Mind Games
Today's Weight 206.5lbs
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I’ve been tyring to figure out what caused me to fail at my previous weight loss attempts, so that I can try and avoid the same pitfalls. It’s been illuminating to scrutinise my past behaviour, and see the distinct patterns that have underpinned all my previous attempts to achieve my goal.
In a nutshell, my pattern goes something like this…
Stage One – Denial
This is where our heroine sticks her fingers in her ears and sings loudly to herself to drown out the chorus of voices (mainly from within) telling her that she needs to do something urgently about her ever-expanding fat-rolls and increasing susceptibility to health problems. Behaviours exhibited in Stage One include getting dressed with her eyes closed so as not to catch a glimpse of said fat-rolls; switching to elasticated waistbands and hanging ‘thin clothes’ at the back of the closet where they can gather dust; packing away fitness equipment and getting zero exercise (to the extent that our heroine takes the lift rather than walk up even one flight of stairs); eating a diet comprised almost entirely of processed, refined carbs; and periodic episodes of self-loathing when our heroine has a moment of mental clarity and realises she ought to be dieting – which she does for 8 hours or so - before the mental fog re-descends .
Stage Two – Dawn of the Dead
This is where our heroine suddenly has an epiphany, and decides “once and for all” to tackle her weight problem. Behaviours exhibited in Stage Two include a sudden flurry of obsessive journalling; a compulsive desire to calculate to the nearest second when the far-distant goal will be achieved; daily weigh-ins (with attendant agony or ecstasy); refusal to allow so much as a morsel of refined carbs to pass the martyred lips; embarkation on a rigourous and demanding daily exercise schedule designed to bring our heroine to olympic standard in a matter of weeks; total immersion in that strange other-world of weight-loss message boards and blogs; and a sudden fascination with celebrity diet and fitness secrets.
Stage Three – Attention Deficit Disorder
This is where our heroine – who thus far has been a dieting demon for around 6 months – suddenly and inexplicably runs out of steam and falls spectacularly off the wagon. Behaviours exhibited in Stage Three include skulking around in a false moustache and glasses to avoid encounters with people who will ask how the diet is going; surreptitious eating (eg. chocolate in the car on the way home from work) so as to maintain the illusion for as long as possible at home that the diet is still going strong; an excuse-laden avoidance of exercise; and acutely unavoidable feelings of shame and disgust.
This has been my pattern for at least the last 20 years – burying my head in the sand while gaining 30, 40, 50, 60 lbs, then having 6 months or so of fiercely strict dieting, followed by the inevitable failure and the regain of all the lost weight, and always of course a little more.
Somehow, this time I’ve got to break the cycle.
I’ve got to try and figure out exactly what derails me, because if I don’t figure it out in time, what’s to stop me failing like all the other times? It’s not as if I’ve never been as committed as I am at the moment – I’ve been here before, going full steam ahead in calm waters – and then whammo, suddenly I’ve capsized and sharks are lining up to eat me for breakfast.
So where do I go wrong?
Sometimes I think it’s sheer boredom with having to worry about it all the time. All the measuring, weighing, exercising, water-drinking, eating sufficient fruit and veggies suddenly stops being interesting and exciting and just turns into a huge chore. I suddenly start resenting having to put in so much effort to achieve something that so many slim people seem to take for granted – and I think “Sod it, I’m just going to live and eat like a ‘normal’ person.” And of course that’s disastrous, because I’ve never really learned or studied what ‘naturally slim’ people DO – I’ve never watched them to determine if they exercise portion control, or make better choices, or exercise more, or take 50 laxatives a day. So I try to emulate without doing the groundwork, and of course that’s doomed to failure.
Another reason I’ve quit in the past is complacency. I’ll cruise along losing steadily each and every week, thinking I’ve sussed this whole weight-loss biz and I’m going to carry on cruising all the way to the finish line and beyond. Then suddenly I’ll hit a mini plateau and all that hubris and over-confidence comes crashing down around my ears. It feels like the end of the world, because I’ve got so much invested in untrammelled success, and a small setback seems like a huge failure.
A third reason I’ve quit before is because a little voice in my head starts playing mind-fuck games with me! It starts saying things like “Don’t you think it’s vain to spend so much time thinking about your appearance?” or (more insidiously) “Don’t you think it’s selfish and insensitive to be improving your own health so much when Km’s health is so poor?” [This was a very effective mind-fucking tactic before K had his surgery – and it still has the power to knock me for six even now].
Thinking about my current journey, I think that I’ve learned some lessons, but by no means all. I don’t think I’m in too much danger of getting bored, or mistakenly thinking that I can suddenly start eating like this mythical ‘thin’ person. I’ve started to choose things for their innate nutritional value, not just because they’re low calorie or low fat, and I’ve also been working hard on portion control, and trying to think whether I really want something before I mindlessly shovel it into my mouth. I guess that’s a good start.
I’ve also been trying really hard not to get too hung up on the number on the scale, so that I don’t have those extreme high-low mood swings. It’s crazy to give a lump of metal and plastic the power to make or break my day. So, although I’ve been weighing every day to keep me accountable, I’ve been taking the numbers with a pretty large grain of salt. Gain or lose, I’m trying to learn that it’s no big deal. If I just keep chipping away at this I WILL get to goal eventually, and I’ve just got to accept that that will take time, and patience, and hard work, and setbacks and detours etc.
So that just leave the mind-fucking voices, and I don’t mind admitting, they’re the things I worry about the most. When that little interior monologue starts up, it can do untold amounts of damage to my resolve and attitude. You could put all the temption in the world in front of me and I’ll be able to resist it, but that voice is a killer. It turns everything on its head and undoes every argument. Suddenly trying to live a healthy lifestyle feels foolish, selfish, self-indulgent, vain, shallow, insensitive. The voice says I shouldn’t invest so much time thinking about myself, that it’s obscene to worry about food and body image when there are children starving to death in Africa, that I shouldn’t be trying to get healthy and live longer when K has major health drawbacks, that I should stop thinking about myself all the time….yada yada yada.
Somehow I’ve got to silence that voice before it gets going…and somehow I suspect that’s not going to be easy.
