from a “successful” keto disciple, and to finish off your 30 second scroll, a post about how you should love your body no matter the size. The fact that messages exist about needing to be different than you are right now in order to be valuable or desirable is confusing to say the least (and leans toward “maddening”).
Honestly, way too much of my inner dialogue is about food and weight. If I had to estimate, I’d put it at somewhere near 75% of my waking hours when I’m not working. It’s either “what are we going to eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner”, attaining and preparing said food, holding myself to an impossible standard about what I should or shouldn’t be eating, and then raking myself over the coals based on my less-than-ideal choices.
Full disclosure: I am struggling immensely with everything related to food and body image right now. I have faith in myself and am trusting the process, and I am going to get there….but I am not there.
It’s mourning the loss of those jeans I can’t wear anymore and the several trash bags full of clothes I have given away because they don’t fit.
I have 2 pairs of jeans that fit and 7 that don’t. I don’t know why I can’t let go of them, but I just can’t.
It’s seeing myself in pictures from a year ago (thanks, Facebook) and remembering what it felt like to be lighter. Not just physically, but emotionally. I was happy. Elated, proud, accomplished. I had lost 175 lbs. and was thinner than I’d been since high school. And I thought I was doing the right thing.
Now I know that I was also starving myself—but being told (by people who were profiting off my desperation) that I was doing something good for myself (and others, but that’s a whole other post). It felt good to feel like I was treating myself with love, but I know now I was just putting myself in a worse situation. I have a lot of shame around that whole part of my life. A ton of shame.
I know from listening to Dr. Brene Brown that shame does nothing good for us. It keeps us trapped, isolated, disconnected. Am I super jazzed to see people I haven’t seen in several months who were so complimentary about my weight loss? I’m pretty nervous about it, actually. Do I want to write a blog post about how most of my thoughts are about food and berating myself for gaining weight back after losing so much? No. Do I want to feel stuck and hopeless and terrified of gaining it all back? Also no. (Am I getting help for this? Yes, but it is not a quick journey, much to my impatient dismay).
Do I worry constantly that the people who praised me for my weight loss and were kinder to me then are silently judging me for my weight gain and putting me back in the “do not engage with” category? Pretty much every time I go outside.
Do I have to remind myself what my dietician tells me—-that if someone has a problem with the way I look that it is THEIR problem and not mine? Every day. Does my head know that and my heart not fully believe that yet? Also yes.
I am very fortunate to have people in my life who loved me at 350 lbs., at 170 lbs., and love me now. I understand this is not always the case. But, no matter where you are on the scale right now, today, or where you are at on your journey toward self-love and acceptance, I see you and I care about you. You are worth having a life full of peace of mind and peace about your body.
I am too. We are mending. We will get there, together.
