As a life coach there is one thing I have to always be to the people I spend time with (and to myself):
Honest.
I think when people look to those that are accomplishing things they’ve only dreamed of or are just starting to dream about, the one thing they are hoping for is that at the end of the proverbial rainbow life is delicious and all the (insert whatever feelings/emotions you wish would go away) will actually go away.
A common expectation of those of us that spend a majority of our lives in the category of obese / morbidly obese and attempt to lose weight (for the umpteenth time) is that the weight is what causes the majority of our emotional breakdowns and once that’s gone it takes depression, anxiety, sadness, anger, resentment, jealousy, defeat, shame, insecure, self loathing, and all those other nasty negative emotions right along with it.
I’ve said it over and over again through out this blog of mine that I did the same thing in the very beginning of this, what is hopefully to be my final attempt at weight loss and my only attempt at life sustaining (and life long) changes. I scoured hundreds of blogs looking for those that were where I could only imagine standing one day; 100+ pound weight loss.
They were few and far in between.
I found them among the masses of other weight loss bloggers. The difference is they were where I wanted to be, not where I was. I was swimming in the deep end with other virtual bloggers looking to lose this massive amount of weight once and for all. All of us reaching out trying to grab on to something that made sense, some sort of flotation devise that would become our life jackets that we could hold on to for dear life as we floundered around trying to save our lives.
At first I looked for the “oh life is great now that I’ve lost the weight” and the “I have absolutely no problems now that I’m half my size” along with the “losing the weight was the answer to all my problems” endings to the fairy tale story that I was trying to recreate for myself. I read these blogs like they were my Bible. As if I was reborn again, I devoured everything they said while still wondering when I would get to the “and then I lived happily ever after” ending.
Because losing the weight should always have a “happily ever after” right?
As I continued to swim in the deep end of weight loss, I found my ability to tread water a little easier. My flotation devise became my own words. So many of those that had jumped into the deep end around the same time I did began to quietly slip under the water as guilt/anger/depression grabbed one leg and resentment/addiction/self loathing grabbed the other, slowly drowning themselves in paper bags with promises of pain relief in the form of food.
As my own words helped me to stay afloat I began to understand there is no “happily ever after”. There is no rainbow at the end of the storm. That losing 100+ pounds wouldn’t take away my depression, my self-loathing, my addictions. Stepping on the scale at 160 pounds wouldn’t clean the slate of my past mistakes nor allow me to walk into a room full of people and feel like I belonged.
That’s when I took notice of those bloggers that still stood where I wanted to stand. They wrote about real life. They didn’t pretend that life was all unicorns and cute chubby cheeked drooling babies when the scale finally stopped on a number they’ve worked so hard to get too. Years after weight loss they still had to deal with the curve ball life tended to throw in their direction and sometimes they caught it one handed and chucked that shit right back at life with a resounding “TAKE THAT!”
Sometimes that curve ball cracked them upside the head and took them down a notch.
I stopped looking for the happily ever after and focused on my “here and now”. I took my life apart and bit by bit I held it in my hands slowly putting it back together with a clear understanding of how I felt broken for so long and that losing the weight wouldn’t “fix” me. As I got farther away from wanting to be one of them and inched ever so slowly towards being one of them I let go of the notion that losing the weight is what’s going to finally bring me happiness. In fact, it became apparent very quickly that while some of “problems” that I associated with morbid obesity became easier to deal with, a whole new set of problems came with “oh look I now can wear a size 8”
This last Sunday, that curve ball came right for my head and while I did everything I could to catch it with one hand and throw it back with an air of confidence, it conked me right between the eyes and left me feeling down right shitty about myself. So much so I couldn’t look at Mimi in the eyes because I didn’t want my existence to be acknowledge. I couldn’t look in the mirror without throwing daggers with words like “ugly” “undeserving” “worthless” attached to them towards myself. As I sat down to eat breakfast, I had to rock myself with each bite because every time the fork reached my mouth it took everything I had to not shove it down my throat until I bled. I wanted to be invisible, to blend into the walls that surrounded me on the outside because the walls on the inside were caving in and I didn’t know how to stop it.
Do you see what I’m trying to tell you?
This journey of weight loss and life changes doesn’t get easier when the scale finally congratulates you for a job well done. Life is the same set of struggles whether you are wearing an XXXL or a Sm. The difference between the me that once wore a size 26 and the me that wears a size 8, is that I know even when I feel like I’m drowning in my own emotions and think I can’t stay afloat I know that these feelings are temporary.
I stopped looking for the rainbow and learned how to ride out the storm.
I may be internally screaming that I’m worthless but I’m also whispering “You’re okay”, “This will pass”, “You are loved”, “You are worthy”. When I can’t look Mimi in the eyes because my existence is painful, I allow her to look at me because I trust her when she sees me. When food is difficult to place in my mouth, I rock to sooth myself because I know I need to eat to nourish my body even when I deeply believe I don’t deserve it.
My journey of life changes and weight loss has made me stronger emotionally and physically and while the emotions I feel don’t get easier, how I deal with them and for how long has. Instead of months and years living under a dark cloud not knowing how to get out from under it, I know now that the sooner I acknowledge that dark cloud descending the sooner the proverbial umbrella comes out to protect me from the impeding storm.
So if you’re here looking for the “happily ever after” of my story there isn’t one.
What you will find is someone who is where you want to be.
Someone that used to sit on the sidelines of their life wondering if this was as good as it get. Someone that used to find relief at the bottom of a fast food bag and wondered how long she could shop in one size before having to move onto the larger sizes (again and again).
And now that very same someone is standing up and taking control of her life the very best she knows how and while getting smacked up side the head, every once in a while by that curve ball called life, catching it more often than not and throwing it back with a mean right hand and a loud “TAKE THAT”.
Losing the weight didn’t solve my problems.
Finding the solutions did.