Strong, confident, intelligent, fun, goofy, geeky, are just a few of the words I would choose to describe myself. No matter what has gone on in my life I have always known who I am, what I want and have trusted myself. That is probably why I’m struggling right now because I have been feeling a little lost. The confidence I had in myself feels a little shaken. I know that the process of losing weight is a process and I think the fact that I’m trying to work through a lot of changes is what is creating this shaky feeling. I know that there are a lot of pieces that go into losing weight and one of those pieces is an emotional piece. I know that without working through the emotions and rewriting myself for a new me I won’t be able to maintain the changes. Knowing it and doing it are two very different things though.
Having grown up heavy and never knowing anything different has meant that I don’t have a reset point. A lot of people that I talk to that are working to lose weight put the weight on after. They have memories of what it is like to be smaller. They know what it feels like to be smaller. I don’t have memories of being thin and have never had to know who I am as someone that is at a healthy weight. The only knowledge I have is of being bigger than everyone else and feeling different from everyone else. As I make more and more changes in my life to become the healthiest me that I can be, I find that it makes me question everything else as well. I’m entering a world of the unknown.
It is a strange and almost overwhelming sensation to question everything you believe and have held to be true. I will admit that especially in the last few weeks this feeling has been following me a lot and it is a scary place to be in. For the first time in my adult life I feel completely insecure and it causes me to second guess everything. I am spending way too much time analyzing the things I say, the things I do, friendships, family – basically everything that I experience in my daily life. I even think that might be part of the problem with the writer’s block I’m currently experiencing. That is why I wanted to write this blog entry. I’m hoping in opening up about this, it will help me move past it. I also don’t think I can be the only person that is struggling with completely changing who they are.
Logically I know that this is a journey I need to take. I know that as I lose weight I will continue to have to redefine myself because I am changing. I am rewriting habits that I have had for 33 years. They are things I have never really thought about and probably things most people don’t need to think about but that play a big part in my life. Everything from popcorn at the movies, or dinners out with friends and don’t even get me started on the idea of dating. (I have no clue how I will tackle that when it happens because so much of my dating life has revolved around dinners or movies…hehe)
I accept that it is part of the process I need to go through to be able to make the lifelong changes I want to make. Part of me wishes it was easier and that I didn’t have to go through the self-doubt, redefining and rediscovering the person I am. I know that the words I listed above will still apply (or at least I think that they still will) but until I’m done there is a part of me that is scared of how it will all turn out. It is hard to put some of the questions in my mind to rest. Things like ‘Will I still be me when I’m smaller?’ or ‘Will my friends still accept me?’ or even ‘Will it change things in my connections to my family?’. Each of these questions and so many more float around in my brain and none of them really have answers. Most of them don’t even have ideas of what I want the answers to be. Not knowing the answers or being able to control the outcome is probably what is causing me the greatest anxiety. There is no question that I like to have the answers and if I can have control over something generally I take it (maybe with a few exceptions).
The good news in everything though is that most of the time I can focus on the positive things. The confidence that comes with knowing that I’m doing the right thing has made it possible for me to have faith that in the end everything will work out. I also count myself lucky that I can turn to my writing to help calm my fears. The pages of my journal are filled with writing and musings that help me to find some peace with all the changes that I have been making. I know that the challenges I’m facing are going to help make me a stronger version of myself when I’m at a healthy weight. I am excited to see the outcome. When I close my eyes and picture myself thin I see a happy active woman with nothing standing in her way. I know that she is inside me and I know that the future me is the person that I want to be. It is what carries me along this hard journey to lose weight.
A journey in accepting myself for who I am now while working on making myself into the person I see in my future.
Jill, what you're feeling, I can completely relate. Remember today, when we were talking about how we hold our feelings in our bodies? I believe that, and I also believe as we get more connected with out bodies, it can be terrifying.
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to talk to you a bit about your weight loss path. I don't think I've told you that I've struggled with eating disorders a good part of my life. I was anorexic for a good part of my teens, and when I learned to live again, it was hard. It's a long story, but I will tell you that the only way I could actually eat was to not think about the fact that I was putting food in my mouth, and to eat it as fast as possible. Not the healthiest, but hey, it was survival, and it meant I lived. (That habit's still lingering.) I also had to deal with a body that no longer trusted me, my metabolism at the lowest setpoint, and I put on a lot of weight-- moving from double zero to plus sizes in a couple years.
Learning to be me heavier was hard, but not in the ways I thought-- I expected constant rejection, but people were in many ways nicer to me when I was heavier, although fewer men I was attracted to shared my attraction. But when I was tiny, I could barely speak above a whisper in public, and held myself in all of the time, drowning in all the words I wanted to write and say. I made most of my friends while I was plus sized. I learned how to be more on the outside of myself, writing plays, moving far away, becoming confident in my mind and what I had to offer from the inside. But I was so detached from my body, and what it was holding in. A few times my weight dropped somewhat, and I started feeling... bitchy. Impatient. Not "nice", not the "myself" people had learned to love. I wanted things, was more confident, not just in my mind but all over, and it was scary. It's a very different platform for performance. I put the weight back on.
When I started losing the weight again, six years ago, it had a lot to do with stretching and getting in contact with my body, learning what it needed, and what it was feeling. I spent strange, long half hours of my day, twice a day, stretching and finding muscle, aches, places that wanted attention, not caring what other people thought, but what my body and mind and soul were telling me about how to feel good and connected, each day. I learned to say, whatever weight I was at, that I had never liked or loved my body more than this minute, this day.
When my metabolism finally balanced, when I stopped dieting and made myself eat as *much* as I was supposed to each day, regularly throughout the day, the pounds started falling off. I loved it, though in the end I lost too much too fast. No matter how thin I am, I still have to deal with a body that will never be ideal, that sags and shows wear. And I have to keep talking to my body, which is hard. It's hard because I had to learn that all the self-punishing, both the anorexia and the mindless, fast eating, was anger that I refused to express. I hate the thought of being an angry person, don't believe that lashing out is ever any healthier than suppressing, so I have had to learn to be honest about what I'm feeling, and vent in a safe manner. And of course the hurts from so many things buried in my past, things I've tried to carry alone, I've had to learn to talk about. And the stuff that comes up, day to day, it also has to be dealt with, and not buried deep. I hate it, worry that I'm becoming unlikable, worry about how people see me with the new confidence I have, deal with insecurities... but I can tell you, there are people in my life I trust so much, because they have walked with me through this, and love me whatever weight I am. And for their sake, I'm going to keep fighting to be the best person I can be, the most honest, the most loving, and occasionally the most discontent and morelifeseeking, for their sakes. I will be healthy, live with purpose, and keep in touch with those I love, no matter what changes I go through, because we're all learning this thing together.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is helpful, and it's certainly a ramble, but I wanted to get it out there. There's lots more to talk through, dear friend. I hope you know you are beautiful, and every person that was there this morning was there because they like you, and wanted to spend time with you. Please take care, and keep writing and learning yourself. Sometimes your self will surprise you with what it wants. But a lot of the time, that's just you learning to talk to you. It doesn't mean you've changed so much as you're learning to become more yourself. You might be flabbergasted when you learn you don't like something you've always just accepted, or like something you've denied yourself, but if there are things you value about who people are, they won't be destroyed by what you discover about yourself. They will grow, mature, and become more real as you bring all of you into balance.
... yeah, that's more than enough. Have a good night, and I'll see you soon, Courage Girl!!!