
I am not a believer in weighing myself constantly, I hate the scale. It is ridiculous to me that an object can dictate how I feel about myself, about my day, about my LIFE! I choose to only weigh when I am at the doctor. Sometimes I slip the nurse a few “free chick fil a” coupons to not actually tell me the number on the scale (you would be amazed at what people do for a chicky)! I am just not someone who is obsessed with the number. Or at least that’s what I thought…
I have always told people to not go by the number but to go by how your body feels. And I believe that, to a point. When I was at my lowest weight last year, I didn’t worry at all about the number. I would yell from the mountain tops to NOT WEIGH YOURSELF EVERY DAY! Then the exercise stopped and after a few weeks, my eating changed also. I began to let more of the unhealthy habits back into my life.
Haha!! Habits??? That seems like such a nice word for this!
As I was saying…the exercise and the food began to take a downward spiral. The journaling stopped and the affirmations were put aside also. I pretty much gave up on myself. Fortunately, a mental breakthrough stopped my freefall before I hit bottom.
I cannot get back to my starting point. 480 pounds is not where I want to be. 480 is the number I started at, not the number I want to end at. I sat down and did what I do best – made myself feel like crap and guilty as ever. Then when that was over, I started journaling. I wrote about my feelings and I wrote some more, then when I felt like I could come up for air, I wrote some more.
I have stopped forward movement in my journey. A cookie here, hot bread there, pasta leftovers and yes, even pizza. At the moment I ate them, I did not feel bad about it. I really didn’t. My therapist (my sister and yes she is a real therapist) asked me how I felt right before I ate too much food. WOW! That was a hard question for me to answer. It wasn’t that food game me a warm and happy feeling or that I was so in love with food I could not walk away from it. So what was it? I began to think about that question and really went back a looooong way, to when I was very young.
I believe that I overeat because it is something that I can control. My life right now now has A LOT of drama. Issues at home, issues with money, taking care of my mother and father…I feel like I have no control over anything. But I have control over my food intake and I do not want anyone to take that away from me. I don’t want to lose control and let others into my private world with food.
So I am back on the wagon (again, always again it seems). But I discovered a trick that will never let you down. I weighed myself to see how much I had gained and I saw a number that surprised me. It was BELOW my goal weight!! Right there, blinking in front of my eyes. For a moment, I cannot describe how crazily my heart flopped. Then my husband walked in and said “Oh, that is set on kilograms, you might want to change it to pounds”! NO I DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE IT BACK TO POUNDS!
Anyway, that is a perfect reminder for me to remind you that the number does not matter. How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? Does anything hurt? Ask your self that question if that scale number is not going down as fast as you want it. I have to say this because I have heard this from SO MANY diet institutions: “It won’t happen overnight”! No shit!
I think my next blog will be “Things Overweight People Do NOT Want to Hear”!
Stay strong!