In my last post I discussed why you can let go of shame and blame and forgive yourself for being fat, for ever having been fat, for hating being fat, for remaining fat, for struggling not to be fat. It is your BodyTruth. For some of us, food will wrap itself around everything that ever happens in our lives and distancing ourselves from it is very difficult. Our bodies’s own nature is our toughest adversary. Even when we do “everything right,” results we earn are usually a battle. That in itself, is one of our BodyTruths. Our bodies and minds will fight us every step of the way.
I’ve written before about a particular “Lady in Weighting” I have been following for awhile. She started her current weight loss program and weekly weigh ins thirteen weeks ago. She started out at 304 lbs. Three months and a week later she’s at 297. She writes with great enthusiasm about the 100-calorie packs she’s eating and the exercises she does now and then. She gains one week, loses the next, and she always has a thoroughly rationalized explanation for whatever happens. This week she only lost a pound, she says, because the Connecticut shootings brought on a binge.
When you weigh around 300 lbs, 7 lbs is practically a day’s fluctuation. If this woman ever hopes to get she has to accept the truth that what she’s doing will keep her in a never-ending cycle. Losing weight at a drawn-out average of a half pound a week will take her more than six years to reach her goal of losing 160lbs. But that’s moot. It won’t happen if she does not make more significant changes.
A tough truth for us to face is that our bodies make it very difficult for us to transform them. The work it takes from us is very tough. We all know someone who quits drinking soda and they’re down 15lbs in a month. Lucky them. For us it takes a truly deep commitment and intense consistency. It may even take surgery to finally make that scale number start moving southward.
These are the cards we are dealt. You can deny it. You can try to defy it. You can let it make you angry and bitter. But the truth of your body will prevail. For those of us who have dealt with weight all of our lives, losing 100lbs or more, taking control of our weight management, and reclaiming our health is not impossible but it’s a big job. Look deep inside and ask yourself what needs to be done. Accepting the answer—your BodyTruth—will reveal the path only you can walk.
