WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
Fall seven times and stand up eight.
-Japanese proverb
I used to weigh 287 pounds. Now I weigh 169 and I'm still going down. A lot of people have asked me how I did it, but the answer never seems to satisfy them. This is because they really don't want to know how I lost the weight. The answer to that question is readily available. No, what they really want to know is how I got past all the obstacles that they and everyone else who has tried to make lasting changes to their bodies or minds have faced. They want to know how I got over the wall. The answer is simple - I didn't.
Stay with me...
I have been dieting since the age of nine, and am days away from celebrating my 39th birthday. I have a lot of experience at trying to lose weight, as I'm sure have most of you. During my 35th year, when I was at my highest weight ever, my mother was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. Only weeks prior to her diagnosis, we were measured for formal dresses, and our measurements were virtually identical. So when she received her diagnosis, it frightened me. It was as though I looked into a crystal ball and saw myself 25 years in the future. That's how my journey toward successful, long-term weight loss began, and I was determined that I would see this journey through to it's conclusion.
Then, I found my wall. Some people describe their obstacles as hurdles they simply leap over on their way down the road to their goals. Others have their own wall, but it blocks their road at some point and all they have to do is climb over it or get around it, and - Presto! - the road to success is clear and traffic-free! Not so for me. My road to success was short - just a few steps really. But there was this big-ass wall, a Great Wall that stretched for miles in every direction, was too tall to see the top of, and went deep under the road. It was made of many bricks, and each brick was a challenge for me to overcome. Some bricks were physical in nature - my bad back, my arthritic knees and hip. Some were psychological - my aversion to pain, my fear of failure. Others were emotional - my lack of any coping mechanism other than stuffing my face until I was sick. I had to grapple with the first brick on, literally, day one. Did I mention that my wall has no mercy?
Brick Number One - Honesty, or the death of denial.
From my journal:
March 11, 2006
Began journal-ing my food as instructed. I'm editing my regular food intake already. I'm not supposed to - I'm supposed to eat "normally" for the next four days. When the fuck was the last time I ate normally? I re-read what I had for breakfast and am so angry at myself. What the hell am I doing? Six fucking doughnuts and three cups of milk?! I am so glad I didn't buy any more, but am ashamed to admit, even to you, dear diary, that I would have bought a dozen if I hadn't had to write down everything for the nutritionist. At this point I don't give a rat's hairy ass what she has to say, because there is nothing she can say to me that I haven't already thought to myself. Why do I hate myself so fucking much? What the hell did I ever do to me that was so awful that I would punish myself like this? I feel sick... I have been doing this to myself for over a decade now. I am starting to accept the fact that I'll be lucky to be at my goal weight by the time I'm 40. You know what? I don't care if it takes me 'til I'm 60. God dammit, I am going to make it this time! But if I am, I've got to start figuring out what makes me so damn self-destructive. Holy Hannah, I may need some help here.
After I wrote this, I re-read it over and over, until I was crying so hard I couldn't see it anymore. Then, I asked myself, "What can I do to move forward?" I had answered the question before I asked it, really. It was obvious, and it was terrifying, and it was beautiful, and I didn't want to accept it at first. I had already begun a journal, so what I needed to do was simply be honest. I needed to stop telling myself the lies which allowed me to justify my self-destructive behavior. I needed to start being unfailingly, unblinkingly honest with myself and everyone who was trying to help me, like my nutritionist. I decided not to lie or fudge one little bit about what I ate over those four days. It was like a dare - "I dare you to eat until your buttons pop, until you puke, and I dare you to write every single bite down." I was calling down the mountains. I was inviting the absolute worst that could happen, and expecting chaos and catastrophe. But, something unexpected happened. My nutritionist didn't judge me or scold me, she just added up all the calories I ate and averaged it out over the four days I'd been journaling - 3100 calories per day, and almost no exercise. No wonder I was nearly 300 pounds. But, I didn't die of shame. I didn't get a letter saying I was losing my medical insurance (thank god). The sky didn't fall and the earth didn't shake. Nothing bad came of being honest, and the only consequence was that I knew exactly how to move forward. I needed to eat less, and move more. Period. There was no mystery, and there was nothing more scary than what I had already faced - the prospect of making a virtual stranger privy to what I viewed as my ugliest, most shameful secret.
I promise I'm not going to go through every brick I've removed from my wall in such detail. Suffice it to say that I'm still deconstructing my wall everyday, brick by brick. I had a pretty serious injury in January, and am only just now returning to my pre-injury fitness level. There was a point when I wanted to give up because I hit a serious plateau and couldn't find my way down for six months. What I thought might take me 12-15 months has now entered it's fourth year. My point is simply this; you will face obstacles, and they will stop you from reaching your desired destination unless you decide, right now, not to let them. You need to make the decision to face each obstacle, to do the thing that scares you the most, to ask the questions you don't want to ask, to accept the answers and to pound each brick to dust so that it doesn't end up right back in the wall. And you need to do that over and over again until you can walk through the hole you've created.
Oh, and you need a community. You need to know that there are other people who have been there, people who can help you with the tough bricks, and reassure you that you are not alone. I guess you can check that off your list :)
If you haven't, please consider joining the WHEEfit social network
Future diarists:
July 24 Fri AM - jennyjem
Fri PM - bluesophie
July 25 Sat AM - cusoon
Sat PM - matching mole
July 26 Sun AM - louisv weekly
Sun PM - Stage Stop
July 27 Mon AM - Albatross
Mon PM - StrangeAnimals
July 28 TuesAM - Kascade Kat
TuesPM - debbieleft
July 29 Wed AM - Edward Spurlock
Wed PM - sheddhead
July 30 Thu AM - mommyof3
Thu PM - Glow Dog
Augu 01 Fri AM - gchaucer2
Fri PM - help