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This is not actually the
blog that I had planned to write this week. All will become clear in due
course, but, in the meantime, permit me to meander in my usual way.
When I lived in Cyprus, one
of my local friends, a very wise lady told me that the Cypriots have a
saying:
“When you make plans – God laughs”
Now I have a feeling that
there might be something lost in translation, because I don’t think that the
planning refers to making preparations or taking precautions for a certain
outcome. And in previous blogs, I have exhorted that “preparation is key”. I
still hold to that.
No, in this context I think
that the saying is referring to behaving in a certain way with the
expectation that a specific outcome will definitely happen. In anticipating,
even feeling entitled to, a definite result according to your own desires or
perceived needs.
I have seen this
paraphrased as “God will wreck your plans when he sees that they are about to
wreck you”.
Now this is not going to
become a theological or spiritual discussion, feel free to substitute ‘God’
with ‘The Universe’, ‘Fate’, the Higher Power of your choice, or even the subconscious
within you. My point is that it’s fine to plan, but never expect or take for
granted that what you believe will happen will actually happen. You are setting
yourself up for a fall.
I took one of those very
tumbles just yesterday at my weigh in.
So far, my weight loss has
been speeding along very nicely, thank you, with regular weekly losses of
6,7or 8 pounds which has been very gratifying. I did however, express to my consultant
my concern that, possibly I was losing weight too fast.
Be careful what you wish
for…
In the previous weigh-in,
twelve days earlier, I had lost a cumulative amount of 3stone and 6lbs. That
was fabulous. Now I was just eight pounds short of a four stone loss, and my
first interim target. So I set my sights on achieving it at the next weigh
in.
I stayed thoroughly on
plan, I worked even harder on the exercise bike and, all the time, I was
doing the mental arithmetic. I would repeatedly, and obsessively work out my
average daily weight loss since starting the plan, which had amounted to
around an amazing 0.9lb a day so far
(yes- I was truly this anal!), multiplied it by the 12 days between weigh ins
and worked out that I should have lost 10lb at the next anticipated weigh in.
Even give or take a couple of pounds, I would still achieve that illustrious
and coveted goal. My eye was on the prize.
So, as yesterday’s weigh in
approach, my excitement was growing, I wanted this target. I needed this
target. I was going to lose at least EIGHT pounds. Definitely.
I had PLANNED for this. In
fact, I was already mentally MAKING PLANS as to how I would celebrate this
achievement.
So, yesterday, in the sanctity
of my consultant’s room, as I stepped on the scales, breath held and looking
across at the lady like a small child anticipating an ice cream…I waited
excitedly…and was then given the verdict.
“You have lost FIVE pounds”.
At that point, I couldn’t
just hear God sniggering, He was guffawing, holding his belly and rolling
about as celestial tears ran down his holy cheeks….
Of course, being the proud
individual I am, I smiled sweetly and behaved graciously, expressing a “slight disappointment" in the result, but for the
remainder of our meeting I was screaming inside. This was so unfair! I had
done everything right! I deserved this!!!!
On returning to my car, I
let forth such a tirade of expletives that the Almighty’s laughter would
rapidly have turned to blushes and then anger.
It was only after I had
cooled down a little that I began to see the error of my ways. I started to
understand that I had become blinded by my obsession, I had so focused on my
sense of self entitlement and become so convinced that I would achieve what I
expected that I failed to see the positive in my actions. After all, five
pounds is a bloody good weight loss, even over twelve days. But, back there,
in the weighing room, I had failed to adhere to my plans.
Ergo – I had
failed. And the fear of failure is my Achilles Heel.
So I think it’s time to
address what I truly believe that Failure is. I think I need to rethink and
redefine the word in my head. I know that in past blogs I have talked about
having lost weight and then regained it (and then some), and therefore called
it a Failure.
The Oxford English
Dictionary defines Failure thus:
1.
Lack of success
Care to hazard a guess
which definition I related most strongly to???
Yep, when I make a mistake
or fail to come up to my expectations I AM A FAILURE. Pretty derogatory, huh?
I would never, ever
consider using this term to describe my precious children, no matter how many
mistakes they make, so why on earth do I deem myself low enough to bear this
title?
The problem was that I
focussed utterly on the outcome I had planned and not on the process of
reaching for it. So, I ignored the fact that I did actually succeed in losing
weight, on several occasions. I denied
myself any credit because the final outcome was not permanent.
This is as fatalistic as aspiring
to live to the age of 90, and then declaring your life worthless when you
find yourself on your deathbed at 88.
It is as cruel as turning to
a child who has fallen over and telling them that they may as well stay on
the floor, because if they get up again they will risk another tumble.
Life is simply not like
this, so why am I expecting it to be so?
