I am currently dealing with a mental crisis regarding weight loss, Health at Every Size, body acceptance, and myself. You see, I have come to firmly believe in the tenets of Health at Every Size. I believe that it is possible for everyone, no matter their current weight, health status, or body size, to begin making healthy changes in their life if they so choose. I firmly believe that it is their choice, and should a person choose to prioritize something other than their health, it is really none of my business. They have their reasons, and unless they choose to share them with me, it is none of my concern.
It has been a difficult road for me to achieve even a minor level of self-acceptance when it comes to my body. The struggle to come to a point where I don't actively hate myself every minute of every day has been a long, uphill road and one that I don't ever wish on anyone. Knowing that society as a whole views me as lazy, sloppy, and a failure is something that I have finally managed to come to terms with and, for the most part, ignore at long last.
That said, I have apparently hit a crisis point. I am really, REALLY struggling with the desire to fall back on old habits and start trying to lose weight again. It doesn't matter that I know intellectually that 95% of people who lose weight only end up regaining it (usually plus extra). It doesn't seem to matter that I've spent 40+ years of my life riding that merry-go-round with the only results being that I ended up weighing over 500 pounds at my peak weight and only managed to get below that by amputating my stomach. I KNOW these things, and yet I am still struggling with the desire to be smaller.
The compromise that I have forced on myself at this point is to focus on health. I am going to work on adding more movement into my life, and getting more vegetables in my life. I am going to try add alternative grains like quinoa, barley, and so on. I am going to do all of this to keep my diabetes in check, to lower my cholesterol, and to give my heart and body better tools to work with. But there's That Little Voice in the back of my head (remember, we've discussed TLV before!) that keeps whispering, "And maybe you'll lose more weight!"
*sigh*
Why won't it go away? I'm struggling and struggling with it. I don't want to become someone who obsesses over calorie counts, points, or measures every bit of food that goes into my mouth. Quite frankly, there's only so much room in my head, and I just can't push other things over to make that kind of thinking the central point of my life. My business, my family, my friends, activities like crafts and reading and studying new things all take up what space there is currently in my head. They matter too much to me to push any of them aside for these old tapes that I thought I'd thrown out.
I know, logically, that part of it is frustration. I get frustrated with living as a fat woman sometimes. I get tired of walking into a room and looking around to determine which chair is safest for me to sit in (and I will fit in). It is tiring to constantly have to pay ten times as much for clothing as smaller women, with a much smaller selection of items to choose from. My heart winces every time that I think about going on trips because of the added stress trying to find the funds to pay for an extra airline seat or to figure out if we can afford the gas and time to drive to our destination instead.
I won't lie. If I had a magic wand and could change it all, I would. Whether that meant changing the world so that no one had to deal with such things, or just change me so that I didn't have to do so (preferably the former). Or even both.
But there is no magic wand, and no miracle cure, and even with the changes I'm making it is statistically unlikely that I will lose additional large amounts of weight and keep it off.
Weak woman that I am, I still dream about how my life would be different.
Fantasy creates my current crises. I have no idea how it will come out. I just want to like myself. All of myself. Why is that so much to ask?
