Received a nice little pick-me-up this week. This blog is obviously a journal I keep for myself, but it’s lovely to see you supporting my “content journey.”
Hope everyone is having a great holiday season. I had PIE for the first time in years at Thanksgiving. Yet, yesterday my weight checked in at my lowest ever in years. So, hellya. Still going strong.
This journey that I’ve been on is a journey of self-preservation.
It’s more than just an interest in losing weight. It’s about reclaiming my identity.
I’m not looking for a mate; I’m postmenopausal.
I’m looking for myself. I’m looking to become, again, the person that I was before life’s tragedies interfered with my body type.
So it’s bigger.
It’s a bigger, bigger challenge and a more interesting path that I’m on.
Losing the weight I’ve carried all these years is a monumental step toward the healing I’ve been working on the past few years.
It’s a way, metaphorically, to erase– to disappear– all the layered anguish and self-protection.
To allow myself to be myself free from fear.
Addendum: I’m currently at the lowest weight since I began this blog in 2008. I’ve also finally broke through into the 30s in BMI. So, it’s working. Slowly, but surely.
I will start this post with a great report: I have lost all my “pandemic” weight, and the last time I weighed myself, my weight was lower than it has been in the past three years.
I have been going to the Y, and I’m continuing my simple no sugar, no carbs routine. That’s it. As far as the physical weight loss, as I’ve discussed before, it’s just a matter of discipline.
However, on the psychological front, it’s not so easy.
Unlike a lot of weight bloggers who’ve struggled with obesity from the time they were children, I was not always super heavy. In my youth, teens, and college years, I was thin. I was a cheerleader for years. Lithe, strong, and generally living in a “normal-sized” body. The massive weight gain began in the 90s for me when a pdoc put me on an Rx that gifted me 100 extra pounds. It was like a runaway train. I tried several times to bring that weight down, but eventually gave up in exasperation.
The weight morphed into something else more sinister though. The weight was what I would come to dub a “spray-on male repellent.” I was able to move about my career without the unwanted advances of creepy men; it was so freeing in that way.
It also afforded me the ability to live my life without inviting men into it with complicated relationships that always seemed to end in ruin. Even more unsettling is the deeper, more fragile realization that the abundance of fat cells wrapped around my organs and bones acted like a bubble wrap, a physical protection against being kicked, punched, and thrown down a flight of stairs. Heavy, I know (pun, intended). To understand this at a root level, there is a book: “The Body Keeps the Score” that I have not read, but I hear it referenced all the time in my women’s work.
On my last appointment with my new pdoc, I struck up a conversation with him about this. He said it’s absolutely a factor (weight gain as protection). He said it’s not uncommon for men to gain weight too to ensure they won’t be tempted to cheat on their spouses. He said he hears stories like mine all the time.
I’ve been working hard here in this phase of my life to face my demons, to heal.
Losing the weight is part of my journey. I’m hopeful I will get back to the young woman I was before trauma derailed my mind, my spirit, and my lovely body. Of course I won’t ever be young again, but I can be that strong, healthy woman again.
I’m working on it.
The Fatcinating Blog 