The weight loss was going great. My strength and flexibility were improving. I was challenging myself and growing my skill set. I was very happy with the physical stuff but what crept in from the recesses of my mind was my fear of an impending depression that I was sure would come. I could always figure out how to lose weight but I could never figure out how to keep it off - obviously since here I was again losing weight. Every time I'd lost weight in the past I would get to this plateau and "something would happen" that I never could pinpoint. This "thing" would then cause me to become pissed off at myself and in anger I'd punish myself for screwing up and then I'd eat crap and gain weight. If I could just figure out the "thing" that caused this, I could do something different?
I had this eating and exercising thing down and I knew nothing but my fears could stop me now. I needed to address this. How could I keep this depression that always came away. Was I clinically broken, did I need medication, was I bi-polar, was I depressed, what was wrong with me?
Somewhere along the way my eyes were opened to what part of the problem was. I stepped back and looked at my pattern from afar. I'd lose weight, become proud of myself, then I'd make a mistake and be so mad at myself for failing (because a mistake meant failure) that I'd punish me/love me with pleasurable food. The punishment was that I created a cycle of self-loathing to "show me" what a loser I was. The love part was that I thought I was soothing myself by giving into my desires for pleasure through food. WOW....what the hell!
I thought of my sweet 7 year old son who was a mini-perfectionist like his mom and I'd watched him be hard on himself and cry when he made a mistake and it broke my little heart. I'd grab him up and hug him and say "Sweetheart, it's just a mistake and those can be fixed. Everyone makes mistakes cause nobody is perfect...except Jesus....and we aren't Jesus". I'd then help him try to fix the mistake and all would be better. WHAT DID I JUST SAY? Hold up. WHAT DID I JUST SAY? What would happen if when I made a mistake, I grabbed myself up, wrapped my arms around myself and felt a mother's broken heart at the little girl inside me that was so destroyed by a mistake and I told that little girl, "Sweetheart, it's just a mistake and those can be fixed. Everyone makes mistakes cause nobody is perfect...except Jesus....and we aren't Jesus". If I fixed the mistake, what would that look like?
This process seemed silly to me...to be my own mom to my own little girl inside me and hug myself and tell myself that it was ok. I would allow both parts of me to exist...the little girl who felt the world would end because of a mistake that was surely unfixable and the mom who knew the world wouldn't end and that mistakes can be fixed. But it wasn't good enough to simple KNOW this...I had to go through the process of the mom in me telling the girl in me. I needed to show myself that gentleness and love.
When I did this, I realized that that depression wasn't going to come. That "something would happen" wasn't scary because nothing was unfixable. I didn't have to be that scared little girl who didn't know how to fix the mistake. I was a mom who could figure out how to fix things and could take care of the little girl. Just like my son could trust me and count on me and was never alone because I'd protect him and help him and love him and always be there for him....I could trust me and count on me and was never alone because I could protect myself and help myself and love myself and always be there for myself.
AHA! THAT was God's lesson. THAT was why I had to do this myself. Because in the end it's ME who has to take care of ME! I can't wait for someone else to love me. HE loved me, HE loves me, I love me, HE put HIM into me and can love me through me. It was all in ME.
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