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Sigh. I am SO DONE. I have literally been battling in the weight war my entire life and I am so over it! I mean seriously. I have literally lost 150+ pounds and still I struggle! I don’t just mean struggle with my weight – I mean struggle with my perception of my weight. I still feel too big at times. I still slip into diety patterns. I’m still overly critical of my body. I’m still tempted to restrict my eating and swap out meals for smoothies more than I should. I still compare myself to others. I still feel like I have not lost enough weight and I should keep working at it until I’m as small as I “should” be. Or as small as she is. Or as close as I can be to the BMI recommendation on the wall of the doctor’s office.
Logically, I know this is not a good thing. And honestly- I’ve come so far in my journey of breaking up with diet culture. I really have. Honestly today is one of those days where I’m just in a funk about it and I think that will happen from time to time no matter how much I work against it.
So maybe today’s not the day to write a public blog post about this for all the world to read! hah!
But the truth is, I do have days like this. They’re fewer and further between, but they do come and they suck.
This blog post series may look a little different than most of my others, but I wanted to document the in between. The moments where I’m not crushing the world of healthy living, and positive body image, and self confidence. I wanted to strip away the highlight reel a little because I need you to know that I STRUGGLE TOO! And that I am walking forward with intention. And that it’s not always easy for me.
I feel like on social media, it is sooooo easy to share the best. And when I post, I will only post that which feels authentic and genuine to me. So if I post a quote image about seeing my body in a positive light or breaking up with dieting – I mean it! And most of the time, I’m there. I’m truly embracing a positive perspective about my body! But there are times when I have to pick myself up by the bootstraps and remind myself of the truth.
The truth that my body is good. And that it DOES NOT MATTER WHAT SIZE I AM. And that the scale is not my master. And that my legs are strong. And so are my arms. And that the people who matter to me, the ones who love me, absolutely do not care about the size of my body.
It’s me. I’m the one who cares. And I can’t figure out why. I mean, I get it. I was literally bullied about my weight for my entire life. Since kindergarten. That’s a long time to be told you’re too big. It’s a lot of trauma to sort through. But seriously, I’m a 30-something now. I feel like I should be completely and 100% over it. But I’m not. Not completely anyway.
I’d say I’m about 85% over it. I’m learning logically what matters and what doesn’t, but it’s what’s way down deep in my heart that trips me up. It’s like there are pieces, crevices in there that sometimes catch light and expose the fact that I still need to do some work in my breakup with dieting.
Dieting
I’m learning a lot about which habits of mine fall into the category of dieting. I think with most of them it’s not so much about the actual thing/habit/practice, it’s about , my relationship with the thing. And just as with relationships in real life, my relationship with anything health related can sometimes be complicated. It’s usually great. But sometimes it’s not.
There are some aspects of my health journey that I feel are totally fine in their place, but when they get off-balance, things go wonky.
Things like weighing myself every single day. I got into the habit of that when I started Noom. I didn’t feel it was troublesome, and have weighed myself every day for over a year now. Including this morning. For me it’s brought accountability, and believe it or not, it actually helped me formulate a positive mindset with the scale that I didn’t have before. It brought me to a place of being neutral about the scale. I can typically hop on, see the number, not care much about what the number is, and hop off and go about my day.
But lately I’ve noticed that it grips me more. It frustrates me sometimes, or even makes me feel happier if it’s down a little. I have to be so careful because I KNOW DEEP DOWN that that number DOES NOT determine my value, and whether it’s up or down a pound (or a few) should not determine the mood for my day.
I have gotten so strong in this area, and even as I’m typing this, I realize that maybe it’s not that I’ve fallen off the deep end. Maybe I just need to notice that emotionally I’m becoming a bit too entangled with that number the scale, and I may need a break. So that’s what I’m going to do for now. Not forever. But I think I’ll take a little break from weighing myself everyday. I’ll try to remember to touch on that I my next Dear Diary post in this series, and tell you how it’s been going. If not, just DM me on instagram and I’ll let you know!
Ok what else. Oh! Another thing I’m doing is slipping into feeling like I HAVE to walk fifty thousand steps every single day. Ok fifty thousand is an exaggeration. I usually just use walking as my go-to for low-impact body movement every day. Walking is my absolute favorite. I love getting outside, breathing in the fresh air, all the things!! But lately I’ve been slipping into that mindset that I have to run myself absolutely ragged trying to get in as many steps as I possibly can. To the point of neglecting other things that matter because I just have to get in as many steps as possible.
Here’s the thing. I LOVE WALKING. So this is again one of those things where, it’s not that walking is bad (quite the opposite, obviously), it’s my relationship with it. If I’m out there walking a million miles a day FOR THE sOLE REASON OF MY WEIGHT, then I’m off balance. So again – just noticing how I’m veered off a little, and shifting my relationship so that I can keep the right perspective and not get entangled with the whole diet-mindset of walking to lose weight.
Ok this post is getting super long, so I need to wrap it up! Come find me on Instagram for my daily stuff on body positivity and healthy living!
