As we near the end of the year, I have been looking back at some Ladies in Weighting. In my book, I write about the women who start blogs to document their weight loss attempts. The blogs go on, often for years and years, but the weight loss does not. Oh there are plenty of success stories out there, like ChrisLivesSimple and 300PoundsDown. I’m talking about the many, many women for whom their blog becomes a social outlet and writing about weight and weight loss becomes a kind of hobby, a shared experience with their readers. The blog becomes the focus; actual progress with weight loss is not.
I checked in on the woman I consider the champion Lady in Weighting. For going on six years now, she’s been blogging about losing half her weight. For the last few years, she has wanted to lose 25lbs to reach a weight required by her insurance to get weight loss surgery. And for another year she hasn’t made it. Putting together clues on her site, she appears to have started out around the 300-teens. In her current “program,” she’s in her tenth week of Jenny Craig and hovering around the 300 mark. She never breaks out beyond that point.
Back in June she posted about a follow up appointment with the WLS surgeon. She was told that if she couldn’t lose 25lbs in three to four months, she’d be dropped from the program and no longer considered a viable candidate. That makes sense to me. Especially if anyone reads her blog. As her weight bounces up and down in a narrow range, she constantly invents new explanations and justifications. She insists on being “positive;” she rationalizes out everything to a beaming bright side but she’s going nowhere.
She refuses to see herself as she really is. She refuses to see the true impact of her own behaviors. I was talking with a good friend last night about accepting the truth of yourself. The First Truth of the New Paradigm is to know yourself and accept what you face. That’s very difficult for some people to do. It can hurt us horribly because some of us buy into the shame and blame that society hurls at us. My message is to urge you to reject that shame. It isn’t yours. Someone’s trying to put it on your back but you can refuse it.
Society’s shame and blame leads you to believe lies about yourself. This shame and blame obscures the view of your true self and and the discovery of what you really need. Don’t let another year pass. Acceping the truth of yourself will reveal a path. Go find it.
