A fierce battle
Wednesday afternoon. I feel sick, have been feeling sick for the last day or so. My stomach hurts, my head hurts, my digestion is terrible, and I'm sitting in my armchair trying to figure out if I'm going to get sick or not. And yet I'm still considering whether I should eat the leftover steak and egg burrito in my fridge.
I haven't worked out today at all. I know that I should. I know that I feel better when I do. I know that I've got cool iFit video workouts that I can do. And yet I still sit here and ponder my next move.
There's a terrible, fierce battle going on inside me and I can see and feel it in every part of me. The digestive issues are just the most obvious signs, but I feel it coursing through my veins, too. I know that the path I'm embarking on by going inside me isn't going to be as easy as previous weight loss attempts - I can't just restrict my food, exercise diligently, and get where I want to go. I'm a champion of that route, having successfully employed it to lose more than 50 pounds four times now, but that's not the story.
No, losing it isn't the journey...it's just a weensy part of the road I need to travel. And restricting my food, exercising, that's just hiding from the underlying issues that keep putting me right back here again. Right back to 262 pounds. Right back to pissed off, confused, and frightened. Frightened, yes, but not because I don't think I'll ever be able to lose this weight, rather it's about unearthing all of the ugliness lying underneath the surface and wondering if I'm strong enough to sit there with it and not go over the edge.
And so I keep abusing my poor body, hiding from the truth, and, ironically, keeping myself weak and submissive to the whims of wildly fluctuating emotions. The answer, the key, the thing that will help me is starting to take care of myself, to esteem myself more than the food. And really, it's not the food that I love, it's the anesthetic effect of eating and eating and eating and no thinking and television and stopping the pain, even if just for a moment.
So again it comes around to hiding from myself. Or not. What if I could learn to stop hiding and start loving myself...not just accepting, but loving? Loving myself as I do others like TCB and Alcott and my family and my cats. Can I overcome the lack of love my father showed me when I was a little girl (NOT my daddy, but my biological father), the way he put me down, scared me, made me want to shrink away until he couldn't see me to yell or hit? And, if I can, what other areas of my life would be changed forever?
But there's no magic light switch for this transformation. No grand plan that I can roll out and make a huge hullabaloo about. No, this is about small steps, quiet introspection, and patience. Patience has never been my strong suit and perhaps that's not an insignificant part of this journey. Figures.
For now, a 30 minute treadmill walk sounds like a good way to take care of my body. After that, we'll see.
I haven't worked out today at all. I know that I should. I know that I feel better when I do. I know that I've got cool iFit video workouts that I can do. And yet I still sit here and ponder my next move.
There's a terrible, fierce battle going on inside me and I can see and feel it in every part of me. The digestive issues are just the most obvious signs, but I feel it coursing through my veins, too. I know that the path I'm embarking on by going inside me isn't going to be as easy as previous weight loss attempts - I can't just restrict my food, exercise diligently, and get where I want to go. I'm a champion of that route, having successfully employed it to lose more than 50 pounds four times now, but that's not the story.
No, losing it isn't the journey...it's just a weensy part of the road I need to travel. And restricting my food, exercising, that's just hiding from the underlying issues that keep putting me right back here again. Right back to 262 pounds. Right back to pissed off, confused, and frightened. Frightened, yes, but not because I don't think I'll ever be able to lose this weight, rather it's about unearthing all of the ugliness lying underneath the surface and wondering if I'm strong enough to sit there with it and not go over the edge.
And so I keep abusing my poor body, hiding from the truth, and, ironically, keeping myself weak and submissive to the whims of wildly fluctuating emotions. The answer, the key, the thing that will help me is starting to take care of myself, to esteem myself more than the food. And really, it's not the food that I love, it's the anesthetic effect of eating and eating and eating and no thinking and television and stopping the pain, even if just for a moment.
So again it comes around to hiding from myself. Or not. What if I could learn to stop hiding and start loving myself...not just accepting, but loving? Loving myself as I do others like TCB and Alcott and my family and my cats. Can I overcome the lack of love my father showed me when I was a little girl (NOT my daddy, but my biological father), the way he put me down, scared me, made me want to shrink away until he couldn't see me to yell or hit? And, if I can, what other areas of my life would be changed forever?
But there's no magic light switch for this transformation. No grand plan that I can roll out and make a huge hullabaloo about. No, this is about small steps, quiet introspection, and patience. Patience has never been my strong suit and perhaps that's not an insignificant part of this journey. Figures.
For now, a 30 minute treadmill walk sounds like a good way to take care of my body. After that, we'll see.