This is what has held me
back in trying to lose weight for so long. The fear of failure – again.
But, really, has this
failure actually killed me? Has it irreparably damaged me? Categorically not.
In fact, if I look back, there are many things that I have learnt from my
failings. That some things don’t work, and some only work temporarily. The challenge
now is to take stock of what went wrong last time, and apply the new experience
to build on a better way of tackling my problems once and for all.
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But it’s scary. It means
facing demons and uncovering ugly truths. It means looking at yourself in the
mirror and actually seeing what is there, not what you wish to see or prevent
yourself from seeing.
I discussed the other day
with a friend my blinkered view of myself, naming it “reverse anorexia”. By
this I mean that, in the same way that a seriously ill anorexic individual
looks at themselves and see a grossly overweight person, I can take a glance
at myself and think that I don’t look so bad. I can believe that I’m not
really that overweight. It’s only on seeing pictures of myself that the
undeniable truth hits me hard. Right now, I am not just a bit overweight, nor
even fat, I am OBESE. Even having lost the weight so far, I am still burdening
my body with an excessive amount of fat that is highly detrimental to my
health and threatens my longevity. It is a cold, hard, unpalatable yet
unavoidable truth. And I must accept this if I am to succeed in my goal of
becoming a healthy individual.
I do wonder if this
inability to accept my true size contributed to my failure in other attempts
to lose weight. Long before I should have, I became complacent, the “reverse
anorexia” got its hold back on me. Once I had dropped a few stones, I could
tell myself I “looked good”, not just “better”. Because I was viewing myself
from a platform of self-delusion, I was able to convince myself that I was
more successful than I actually was, and so I began to lose my focus, and release my grip on the issues that I was holding barely at arms’
length. This tenuous veneer dropped and I fell, very hard, from the pedestal.
It is horrible to have to
accept yourself as you really are when any aspect is wrong, but it is an
absolute and utter necessity if you truly want to change. This is where I am
now. Sometimes the extent of my anticipated journey can overwhelm me, but I
know I must trudge on.
This is not a small honing
of my inadequacies, it is not a ‘patch up job’. I have to break myself down
back to my lowest common denominator, shed all my preconceptions and self-deceptions.
I have to see myself “warts and all” to really understand what I need to do
to change.
But whilst I am doing this,
I must treat myself with love and respect. And, sometimes, that can be the
hardest thing to do.
Up
until now, I have kept my starting weight as a closely guarded secret, not even
telling my husband the dreaded number. Why did I do that?
Shame.
Total and complete self-horror which, I believed, would also be expressed by those
to whom I dared to impart the “secret”.
I
dreaded and feared the look I expected to see on the faces of others when they
learned the extent to which I had allowed myself to balloon. I was not prepared
to subject myself to this level of perceived disgust.
The
problem was, it made me guilty and unhappy keeping anything from my husband.
Therefore I was double-bound, by the fetters and chains of both Guilt and
Shame. I had left myself nowhere to go. Something had to give. And last night
it did.
Discussing
my weight loss with my spouse, he asked me if I had much more to lose. I sighed
and gave the generic response “oh yes- you have no idea how much”. Instead of
placating me with the refutes and positive strokes that I craved, my painfully
honest husband just nodded and grunted. And that is what spurred me on to push
things further.
My
plan (already God was giggling…) was to ask him to guess how much he thought I had
started off weighing, and then, when he had underestimated the figure (as I
anticipated he would), I would brush it off with a casual “ a bit more than that,
I’m afraid”. The matter would then be closed and Pandora’s Box would remain un-tampered
with for another day.
Unfortunately,
this was not how it transpired, and, by now, God was nearly about to pee
himself..
My
dear, beloved husband guessed almost exactly my starting weight.
I
was flabbergasted, and managed only to mutter a shameful “er – yes, that’s
right”.
Immediately I was stripped of all dignity. My Emperor’s
New Clothes had been exposed and I was stood naked, waiting for the stones to
be thrown and the whips to be lashed against my helpless bulk.
But
the derision never came. To my husband it was just a fact, a number. A
dangerous number, albeit, but no reflection on his love and respect for me. It
never was, never had been. If there was anything to be ashamed of, it could
only be my willingness to project my self-disgust onto him.
After
the shock had subsided I was filled with an incredible and overwhelming relief.
I felt free – released. For the first time in a very long while I was blinking
in the sunlight of liberty.
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So why is shame such an
issue for me? I have thought this through and can only allude to my family
history, which I have mentioned in earlier blogs. I was raised in a
dysfunctional, narcissistic home, ruled over by my volatile alcoholic father.
