Every morning, the other mom at the bus stop and I talk about our weight and what to do about it. This has been going on for years now. Several times we've had temporary success, which makes it worse: how can we have success, and feel so encouraged by our success, and then still fail again? We've tried different approaches, different attitudes, different plans---nothing works for long, including "trying something new every time the old way stops working."
This morning, though, we've had a fresh insight. The price of losing weight, for us, is misery. And we are already miserable with our constant failure and constant weights. So perhaps instead of being miserable about our weight and about our failures, we can commit to the misery of weight loss. We will be miserable either way, but one of those ways results in smaller clothes.
We'll see. It is very hard to believe or hope, when experience shows such a consistent lack of reason to do so. It's easy to say "Keep trying! Don't give up!"---but goodness, that certainly sounds foolish when it's been decades.
Oh. I hate to read that you think you're a failure! But I get that this can feel like a zero-sum game in terms of misery. Trading one kind of misery for another. I feel this way about traveling home to see my family. Miserable if I do, miserable if I don't. No clear winner as far as I can see, other than the smugness of Doing the Right Thing.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, here at work we talk a lot about "squaring off the curve", which basically means avoiding a long, slow decline in favor of a high plateau followed by a quick decline. It's pretty motivational to me, from a quality of life perspective.
Anyway, I hear your frustration, and I fervently wish that we lived in a time where we knew how all this stuff works (we don't).
I don't know what to say to make you feel better, but I wish I did very badly. I know this: thinness is not a virtue. And as long as people's health and will power and general worth as people are judged by their body type and weight, there is always going to be misery. Even the thin people will never feel thin enough next to another, skinnier person, and on and on it goes. I know this for a fact because I'm generally pretty happy with my body and my weight, and so are my doctors, but whenever I get around my neighbor, who also has three kids but is skinnier, I feel suddenly fat and MISERABLE for a minute. Gah.
ReplyDeleteI love both Tess and Sarah's comments. I'll just ditto them.
ReplyDeleteThat's how I used to feel about running. I hated running, but I also hated feeling gross and slovenly. So I kept running even though I hated it. And now I still run but I don't hate it anymore. It's actually just the only exercise I can stand.
ReplyDeleteI meant this to sound encouraging but I'm not feeling like I achieved that....
I don't mean to sound like I'm selling something but I've used the Curves weight management plan for a few months now and it's pretty awesome. For one thing there are different stages that you rotate through each month so at the most you're only dieting for 30 days at a time and then you get to take a break. Secondly, there's a section where you are commanded to eat to raise your metabolism - needless to say after 4 weeks of dieting that stage is pretty fun. It also does the opposite of most diet plans and encourages you to weigh yourself every day. From what I've read of your blog I'm not sure if that would cause you some anxiety but I find it pretty comforting. For one thing, you can see that you can overeat at one meal and not instantly gain 5lbs, for another you can see how easy it is to correct for a day where you ate too much. Eg you weigh yourself Wednesday & go up a couple of pounds, but be stricter with what you eat that day & you'll see those couple of pounds and possibly more gone by Thursday. This is massive in terms of not falling off the wagon but making a constant, persistent change. I'm willing to recommend it to anyone at the moment. I'm not sure how you can get hold of the book without joining the gym (which personally I also like but understand it's not for everyone) but I'm sure you can find a place to download it on the internet, seems like just about everything is online somewhere, or maybe you could call a club and ask to buy a copy. Good luck with your weight loss either way but I genuinely have found this to be a good experience.
ReplyDeleteAnon- That does sound really good! I have some friends who've joined the Curves gym and it definitely sounds like my kind of place. Ours doesn't have a kid area, but I wonder if I might join once my youngest is in preschool?
ReplyDeletei ditto anon on the weighing every day thing. I used to weigh once a week and it was quite depressing because if I went up two pounds I was devastated (and it made a difference which day i weighed too). Now I weigh every day and realize there are ups and downs and i aim for more downs than ups.
ReplyDeleteI had a friend who had GREAT success doing Curves. I don't even know - I have been thinking about my weight for so long, the thought of being miserable with a CHANCE of not being miserable is very appealing.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a good post.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wordofwisdomliving.com/home/the-skinny-on-being-overweight.html
It recognizes that shaming people isn't going to work. I totally agree with the sugar/insulin theory, and as long as we (as a society) continue to eat the way we do, nothing is going to change. You've pointed out in several posts that its not as simple as eat less/move more, 90% of our weight is determined by what we put in our mouths. I think most people just can't commit to permanent changes in eating habits.
Hey I notice you haven't updated here in a while, and I just wanted to say I hope it's because things are going especially brilliantly and you have nothing to say, and not because things are especially bad.
ReplyDelete*hugs* (if that's not weird)