There was so much in this post over at BCB that I don’t want to let it drop. The main topic of conversation is basically, do we fail to lose weight and keep it off because we are afraid of success? Or at least afraid of what is on the “other side” of weight loss.
For anyone who has lost and gained back their weight more than a couple of times, this is the Golden Question.
So why, over the last thirty years, have I regained the same 20 – 30 pounds so many times? Except for a couple of pregnancies, I put weight on because I don’t allow myself to become the thinner version of me. It’s like “goal weight” is a bright and colourful object at the bottom of a deep pool. I work really hard to dive down and retrieve the object then float right back up to the surface again. I have no means of anchoring myself to that weight – just an idea that that’s what I should weigh and a diet which can get me there. And who wants to be anchored to the bottom of a pool anyway? The whole picture is wrong and impossible.
Instead of thinking of a weight as the goal, I am trying to think of maintaining a lifestyle as the goal. Yes, in order to be a slimmer version of me, I have to weigh less; I can’t change that. But the numbers on the scale are only a tiny part of the change that is taking place. I need a machine to measure attitude to food, self-perception, reaction to others – all those things that we don’t deal with so we put the weight back on.
I used to work in a prison – a real Victorian jail full of not the nicest men on earth and many of them in there for the umpteenth time. When we talked, it became clear that they didn’t have any strategies for what they were going to do differently on the day they got released. Many of them admitted that they were going to walk out the gates, cross the street to where their drug dealer would be waiting and spend their discharge grant on heroin.
That story tends to make people judgemental because we can see clearly what their problem is. They need to walk right past the thing that keeps them in the loop of self-destruction and they need to work out that plan before they get released. What makes me so different? My drug of choice is food and I can’t give it up completely, but my attitude is exactly the same.
I hit some fairly arbitrary number, get released from my diet and run right back to the thing that got me locked up in the first place. Heroin addicts see the drug as part of their freedom. Dieters see unmeasured calories as part of their freedom. We have to redefine freedom.
OK…..so here’s the freedom I want.
I want the freedom to try on clothes in a dressing room not feel disappointed in myself.
I want the freedom to walk upstairs beside someone 20 years younger and not be puffing and sweaty at the top.
I want the freedom to feel my stress/anger/sadness and not stuff it down with food.
I want the freedom to love food.
I want the freedom to be a slim & fit person without feeling that there’s a fat one trying to get out.
Because this weight loss journey has been so slow, I’ve had time to get closer to a few of those freedoms. I may always be a work in progress but I do finally know in the depths of my heart that there is nothing in the fridge that will help me meet a deadline or pay my Visa bill. And if you don’t understand what an achievement that is, you’re probably reading the wrong blog. 
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