Being Fat
At the beginning of 2017, I turned 40 and I was fat, the fattest that I had ever been. I had spent most of 2016 on a diet of some sort – all in aim of being at my goal weight for my 40th birthday. That goal didn’t happen.
I really felt the impact of being so fat when I turned 40. First of all, I had failed at my millionth attempt at losing weight. That I had been overweight for almost half of my life; my attempts to remember how fit and thin I was in my 20’s was a sad reminder that I didn’t even realise how different I was to that person. How much my eating and exercise habits had changed. How lazy I had become and losing weight had become so hard.
It also meant that I didn’t celebrate turning 40. Instead, I hid. I hid from the attention because I didn’t want to have to be in front of all of my friends and family while they sang happy birthday to me; I didn’t want to have photographs of my 40th birthday party and be reminded about how fat I was.
So it is really sad that I’m now finding myself in a similar position, coming up to my 41st birthday. I’m not as fat as I was at the beginning of the year. But I’m not that much lighter that it will make a real difference. Underneath (all the fat), I still feel the same way.
In the Flesh
Yesterday I sent for my first swim of the season. It’s almost November and it was a warm day. Our pool has glass fencing and as I sat on the pool step, I caught a glance of myself in the reflection on the glass and I was devastated. All I could see was my stomach protruding out in layers of blubber. Folds of fat.
That feeling of disgust that I felt for myself ricocheted and I’m ashamed to say it, impacted on my family. I felt so angry last night and I yelled at the kids for nothing and I behaved so poorly. Then I finished it off by eating pizza – too much pizza.
Today I’ve woken up feeling sad and worried. Worried that I’m always going to fail. I know that this mindset is not helpful and I’m sure many people and just thinking to themselves – “snap out of it and stop eating donuts and start exercising”. But living in the mindset of being a fat person means that there is a constant dialogue going on in my head.
I’m always looking for the ways that I’m failing. I have an out of control sugar addiction that I can’t seem to get on top of. I try new fad diets all of the time, every single time I fail and I’m so sick of failing. Every time I fail with losing weight, it affects my belief in being able to do anything in this life. It reverberates and I feel like I’m failing my kids, my husband, my family, my work life. I feel like my mind is trapped in this never ending viscous circle of failure. I honestly don’t know how to break it.
What I do know is that beating myself up over ever single failure is not working. Comparing myself to my friends on Facebook is not good for me. It just repeats the notion that I’m a fat failure. I don’t want to be a fat failure.
Start now
I’m going to start right now by putting on my work out gear and I’m going to go and walk on the treadmill. Then I’m going to commit to walking on the treadmill every single day for a week. Normally I wouldn’t set a time limit – I’d say just walk / jog for as long as you feel like. Well I’m going to do the opposite this week. I’m going to challenge myself to go for 30 minutes every single day. And every single day I’m going to check in and keep myself accountable.
I’m not sure what to do about weighing myself. When the numbers go down, it’s great. It’s motivating and I want to keep going. When the numbers go up, it is completely defeating and I feel that heavy load of failure. I think I’ve just given myself the answer. No weighing in daily (like I have been). I’ll weigh myself in two weeks.
I did it!
POSTSCRIPT: I DID IT! I WALKED ON THE TREADMILL AND THEN I DID YOGA ON THE WII. WITH MY HUSBAND. HERE’S THE POST WORKOUT GLOW 🙂
