If you know, you know, gaining back weight is hard. I think it’s very important to try to make sense of why this happened to me. I regained 74 of the 94 pounds I lost over the span of five years. This is a hard post to write, so why do it? Why be so vulnerable in such a public space? I want my story to be about resilence not failure, and I want to evolve. I also need to understand why it happened. Sharing these blogs helps me to reflect, and a weight gain story isn’t that unique. Lots of people struggle with weight gain and maybe if I take the risk and put myself out there others will be inspired do their own work of uncovering their why.
Looking Back to Go Forward…
I am at a mid point in my weight loss journey, I have another 35 pounds till I reach my goal, and my intuition tells me that it’s time to take a look back. When I reached my weight loss goal last time, my motivation was all about turning 50. I wanted to look and feel my best, and I did it. I felt really amzing, I was really proud of myself. I did maintain my weight loss for a long time, until COVID happened. Then two of my most reliable habits were taken from me: going to Spin classes, attending in person Weight Watcher meetings. Everyone was home doing jig-saw puzzels, drinking, and eating. Old habits set up shop and I let myself be oblivious.
Regaining the weight was a slow process. Life events my coping strategies made it so easy to lose touch with my body. My “lockdown” was to set up house in my head and live there taking the rest of me for granted. Does that make sense to any of you? I was going along slowly gaining for a long time and it felt almost annoyomous. What I mean is while my weight fluctuated up and down (with a long term trend of going upwards). Just last year, my friends at work were complimenting my weight loss. They would remark about how great it was that I was maintaining the loss. I wasn’t maintaining it – and I knew that, but I ignored that it was happening.
By the winter of this year, the jig was finally up. By then there were no complements about me maintaining weight loss. To the outside world, it was obvious I wasn’t. On the inside I was feeling physically and mentally sluggish, and my confidence was taking a beating, I certainly wasn’t happy with my appearance. Everything to do with food had felt like it once had, overwhelming. It became very clear to me that I could no longer ignore my problem.
Early one morning, I stepped on the scale and to get reacquainted with reality, I thought to myself, “Now you know.” This was quickly followed by an onslaught of negative self-talk. My inner voice was all too happy to share her opinion about how I had let myself down, “You gained back so much weight! How could you do that? You knew it was happening. What’s wrong with you? You are practically starting over”. I realized that if I was going to do this; “Again!” (there she is) and have a of shot of being successful, I’d have to figure out how to quell that inner voice.
The Body Remembers…
Muscle memory refers to the body’s ability to reproduce a move without giving it any thought. So if you are a person who has lots of experience doing yoga, playing golf, or even riding a bike your body knows the script. This is the best analogy I can think of to descibe how I felt after my freak out session about my weight gain. I decided it was time to say goodbye to my negative inner voice, pack my bags and move out of my head and trust myself that I could indeed make weight loss happen again.
Strategy #2 Living As If…
Starting over was hard but something that helped me was to live as if I was feeling confident with my habits even if I wasn’t. That negative inner voice kept opening windows in my head and shouting down to me, “This is too hard!” When that happened, I would play this little head game. Let’s say a thought pops into my head like, “Ugh, I don’t want to drink any more water.” Another thought bubbles up, “This is just what you do. You are the kind of person who drinks 64 ounces of water every day. Now drink up.” I would act as if this is the total truth, and eventually it actually does become the total truth!
In a lot of ways, I’ve already arrived. What I mean is, I’m not wishing I were living a healthy lifestyle I am living it. And, yes, I have a way to go before I hit goal, but I’ve got this. Healthy living is becoming part of my identity. With this change, I feel like I can be more flexible when some other life event comes along and messes with my systems. I do want to lose weight but more than that I want to hold onto feeling physically better and mentally freer.
It’s very likely that I’ll always need to be warry of negative thoughts. Pictures will happen, feeling inadquate will happen, and there will definately be low days in the future. My big work is to learn how to manage that negativity. This strategy of living as if, is teaching me to understand that what I do in the long terms matters a whole lot more than what I think in a fleeting moment.
My Birthday Wish…
Today is my birthday, and I’m old enough to realize that I have so much to be grateful for already. In a real sense my wish has already been answered, because just being alive is the crown on my head. So here is my birthday wish – I’m sharing it with anyone reading this post at any time: “I wish that we would all believe in the power that we all possess to change ourselves for the better.” We can do it together.
Getting to Goal 