Losing weight doesn't make everything better.
This battle to get fitter and thinner is certainly an uphill one but the thing that no one tells you about proper weight loss is that losing that weight can often bring all the emotions, you had spent many years suppressing, up to the surface and if you're ever going to move forward then you'll need to deal with them. If you don't then the weight is gone but you'll probably feel the exact same and it's a shame to have a new improved body but barely be able to appreciate it. Now I do have moments of churlishness where I can't help thinking that even though melting chocolate and ice-cream and cream, (yes folks I bring you chocolatey ice cream) might have been a horribly unhealthy way to deal with all the angry and sad but that I was suppressing these things for a reason so maybe they should stay suppressed. No, I didn't really convince myself with that argument either.
I do eat healthier these days, so much healthier and this elimination diet has made it tough to
be bad with food. Mostly because I want to see this through and find a way to live where I don't feel crappy all the time but it does seem a little unfair that so many foods are short chain carbohydrates (high fodmaps) but whenever I'm not sure If a food is allowed or not I find the day of stomach pains usually helps to settle that debate. Now recently I found myself in the baby food aisle looking at toddler snacks, in the desperate hope I could find something in there that would satisfy my sweet tooth but still be okay to eat. It felt pretty sad and It was a failed mission so I left Tesco's pretty depressed about the fact that I couldn't have nice things. I know I'll figure this out and some of those banned foods will be allowed in a few weeks time so I probably wont crack up entirely but I think this cleaner than clean eating raises some new issues like if my idea of binge-eating is having a half jar of organic almond butter ( what are they putting in that stuff? crack ? because I cannot get enough) and maybe a bowl of porridge then why do I feel like such a pig?
I find myself getting annoyed and glad I'm no longer doing an actual calorie count because I'm already giving myself such a hard time for eating that many potatoes with that much rice and then snacking afterwards. Even though my clothes aren't getting any tighter (they aren't getting any looser either) I am not seeing the muscle definition I crave. All I can really see is the flab around my middle like the ghost of a fatter me, stubbornly staying when everything else is gone.
Then this leads to other problems, when you start to feel this way about yourself then sometimes exercise is not to feel good or get fitter but to punish yourself. To punish yourself for the food you ate recently or gluttony from years before and you push yourself harder and harder because you start to believe you deserve a certain amount of pain. Thinking that if you hadn't eaten all the almond butter you could take it a little easier on yourself . Not I'm not saying every workout is like that but certainly some of them are and I know I've with held food I really wanted until I felt I burned enough calories to eat it but I recognize this is not making me happy and its not making me healthy.
I'm working on me and I'm working on these issues. I'm currently reading a biography of a woman who suffered from an eating disorder and it's been a bit of a wake up call because her words sound like an exaggerated version of my own when talking about food or my body or just how I feel about myself and I instantly knew that was not a good connection to be making. Losing weight doesn't make everything better and I don't have it all together right now but that's okay because this isn't it for me. My story is still being written.
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