I’m back in the land of journalling and looking to get to where I want to go.  By dear friend BFP sent me this link today and it got me thinking about the long continuum of mindsets about body/food/health.

Is this blog a reflection of the fact that I have an eating disorder?  Or is it a tool for helping to straighten out my sometimes distorted relationship with food?

Would I be better off just accepting myself as overweight and getting on with my life?  Or would I be better off just following a strict diet and taking the weight off without all this inner (and outer) dialogue about it?

As usual, I want the best of both worlds.  I want to be healthy in body and in mind.  For that reason, I don’t want to be “thin”.  I don’t want something from my 48 year old body that it doesn’t want to give me.  I don’t want to re-capture a time in my 20s when I weighed thirty pounds less than I do now.

But I do want to have a healthy waist size.  And I do want to run comfortably – not because I’m afraid of fat on my body, but because I love to move.

As much as I want a healthy body, I want to enjoy food and I want its presence in my life to be about fuel and taste and sociability.  I want the act of eating to be about caring for myself in a healthful and mindful way.  I don’t want it to be about dealing with stress or emotions.

That’s the reason I write -not because I’m afraid, or because I’m permanently “on a diet” but because I need some alternative for stuffing my thoughts and feelings down with food.

Journalling my thoughts is a tool.

So is journalling what I eat.

A WW meeting can be a tool.

A session at the gym can be tool.

Scales and tape measures are tools.

All these things can also become obsessions in themselves – and only I can decide what’s a helpful tool and what’s an obsession.

It’s possible that I will spend the rest of my life thinking about this stuff.  More than once in our online conversations, the other Rems and I have talked about the similarities between what we deal with and what alcoholics deals with.  The big difference is that we can’t swear off food but have to learn to consume it in moderation.  So we talk and keep talking.

The great news is that, even though we’re still talking, we’re generally way down the road from where we were a couple of years ago.   And I’m predicting that a year from now we will be further still.  Will I be skinny?  No.  Will I be at the gym 5 times a week?  No.  Will I be confident standing beside skinny and fit women?  Yes.  Because I will be the “me” I choose to be and the one I know I can keep on being.

Must make a note of this entry and check back next October.