I used to have a lot more fear, not so much anymore. Does not mean I live fear free. I have been going around in a cul-de-sac of weight loss. I get to this one point and then I either hang out here, or I move a bit back up. I am back at this place again. I have switched my mindset over a bit of not being obsessed and consumed by weight loss. I am more about living a life style, but have I become too comfortable in this life style? Also are there fears that hold me back? Fear is not rational but that does not mean it can not muck up your life or goals. When I first started with Marisa, she stressed the importance of giving fears a place so they did not dominate the space in your mind. Writing them down helps, and I have gotten out of this habit. I fear less and less, but that does not mean I do not fear things at all. I journal less for myself and blog more now for accountability, so why not share my fears with you? So here's the fear list.
1. I am afraid I will not get to my goal, whatever that is.
2. I am afraid of what life post weight loss is. The past few months are the closest I have come to not having a life which revolves around weight loss.
3. I have never maintained a healthy weight. Ever. This scares me.
4. What else will happen to my body. Things have changed a lot and every time I feel like I connect to and get to know it, it changes. For better and worse.
5. What else will I have to change or give up to move forward?
6. What emotional landmines are waiting for me? Will anything else come up?
7. How much longer do I have to keep doing this? Time scares me. I feel like I wasted so much time hating my body, myself, my eating habits, food, I just want time to be all mine and not centered on me physically.
These are what come to mind now. I am sure there are others. There are things I am happy about though. In the past weight loss has been stalled because I settled. I said this is good enough, and not for very good reasons. I could wear more clothes then I wanted to, a boy liked me, my mom left my alone, and I felt socially acceptable. All of those reasons except the clothes are utter crap. My mom has never been more proud or supportive and could not care less where I end up because it's my body my choice. I do not care what a boy thinks, well that's not true is it. I do care, but how I look and how I feel about myself is not determined by whether or not one likes me. As for society, that also matters not to me. I "fit in" I suppose. I do not feel outside it. What matters most to me is what I want. I want to be at a weight I stay out or around the rest of my life, and I want to maintain that weight in a healthy, disordered eating free manner. The good and bad news is I know I can do it. I know I can get there, I just have to keep doing the work. The work is not always clear, like right now I am not sure what holds me back, but I know asking myself is the first step to figuring out what that is.
Totally with you on this. I can't remember a time in my life where I was simply trying to maintain my weight. I've always been trying to lose, or else I was just eating and eating and eating...and gaining. But reading your blog makes me feel less alone in this. You're much stronger than me though, but reading here makes me feel that maybe I could do this :)
ReplyDeleteThis is an amazing post. Your honesty has definitely inspired me to make my own fear list, as well as my own "what I'm grateful for" list.
ReplyDeletemicrolife- You are so not alone in this and there's a huge community on this interweb of people with similar struggles. The best part is none of us have it figured out, we're all learning. Thank you for being brave enough to share, and your kind words!
ReplyDeleteSamara- Thank you, I really appreciate it. I am glad I did it. It was interesting to see my fears have changed. They are not what they once were which I did not totally realize until I wrote it out. There's that vague something irks me swirl but writing it down makes it clear up.
I am fearful of the post weight loss struggles... sometimes it hard to imagine I will ever even reach that point.
ReplyDeleteAlan- I know the feeling, but in some ways it's not so much I fear it as I have ZERO concept of it. I can not even project into the future enough to fear it it's so unknown to me. Do you think sometimes that we fear the future to distract from the present? I wonder if that's what I am doing sometimes.
ReplyDelete