I was fortunate enough that the volatility was never physical, but the psychological
and emotional abuse played a terrible toll on my self-esteem, which has taken
a lifetime of therapy and self-contemplation to rebuild. Despite all that
went on in the family home, it was tantamount to keep the “secret” of my
father’s condition and subsequent behaviour. The shame was so great that it
was never to be mentioned to anyone else.
I was berated severely on
more than one occasion when I happened to comment on my father’s drinking
outside of the family (in fact punishment was more severe if I tried to
discuss it within the family), so I soon learned that silence, lies and
deception were the easiest routes to survival. And I got good at it – too good
at it.
Several years ago, I was
seeing a psychotherapist who, when I revealed my then weight to her, was
astonished. She then confessed to being taken in by my rhetoric about my
behaviour to the extent that she disbelieved what her own eyes were telling
her (she was not a very good therapist!).
Ironically, however, in
respect of my father’s drinking, after the alcohol got the better of him and
he passed away, at the too young age of 56 in 1998, when I felt safe to speak
openly about his alcoholism, nobody who knew him was in the least bit
surprised. They all knew. Despite the best efforts of our family, his actions
and behaviours spoke for themselves. It was the ultimate “elephant in the
room” – visible to all except those who were inconvenienced by it.
And so, I now understand my
weight is probably as visible and quantifiable as my father’s drinking. After
all, I wear it daily, plain for others to see. It is only me that has made
the subject unspeakable. I bet if I walked out into the street right now, and
asked a random person to be utterly frank and guess my weight they wouldn’t
be far out.
So, in this spirit of
embracing courage, I am going to do something that thoroughly and totally
terrifies me. I am going to publish my starting weight.
I can feel my fingers
trembling over the keys as I type…here goes….
On May 14th 2015,
when I was weighed, prior to starting my plan, I clocked in on the scales at
24 Stones exactly.
There, I’ve said it. It’s
out there. It can harm me no more being expressed than it did when the shame
and guilt gnawed away at me internally.
It’s a terrible, horrible,
frightening number. Some may be shocked, others think nothing of it. It
horrified and disgusted me.
But the positive thing
about it is that I have now distanced myself from it by 53 pounds. And I have
no intention of ever, ever even approaching it again. In fact, I never want
to see a figure in the twenties ever again.
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After all this deepness, I
will end on a more positive, lighter note. At yesterday’s weigh in, my
consultant, clearly sensing my disappointment despite my best efforts to conceal
them, suggested that I might want to consider going “up a step” on the
Cambridge plan. This would involve dropping my salad lunch in place of an
additional soup or shake, and removing all carbs from my diet so that I go
into a state of Ketosis and the weight loss accelerates. I said I would consider it, and, at the
time, it seemed to me to be a very attractive proposition. However I have now
slept on it and seen the error of my disappointment and I have decided, at
least for now, to continue on the path I am currently on.
I understand that the next
step is the best choice for many but I believe it is not for me. My reasons
may surprise you…….
I do not want to give up
having my salad at lunchtime.
Now, close friends, my consultant
and regular readers of this blog may well now having to be wiping coffee off
their screen having read the last statement. I have made no secret of the
fact that for all of my life, I have been veggie-phobic. In this very blog I
described salad as “the Devil’s own bogeys”. So why would I not jump at the
chance to eliminate salad from my diet again?
I certainly have not
developed a love affair with all things green, and do not salivate over the
produce section in Asda, but I have learned that, although I do not love
salad, salad loves me. It is doing me good, it is making me healthier.
Above all else, I now feel
an innate righteousness that I am fuelling my body with stuff that is doing
me good, instead of gorging on cheap and dirty fast food which has little or
no nutritional value. For as many years as I can remember, I have been
overshadowed by the regret that I did not eat vegetables. Unfortunately,
until recently I did not find a force strong enough to drive me to take
action against it.
I cannot tell you how proud
it makes me feel, when I take a bite of the leafy greens, to know, on a very
deep level that I am DOING THE RIGHT THING. Together with my increased water
consumption, elimination of fizzy drinks and caffeine and recommenced daily
exercise, I feel a wonderful satisfaction that I am finally making the right
choices. Choices that even managed to bypass other times I was “on a diet”.
To be honest, I actually
derive more joy from the knowledge that I am doing this than the thrill I
receive when the scales register a loss. It is the act of proactively taking
control and making changes that give me the biggest buzz.
I don’t want to lose that
buzz. So I’m sticking with the salad.
I have noticed my
vocabulary change, too, when my weight loss and my journey are discussed. On
previous efforts, I used to talk about “being slimmer”, “looking good”, “and “fitting
into nice clothes”. I have noticed that my language now is peppered with
aspiration to being “healthy”, “fit” and “well”. This tells me that not only
is my body getting healthier, my mind is too! Long may it continue!
Well I’d better round
things off for now. Thank you for persevering through another long blog entry.
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Wish me luck!!
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