Trying to keep it real...

Sorry if this one is kind of a drag, and a little scattered.

Contrary to what you might think, this doesn’t happen very often: I’m beginning this blog post having no idea what I want to say. I’m a little lost at the moment, and I’m not sure what to do about it. I feel like I’ve lost sight of my goal a little bit, and have reverted to feeling like “being thin” is a goal that just isn’t in the stars for me. Much of my original propulsion came from inarguable success. And then the results slowed down, and I thought “that’s ok, as long as it continues, slow is still good!” and then it slowed more and is at almost a stop. I’m looking around, with all these nagging doubts are still in my head, and I wonder if and when they’ll ever quitetdown. I think I’ve reached the point in a long-term diet where the chronic dieter becomes so stuck. It’s like the edge of a cliff, and you know it’s there somewhere, and you run so free and fast up to it, but you reach this ledge and screech to a halt. I’ve been to this ledge before, and I know it well. It is as far as a diet has ever taken me, and gazing over the edge I have no idea if I can go any further, simply because I never have. It’s like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with the leap of faith bridge. It might not be there, and I may end up crushed at my own failure. I may be kidding myself that I’ll look good in a size medium one day. I may be a fool for thinking I’ll ever be anything but a disappointment to myself.

Because, you see, to those who compliment me on my success, I am “thinnER.” But I don’t want that. I don’t want to be slightly less enormous. I don’t want to work this hard and go without this much, and still hate my fat neck and my cheesy knees, and my bulky arms. It wouldn’t be fair! But I am terrified that I’m pushing against a giant rock, here, and that I’ll throw more effort and anxiety into this thing and never get further than I’ve gotten. Just because other people have moved their rock, and just because it is possible that the rock is movable, doesn’t mean it actually will move.

I’ve also just come out of a really rough week, the details of which I’ll leave alone, but suffice it to say it was one thing after another. It was like a battle and it caused a great deal of anxiety. It was physically painful, and there were several times when I failed at keeping to my nutritional plan because I frankly didn’t feel like coming home to a dinner that wasn’t something I could look forward to. When I felt beat up every day, there wasn’t much that was inviting about dry chicken and a salad… again. But then the food guilt always settles in! and I’m sure I’ve gained some hard-fought pounds back, and I’m sure I’ve wasted a month of results… and that isn’t fair either, by the way. Little skinny girls run around eating whatever the heck they want, whenever, and not having any idea how much their burger patty weighs or how many carbs are in lettuce, and have no problem at all—no guilt and no consequences. I get both, in heaping, steaming, stinking spoonfulls.

Every diet I’ve ever done is like the movie Groundhog Day, and I’m Bill Murray destined to live the same thing over and over til I get it right. But just like poor Bill wandering the streets of Punxsutawney, I may know what is wrong but I don’t know how to get it right and still maintain my sanity.

And I keep thinking of how much I should have lost by now, and how I hadn’t planned on still being in weight loss mode during the holidays, and what a food-guilt-ridden misery that could end up being (more thoughts on that in another post). I’ve lost 35 pounds so far, in total. Remember how I had lost 33 when I started this blog out in the first place? Yeah, that is where I am right now—extreme disappointment mode. Not in the diet and not in the plan, but in myself. I feel broken and pathetic.

And all my encouragers out there are going to say “35 is so good!” but with a net of 2 pounds since I began this blog, I can’t really be happy with that. I should be at 50 by now.

I began with such fervor because I had marked out the finish line, but I’ve moved and moved that line so many times to accommodate my lagging results that I don’t even know where I left it last. So here is the hard part—every time I’ve started a diet and gotten to this crisis point I’ve given up entirely, because it is easy to start a new thing after you fail, but it is very difficult to go back to the status quo that existed before the failing. It is as hard as running, and then tripping on something, and then getting your balance back and keeping on with the race, rather than tripping, falling, nursing your wounds, and starting over. I know the plan works, and I know it has worked for me, and I have to decide if I’m strong enough to regain my balance without faltering.

I almost feel like I’m facing the same doubts as when I first began—the fear of wasted effort and of making a fool of myself for betting so publically on my own success. The doubt that there is a skinner girl inside of here. The doubt that I’ll ever wear that Pinterest wardrobe I’ve built. The fear of being huge forever no matter what I do. The fear of being just as unsatisfied with my skinny self. It all haunts me continually, and the only thing that can lift it is to prove it all wrong.