The tides are shifting

Yesterday I had “the meeting” with a lady with whom I am going to embark on the path which I hope will change my life. It was good, in fact it was better than I had anticipated. Driving up to the house where this meeting was to take place, I was nervous and excited in equal measure. It’s probably a very good thing that this wasn’t one of those dreaded appointments  to check my blood pressure as I have no doubt that the BP monitor would have gone through the roof. Thankfully, no need for claims of “white coat syndrome” here. Having proverbially spilled my guts in yesterday’s blog about my fears, one thing that I did not express was the concern that I was throwing myself into the lion’s mouth of yet another Corporate organisation intent on extracting large amounts of cash from me with the faint promise of a return of a new body, yet with the ultimate “get-out clause” that any failure was entirely my fault. I am not naïve enough to think that anyone else could do the work for me, however nothing demotivates me faster than a company that appears to care more about their financial gain than my physical and, more importantly, emotional wellbeing. I have attended groups where the “hard sell” was rife and, regrettably, bought in to the belief that the more cash I threw a problem, and the more products I purchased the easier it became. This just pandered to my addictive nature, transferring one ‘substance’ for another.  For me, it is very hard to engage with a consultant who clearly sees my journey as predominantly a business venture. I am very pleased to say that my first impressions of the lady I met yesterday are not of that ilk. Formalities were addressed, but the matter of cost was only mentioned by me at the close of our meeting. Instead we spent a good hour discussing the psychology of weight loss, and the consultant’s passion for addressing weight issues from a mental, emotional and spiritual side shone through strongly. This is what I need. I don’t need to sit in a group and talk about what I cooked for dinner last night, how many “syns” I indulged in. I don’t want to exchange recipes and listen to the woes of others who failed to lose that week because they had one too many slices of cake. I know HOW I got fat. I know HOW to get thinner. It’s very simple. What I really want to explore is WHY I got myself into this mess that I am in now, and to LEARN NEW WAYS OF THINKING so that I don’t constantly make mistakes like this again. The lady I met yesterday mentioned Neuro Linguistic Programming and other psychological techniques which really caught my interest. This is what I want. I don’t want to teach my body to survive on less food, I want to go much deeper and re-wire my subconscious mind so that it convinces my conscious brain that my body can cope on much less, thank you very much. So I was encouraged by the words “the diet is just a tool”. This is not something that I had ever heard before and the simplicity, which had obviously previously eluded me, utterly astounded me. In all my other experiences “the diet” was the be-and-end-all of the process. Everything was focused on what you put in your mouth. Every waking minute was occupied by either eating, wishing I was eating or planning what I was going to eat next. How can that be healthy? It’s not – it’s obsessive. How refreshing to hear that somebody seemed to understand how starved my psyche had been and how much that requires nourishment. The problem is, it is so much easier to focus on food. To address and then redress attitudes to food is a far, far greater challenge. But it is a challenge that I want to attempt. And that is why I have been so scared. Nobody likes hard work, especially not a lazy soul like me. During the meeting the inevitable weigh in occurred and it was more than I expected. To give the consultant credit, she did offer to not disclose the actual figure to me, but I felt that I had to face facts, no matter how unpalatable. My mission now is to not focus on that number any longer, but to concentrate on getting my head straight in the hope that my body will follow suit. Previous weigh-ins have resulted in utter obsession: “Oh God, Oh God, I weigh XX Stones…that’s so much more than anyone else I know…” and so I’m back to comparing myself unfavourably to others as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog entry. Soon I become just a number, the sum of my parts consists only of the number of pounds that combine to form this ungainly body. If I succeed in chipping away the fat, it feels like it adds to my personality. I become a better person the thinner I become. How utterly preposterous, and insulting not only to myself but to anyone else who struggles with their weight. Unwittingly I subscribed to the opinion that I had openly riled and campaigned against for so long – that “Thinner = Better”. I compared myself to an unscrupulous politician yesterday, and this has been an issue for the entire nation recently, culminating in last weeks' General Eelction. We were bombarded with promises, manifestos, 'spin' and unsubstantiated claims. The nation grew weary of the undisguised campaign to win our votes whatever the cost. And underneath it all, we only wanted to hear them speak the truth, to tell it like it is. Even if the truth hurt a bit, that would have been preferable to vagueisms spouted by those who we should be trusting, So, in the spirit of what of practising what I preach, and embracing honesty at any cost,  here are my truths: No matter what size or shape I am, I am a GOOD PERSON.  I have compassion  I am intelligent and witty.  People like me,  I have good friends.  I have an amazing family who love and cherish me.  I have had the resilience to endure difficult times in life and the resource and will to support others through theirs.  