Well, I am alive after the worst sinus-cold-flu-thingy I have ever had in my whole life! I had it for a couple days, got better then it back fired and came back with a vengeance. Last Friday was my first "normal" feeling day. I wish I could say that I lost a few pounds along the way but my body is so screwed up that the less I eat, the more it hangs on to everything. So it was 2 weeks full of No Good Very Bad Days with not even a weight loss to make it bearable. Brian was in Florida for the worst part which left me extremely emotional and self-reflective to be alone and sick, then when he came back he couldn't even kiss me because we were so afraid he would get it too which made me needy and sulky. Egads! I am SOOOO glad that mess is over. I am back to kissing my husband and the grand girls and hopefully; back to blogging semi-normally.
This chapter in Made to Crave was about accountability and I have to admit that this was probably the hardest chapter for me to swallow (no pun intended) in the whole book. The very thought of a friend or mentor talking to me about my food choices just about makes me break out in a cold sweat. I talked in a previous blog about some negative experiences with a friend that constantly talked about weight and food and how horrible that made me feel about myself. Since those years were the very height of my eating disorder; a comment that was not well thought out could send me on a purging binge for days. It wasn't entirely her fault but because of that time period in my life there are very few people that I feel comfortable talking about weight or food with. It takes an immense amount of trust for me to be vulnerable in that area. Here is an example of what I mean. My best friend Dawn knows everything about me. All of the pretty and the not so pretty parts and even the parts that make me look like a Saint but really stem from my own insecurities. She knows my past, my present and my dreams for the future. To say I trust her is only a fraction of how I really feel about her. She is my sister, my confidant and my rock when I am faltering either emotionally or physically. She knows the things I am afraid to tell anyone else and she knows what my heart is saying when I don't say anything at all. She is a Major in the Air Force, a RN at a prominent hospital and is helping raise 3 grandchildren plus get her youngest child through graduation and college so we don't get to spend as much time together right now as we have in the past but it doesn't change anything. It takes a while for me to get "there" with someone, so I don't let go easily but even with aaaaalllll of that- weight and food are still hard for me to talk about with her. She doesn't know about this particular situation and it will kill her when I write about it but it is a perfect example of what I am talking about. One day, we were talking casually about weight. She had just gotten back from deployment where she is fed a lot of starchy and often strange food that is filling and energizing because of the work they have to do, but not always figure friendly.(As a side note I should add here that Dawn has always been smaller then I am. She has an athletic build and WAY more muscle) Like I said before, she KNOWS my past so we rarely talk about weight or food but we were a little this day because she was feeling out of shape and I always feel out of shape so I could relate. I mentioned that I needed to get serious again too because I had gained back all the weight I had lost in Weight Watchers several years ago. My weight is the pink elephant in the room anyway- it's impossible not to notice if you have known me at least 3 years that I gained back the weight I worked so hard to get off. I don't even know how it happened or technically what went wrong but probably just too much Happy in my Meal, if the truth is to be told.
She said something so small and so innocent that it almost went by undetected until my extra-sensitive-food-issue-emotions picked it up on their radar and honed in. All she said was this:
"What's going on? I mean, you usually eat pretty healthy don't you?"
I don't remember what I answered but I remember what she asked because it took me weeks to get past it. The fact of the matter was that I did KNOW what I should be eating and doing, but somewhere along the way I had stopped eating and doing it. I had stopped going to the gym, which had never really helped my weight loss but did appear to help me start my day off thinking about being healthy and in turn, help me make better food choices- so that is where I started, with getting my butt out of bed and going back to the gym. The food choices followed and I am slowly getting back to where I was, so I guess in some ways the words from a trusted friend did get me thinking clearly again even though I am sure she did not intend for that to happen. I know she didn't, but I also know she does care about me and she IS a nurse so she also knows what the extra weight does to me emotionally and physically. That is something I am sure she can't separate herself from as she watches people our own age wheeled into her E.R. every week with health issues complicated or directly caused by obesity. But to her credit, she treats me with kid gloves because that too shows not only her love for me, but her thoughtfulness for my feelings and emotions because I am afraid that the fact remains that if you are weight or food obsessed; we will never be real friends or be connected in any real way. Now there are people that I am helping along the sometimes complicated road of their own disorders whether it's about too much food or the lack thereof and I am NOT talking about that kind of food/weight obsession.
I am talking about the person that goes around scrutinizing what they and everybody around them eats.
The girl with the 5 pounds to loose over her ideal body weight that can talk about little else.
The guy that feels that he has to be the Table Monitor at every function that involves food or the Exercise Expert in every discussion.
I am sure you know the type.
Not only is it self- seeking and self- elevating but it's incredibly thoughtless. These are the people that I wish would wake up with 10 extra pounds that will not budge even after every effort. Maybe then they would learn a little humility or sympathy for someone else's journey but usually these type of people are so engrossed in themselves, the mirror is all they see, It's this sect of humanity, if you can even call it that- that makes it almost impossible for people like me to be accountable to a single person. I hope that isn't you too, but if it is there are some ways around it. I had a lot of success with Weight Watchers. In fact, if I could afford it- I think would go back. I loved the meetings and they really helped me stay focused once I got past someone else seeing my weight each week. But it was very private and they were very discreet, which I appreciated. I could actually probably do it myself again since I have all of the literature, but without the meetings (at least for me) it loses a little of its punch. Besides, I have trouble doing the same thing again if I failed or relapsed. Too bad I couldn't make that work with eating the wrong foods. The human psyche is so unfair sometimes, isn't it? That said, I never met one-on-one with a representative, like they suggest-to discuss goals, strategies and plans. Just like the free personal trainer at the gym, I can't bring myself into that one-on-one relationship. I know me, I won't keep going back.
The other thing that works for some people is journaling or a combination of things that include journaling. In journaling you are at least accountable to yourself and you can read back through to find established patterns of weak spots in your days or see trigger foods that set you in a tail spin diet-wise. Others find that groups such as Over Eaters Anonymous or church- based group weight loss "clubs" help them. The group atmosphere can seem less scary and not as much pressure to speak up unless you are ready and comfortable. After all support is a good thing and can be a useful tool in helping you reach your goals but the same thing doesn't work for everyone. No matter how much wisdom the Pound Police think their badgering bestows, each individual has to find their own way to push back from the table a little sooner or less often. Everybody fights their battles differently, inwardly and outwardly. And the more compassionate those people are that have already won theirs, the faster others will figure out their own battle plan.
I am not sure I totally agree with everything Lysa said in this chapter. I think for some people, on-on-one accountability might be more torture then treatment but I do know this…
The Pound Police might be surprised at how much a little genuine humility would accomplish if they would just put their mirrors down. A little kindness goes a long, long way.
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