Thoughts

I had some thoughts recently about why I always fail when I try to lose weight.

The whole diet thing, I think the very fact that I always know that I am “being bad” when I eat crap just makes me worse. Feeling like you are wrong and bad all the time does nothing for you, I think. It just makes you feel lower, so you eat to feel better, then you feel worse ultimately and it all just repeats. I sometimes eat bad foods not because I am craving them, but out of this strange sense of defeat. “I am always going to fail, so why try”.
I think the only way I am going to get out of this is to accept myself. I always read about this self-acceptance thing being an important part of dieting and just wrote it off as positive-thinking bollocks. But it’s the foundation of improvement. How can you help yourself if you hate yourself? Sure, losing weight will stop you hating yourself so much but it’s almost a paradox, you can’t escape from a state by doing something that makes that state worse.
The very act of dieting is ultimately detrimental to self-esteem. It’s saying that you’re not good enough, you need to change. How can anyone do anything positive with that idea in their mind the whole time?

Anyway, the conclusion to this is that I am going to stop trying to “be good”. I will try to believe in myself a bit more, I will do stuff to feel better about myself.  I just decided I would see what happened, wouldn’t buy crap by default but then wouldn’t buy diety stuff either. So I had a normal sandwich, then a normal dinner. And I didn’t feel the urge to buy crap. There was never the sense I was denying myself, as I still had a reasonable lunch. Also when I used to do “special” things, make a fuss of what I was having for lunch, that would tip me over the dark side as well! I realise that now. So I just have whatever will fill me up and is nice. I wasn’t spending the morning thinking of nothing but lunch either.
It’s not a revolutionary idea this; all I am doing is being normal. Eating like other people do. I will try to go for the less lardy options on a day to day basis, then have treats like pub lunches at the end of the week. But no punishment type denials, and no extremes. No binges. I’m not even ruling binges out though, because normal people do that. But they don’t just do it by default. They might do it before their period or something, or on a Friday night. That’s normal. But I was doing it every day.
Anyway, that’s the idea. Accepting myself as not inherently “wrong” and throwing out the concepts of being bad or good. That’s all it is. It seems to work so far. I don’t even have the “hold your breath” feeling of a new attempt at losing weight, like I usually do. It’s just not nearly as stressful. Will see what happens but if I am not beating myself up all the time it’s got to improve things. Even if I don’t lose weight, ultimately learning to stop hating myself has got to be a positive thing, if it makes me feel better on a day to day basis.

In the few days since I decided all this I have felt like a truce has been made. I’m not at war with myself anymore. I have reconciled with myself. I feel really positive about it and actually hopeful instead of fearful about the future.

Shame it took me until my 30th birthday to realise all this…