I am a survivor.  Regardless of my size, these facts will NEVER change. They never have, they never will. But also: My weight is slowly killing me, it is causing health conditions that could reduce my life and reduce the time spent with people that matter. My weight is reducing the quality of my life – I ache, I get breathless, I sweat. I snore. I cannot participate in sporting events with my children, or my friends because I am too unfit and my body can’t cope. My weight restricts my choices – I can only shop in specialised clothes shops – in fact, I find myself looking for the size before I even consider the style. I dress to hide my swollen legs and ankles and my fat arms. I can’t wear my original, beautiful wedding and engagement rings because my fingers are too fat. The modern world is not designed for people of my size. I have to squeeze into certain chairs, airline seats require careful manoeuvre and often a seatbelt extension. This causes shame and embarrassment. These facts MUST change. Being amongst those that know the true me and love me, I am perfectly comfortable with who and what I am. I know that I am accepted. I know that I am loved. But beyond the comfort of these people lies the rest of the world, inside which live folk who, for their own skewed reasons, choose to judge you by what they see. In the outside world, there are times that I want to hide, to blend in, because I can’t dazzle them with my personality in the few seconds that they see me . And as much as wear my heart on my sleeve, those sleeves are also filled with arms  like over-stuffed sausages. Being fat makes it impossible to blend in when I want to. Every time I enter a fast-food outlet, a clothes shop, or squeeze uncomfortably into a café chair I wonder if someone is looking at me and seeing the cliché of the fat, stupid, lazy individual and not the person who is acutely aware of demons that have refused to go away. I want to shout out that "I am more than what you see!!!"   I want to dispel those demons and make them take the fat away with them, too. I have a big personality, and this I am not ashamed of. I just want my personality to be too large to be contained within my body, and not vice-versa as is frequently the case. It is incredibly cathartic for me to write down and share these thoughts and commit to print what I have been trying to deny to myself for far too long. I just hope that I can take these words to heart and learn from them. This is my Manifesto To Me. I am not actually starting “the diet” officially for another couple of weeks. In just over a week’s time my family and I are going on a much anticipated and long awaited holiday together. We’ve been through some hard times recently following the death of my mother in law last month and this trip away will provide some much needed respite from the grief and allow us some time to regroup as a unit and galvanize the incredible bond we share as a family. I did not want to complicate the matter by being “on a diet” whilst we holidayed. I was concerned that attempting a new regime might result in frustration and irritability which were the very things we deserved to be free of during our stay. So I have had to resign myself to the fact that my weight, and all the issues related to it, will be joining us on holiday too. I will have to face the humiliation of the airline seats, I will still dress myself in a way that does not expose my chubby ankles, and I will still have to seek out the chairs that can accommodate an ample bottom. But I will focus on me, and the good things in my life, and set about nourishing my soul instead of my body. I will leave regrets at home when I board that plane. There is no longer room in my suitcase for ruminations and sadness. I know that when I return, tanned and relaxed, that negativity will no longer be welcome at my door. I will know that I am ready to embark on my new venture. And I will hope that this will be the last ever holiday that my fat issues join me, uninvited. To be honest, a sea change has already started to occur in my head. I am starting to make little decisions to change. I think twice now before buying that extra packet of crisps for my lunch break, I try to avoid the biscuit table in the office; I am considering drinking more water. These little changes are telling me that I am ready to make a bigger change. I no longer want to mindlessly place food in my shopping basket, and then in my mouth, on a whim, I want to stop and ask myself if it is really good for me.  I want to change the vocabulary in my head from “Fuck It “and “I deserve it” to words that nurture my soul, not overfeed my body. I want to stop rewarding myself with food. What madness is that? Why was I giving myself food that ultimately could kill me, as a form of love? This makes as much sense as George Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Love’ from 1984. The concept of that was to subject people to horrendous torture whilst telling them that they were doing this because they loved them, in the expectation that they would eventually submit to the will of the aggressor. This is also the premise of narcissistic abuse which, as I mentioned yesterday, I was exposed to for much of my childhood. As I type, I am starting to realise the insanity and hypocrisy of my motives. I have been treating myself the way that I abhor to be treated by others. This madness must stop. So I shall conclude today with the faint, yet undeniable hope that, this time, I will succeed. I don’t actually mind how quickly or slowly it happens. I deserve this, I deserve to learn to treat my body with the equal respect that I proffer my soul. For what use is a soul on earth if the body is too weak to contain it? Wish me luck……..