I feel I need to say something – after all, it has been nearly a month since my last entry – but I haven’t known what to say. Initially, I took a break from blogging because we went camping. When we returned; however, I remained uninspired and uninspiring. I have been keeping up with meal planning and we are working out three nights a week (more or less) but my heart isn’t in it and I have been struggling mightily with my food addiction.
I have moments when I feel motivation strikes, when I make mental plans to go balls-to-the-wall again but those moments are fleeting and always gone when the time comes to actually get off my duff and do something. I am struggling with exhaustion. Not physical exhaustion but inner-exhaustion. I am tired of meal planning, tired of spending my Sundays meal prepping, tired of giving up my free time in the evenings for workouts. I think about all the people leading “normal” (or what I imagine are normal) lives and I am exhausted from feeling like I have to count every calorie going in, every calorie going out, every moment of movement and exertion and making sure all those numbers add up to numbers being subtracted on the scale. My life feels as if it is ruled by diet and exercise and I know that will never change. So long as I want a healthy body at a healthy body weight, I will have to be ever-vigilant about diet and exercise.
Maybe it is the Libra in me, demanding a balance of the scales, but my mind and heart rail against the seeming-unfairness of it all. While I feel surrounded by healthy-weight people who are free to skip gym days (or never go to the gym), free to indulge on the weekends, I am tethered to the demands of a calorie-restricted lifestyle. Sure, I could say, “*&$% it all” and accept myself at my current size, a larger size. A lot of people do that and that’s great. All I have ever wanted for anyone is to be what they feel is the best possible version of themselves, for them to love themselves. But this is not the best possible version of me. So long as I struggle to hike, climb, run, scale flights of stairs; so long as I experience any physical limitations due to my size or weight; I am not the version of myself I want to be. So… diet and exercise.
I want to stamp my feet and throw a tantrum, screaming “it’s not fair!” but I know I’ve done this to myself. Here is where I fall farther down the rabbit hole. I hold myself responsible for the situation I am in – and rightly so (nobody force fed me until I was 290 pounds). But being accountable shifts to blame and blame is a concept with a far more negative connotation. I blame myself, I get angry with myself, I punish myself mentally and physically (with food) then I feel sorry for myself and soothe my anger and sorrow with more food. Then I regain weight and the blame-anger-sorrow cycle starts anew. I know I need to forgive myself, to love myself and to go about my healthy lifestyle with love, compassion and empathy for myself. At the end of the day, THAT is the struggle now. That is where I have gone so terribly off-course. Self-love and compassion, at this point in the cycle, are empty words – lip service. I am simply feeling nothing towards myself right now but anger, frustration and impatience. Until I can truly love myself again, forgive myself for my history and treat my body with kindness coming from a place of compassion and not punishment, I’m just going through the motions of healthy diet and exercise. That, I’m afraid, is uninspired and uninspiring.
Jody: Lost & Found 