Talking It Off

I have thrown out all of my fat book except three and have recently taken them out to have another browse.

The first is Dr Pamela Peeke’s Fight Fat After Forty and I’ll write here periodically about what it’s making me think.

Yesterday I didn’t get past the first chapter without a major revelation.  I am always curious about what real positive thinking would be like.  I’m married to an “it’ll all be fine” guy and appreciate how much he balances me out.  I’ve always described myself as “realistic” which generally means that I hold back on my optimism and always prepare for the worst, even while knowing that it will rarely happen.

Through some very hard work and having a faith, I’ve got to a point of trust in my life where I’m willing to take risks and live with the risks that my entrepreneurial husband needs to take in order just to feel alive.  But I never quite dare let go and believe that, no matter what, everything is going to be fine – despite the fact that time and time again we’ve been provided for in extraordinary ways.

What does all that have to do with weight?  At the deepest level, I simply can’t accept that I can conquer it, lose it and keep it off and not have weight-loss be part of my identity for ever and ever amen.  I’ve heard a lot of talk about women not believing they are worth it – not worth being fit and healthy.  That’s never been a problem for me.  I know without a doubt how much I’m loved.  I understand my gifts.  I understand my weaknesses.  And I still feel loved because I have been loved and loved well my whole life.

What I don’t do is use my gifts to their potential because I live with an underlying current that everything will NOT be all right in the end.  It’s such an integrated part of my being that I don’t actually have negative thoughts – just a permanent inkling that it’s best to get ready for failure.

Join this fact up with Dr Peeke’s book and you get the revelation. Here’s a passage from the first chapter, “The Stages of Stress”:

The greater the chaos in the young girl’s life, the greater her propensity to seek an anesthetic to numb the pain later in life. For many, food is the preferred substance. So the seeds of Toxic Stress are often planted during childhood. Eating habits, perception of body image, self-worth, and the response to stress triggers in general are formed in the early years and flourish dangerously after the age of forty.

Reading that passage I had the clearest flashback to a moment in childhood.  I was five years old, sitting in my best friend’s living room, surrounded by her family and I was crying and shivering because I had received the news that my dad had been taken to hospital. The shivering is a particular memory because, to stop it, they let me wear my friend’s fuzzy pink sweater which I had long coveted.

That’s a memory I’ve always had but the revelation is that I was genuinely in physical shock, hence the shivering.  And it wasn’t unwarranted; everything changed for my family from that day and I changed too. I began to imagine terrible things had happened to my family.  On the way home from school, I would imagine that my house had burned down and then enjoy the feeling of relief when it was all ok.  I still do that!  After a holiday, just before turning into our street, I imagine the smoking rubble of my house.  I don’t seem that crazy on the outside!

And the point of all this? I won’t have permanent weight loss until I can believe that it can be done.  I need to conquer my natural inclination which is to fear the success of reaching “goal” because “goal” means that failure is just around the corner.

Phew. I’m tired.  It’s a lot to think about.  But it sure explains my last post.