I remember watching Oprah for years and hearing her talk about having to learn the underlying reason for the weight. And I'm an intelligent woman who was pretty self-aware and I really could just never figure it out?
Some of my theories were that I was a food addict. That made sense. I would crave things and then just had to have them. If I tried to withhold that food from myself I could for a while but inevitably I would have to indulge myself in that desire. I did not understand my cravings and why they were so strong. I felt like I was in a constant battle with myself.
Another theory was that I had too big of a problem with inconsistency. Maybe if I learned to follow a routine better I wouldn't do things like wait 4 hours to eat in the morning or skip meals or consider that when I ate little to nothing I was being "good" but then I'd gorge out on some giant meal because I was starving and then I was "bad".
Maybe I lacked willpower or sense of time or knowledge of what to do. I lacked something but what?
Maybe my body was so messed up from years of gaining and losing and gaining and losing that now it didn't know what to do? Maybe I had created so many fat cells that they would always just gravitate toward being filled up (which means fat). Maybe I should just learn to love my largeness (but I didn't at all!).
I would find a diet that worked (most of them actually do work as long as you follow them) and follow the program which meant some type of deprivation until I got to a point where I could wear cute clothes. For me this was somewhere in the 190 to 200 lbs range. This was way better than the 250 lbs range that I would bounce back up to. That was an accomplishment....50 or 60 lbs! So I'd be happy with myself. But ultimately I couldn't stick with the deprivation forever and so I'd slowly make exceptions until I was back up to 250. It seems that magic number would cause such disappoint in myself that it would motivate me to try something else. Maybe that's what was wrong, I lacked motivation?
Every time I could lose weight I was good. I felt good, proud of myself, enjoyed the attention and the "good job" comments. And then some thing would cause it all to unravel and I'd be sucked back into the blackhole of "screw it all" and "I can't do it". I lived this yo-yo for many years and could never understand what was wrong with me. The answer had to be out there.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Distraction and dieting
It's weird what happens to our eyes when we become obese. I didn't see it. I hated seeing pictures of me and don't have very many because of that. But when I'd look into the mirror I always thought, "I'm not THAT bad".
Taking my kids to those play places full of tubes and ball pits where plenty of parents put on the knee pads and joined their kids I certainly couldn't keep up with them but I was still blind. I became one of those parents that would take the kids to fun places and I'd sit and watch and thought "that's what parents do" but in retrospect I couldn't really have done anything else.
My goals became intellectual and not physical for a few years and I went to college, got my degree. I helped with the design and building of my house. I read self-help books about how to have a happy marriage. I dabbled in religions and tried to find the meaning of life. I was doing many, many thing to become a better person on the inside while the outside "wasn't that bad" and so I ignored it.
Over the years I started diets, joined clubs, watched infomercials and bought lots of products. I would attempt to do something about my weight but for whatever reason I was just never getting it. I tried the Beet Juice Diet, Eating for your Blood Type, Tony Little workouts, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Atkins Diet, Ephedra pills, etc.
Finally in 2001, as I was losing my marriage, I went to the doctor desperate to get help. I found out that I had hypothyroidism which can make it hard or even impossible to lose weight if not controlled properly. That was my "Aha"! moment. THAT was the reason I was so fat! I had a "health problem" that made me fat (haha, ya right). What that diagnoses did was give me a valid excuse for having lost myself to food.
Taking my kids to those play places full of tubes and ball pits where plenty of parents put on the knee pads and joined their kids I certainly couldn't keep up with them but I was still blind. I became one of those parents that would take the kids to fun places and I'd sit and watch and thought "that's what parents do" but in retrospect I couldn't really have done anything else.
My goals became intellectual and not physical for a few years and I went to college, got my degree. I helped with the design and building of my house. I read self-help books about how to have a happy marriage. I dabbled in religions and tried to find the meaning of life. I was doing many, many thing to become a better person on the inside while the outside "wasn't that bad" and so I ignored it.
Over the years I started diets, joined clubs, watched infomercials and bought lots of products. I would attempt to do something about my weight but for whatever reason I was just never getting it. I tried the Beet Juice Diet, Eating for your Blood Type, Tony Little workouts, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Atkins Diet, Ephedra pills, etc.
Finally in 2001, as I was losing my marriage, I went to the doctor desperate to get help. I found out that I had hypothyroidism which can make it hard or even impossible to lose weight if not controlled properly. That was my "Aha"! moment. THAT was the reason I was so fat! I had a "health problem" that made me fat (haha, ya right). What that diagnoses did was give me a valid excuse for having lost myself to food.
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