Posted by
Shrinking Tardie
on
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
My initial intention was to stop blogging as I just wasn't getting anything out of it. To be honest, my weight 'loss' journey had turned into a fantastic stint of 6 months of maintenance. Sadly, it's a bit premature! I've bounced backwards and forwards over the same couple of kilos since June 2008. I didn't want to blog, I didn't want to connect with anyone, I wanted to slink off and be completely alone.
So what happened? Did I lose my motivation? What the heck is motivation anyway? Where does it come from and where does it go? Did I become comfortable with being a size 16 and so lost the impetus to continue? Did I let life get in the way of my best intentions? Hmmm...good questions all of them but I don't think motivation was really the problem.
I've spent the past couple of weeks reassessing life, the universe and everything, and I came to realise something. I was bored. Bored with eating, exercising, having no school work, reading books that all start to sound the same. Just bored with everything. So I needed to firstly shake a few things up (again) and change my attitude. I've been studying non-stop for the past 5 years. This is the first real break that I've had - and I feel a bit lost. So much time to do something - or nothing. So setting some priorities of what I want to achieve before Uni goes back in February is my first step.
Another thing that I realised was that I didn't know who I was anymore. Silly eh? You'd think that someone who does so much bloody thinking would have a good handle on who they were eh? Nope, not me. Somewhere in amongst the 50 kilos that had gone, I'd managed to lose the only sense of self that I had remaining. My fat self was far more ingrained into my psyche then I could ever have imagined.
I'd nailed the getting used to being smart issue. Check. I'd nailed the getting used to not being anxious/depressed issue. Check. I even finished a degree! But who was I? I'd always been obese...well for as long as I could remember anyway. My entire adult life I had kept the absolute inner sanctum of myself wrapped in a secure, insulating layer of fat. Yet here I was chipping away at those layers and exposing more and more of myself. I think it scared me. Strike that - I know that it terrified me. If I kept going at the rate that I was, and doing as well as I as, then eventually there'd be nothing left to lose. I would eventually have the body that I was meant to have and I would have nothing to hide behind. The thought of being that exposed scared the crap out of me. It still does. So self acceptance and being kinder to myself are on the list to be worked on.
Body acceptance is also a big one for me. Fifty kilos later I look pretty 'normal' apparently yet I still can't get my head to see that. I still feel and (in my eyes) look huge. Accepting my new body (a bit like what Gok does on "How to look good naked") is a must.
What concerns me is that I allowed myself to maintain my weight (give or take a few kilos), fall back into making excuses for not exercising or not eating what I should, as a way to shield myself. While I wasn't eating emotionally, I was becoming increasingly negative with my outlook and sticking to my new, positive thought patterns became more and more like hard yards.
My current behaviour and thoughts won't work. It's really just that simple. I've got to tweak the recategorising that I did last year as I'd let my image of myself stagnate.
I'm not the person that I was. That's something that is bleedingly obvious and something that I am mostly comfortable with. I need to focus more on the positive changes that I have made, be kinder to myself regarding the fact that I didn't achieve everything I wanted to, and be brave enough to make the changes I need to in order to continue what I was doing.
I don't know who I will be. I think/know I still have some growing and some changing to do.
I'm not sure who I am at the moment. I still need to do some readjusting of a few things and work on a couple of others in the short term and I'm pretty sure this is why I feel a little lost at the moment.
But "I" am here to stay.
First up will be a number of changes around 'here' - here being my blog. Shrinking Tardie was always meant to be a weight loss blog and that's what it should be. I'll write random stuff that flows through the vast space between my ears and how my weekly weigh ins go, but I won't be keep running records of what weight I am from week to week. When I went private earlier this year, I found out just how many people read (or used to anyway) this blog and I was shocked to see how 'out there' I'd become. So in some ways this is going to be a bit more toned down on the private information parts - like my weight and my family. My personal life (as in uni and family) will no doubt rate the occasional mention as it's linked to my very being, but there won't be as much of it as there was in the past. It's not the reason for this blog.
So here's to a New Year! I've got lots of things to achieve this year - physically and mentally. It's going to be one heck of a challenge and likely to be roller-coasterish. But I'm willing to jump in, strap up, and launch myself at it full throttle.
Because, quite simply, I deserve it.
Tard
