My body is an distorted hideous and unloveable shape right now. I'm bloated and fat again in all the wrong places. This statement is why you haven't heard from me in 67 days. How do I live with myself? How do I continue to fail? How do I let my emotions send me into a tailspin and then convince myself that I should just stay down for awhile instead of fighting my way back up?
Disappointment. I had a quick conviction and went on a "no-carb" for 30 days stint. I made it a few weeks and did pretty well, but then I left myself go. I gave myself reasons to say YES to every request that came my way, to every food ritual invite, to every extra hour of work and in turn gave my emotions and my brain the NO. No I won't take care of you, no I won't get enough sleep, no I will not work out, no I will not heed your cry to stop consuming the copious amounts of carbs, sugar and caffeine I dumped into my body. So with my disappointment in myself came embarrassment and then retreat. I retreated from this blog, from my WW meetings, from my accountability and from my schedule of all things healthy.
I don't know what to say, I know I don't need to apologize to bloggerville, but I need to apologize to myself. The only person I hurt in my failures is myself. My friends still love me, my man still holds me and no one has disowned me or told me what a fat disgusting pig I have become. I'm the only one who wants to disown me and call myself those nasty names. So...I'm sorry Alison. I'm sorry I let you down. I'm sorry that in your 31st year of life, you continue to ride this roller coaster of weight gain and loss. I'm sorry that you allow your emotions to control what jumps into your mouth.
I need a reality check. I've been doing some processing and trying to figure out why this happens, what is it that gets the best of me? How come I keep standing in my own way? I realized that when I started to let myself spiral down instead of fighting through the doubt and setbacks, was around day 130 when I was invited to come share my story at my alma matter, SPU. I was asked to speak on suicide, to help educate others with my experience. It was draining, I relived the day my brother died, the days before he died and the 9 years that have come after. What have I gone through? How have I been supported? What have you learned from this experience? What do you want to share with others. I cried, I sobbed, I poured my life out. It took awhile to recover from that. It's been awhile since I went that deep and I had never relived that experience in front of a group of people. Death never leaves us, it lives as a whole the shape of that person in our hearts. Nothing can ever fill it, replace it, only one person is that shape and size. So I experience grief, death and mourning as part of my daily life. But extreme and deep emotional episodes are spread farther apart as life continues moving. I am stunned when they come around and I use them as an excuse to cope with food. If someone asked me to write a book on coping with food, it would be a best seller.
I've been trying to figure out what will keep me on track. What workout have I stayed committed to longer than 4 months? What type of accountability do I need? What food regime works best for me? I know a few things and I'm going to stick with those for now. I love hitting things, I love kicking things. I love boxing. I trained to be a competitive kick boxer for over a year and a half and in the end my work schedule and the commute to my boxing gym refused to work with each other, so I left it behind to succeed at work and take things to the next level. I'm at a place now where I can take some steps back from the intense work regime I have kept over the last 6 years, so I want to box again. I found a gym that is close to me and their schedule works with mine. And to top it all off, I got a Groupon that will get me my first 10 sessions for cheap! I need accountability, so I have schemed up with one of my favorite people for some email accountability in the form of honest question asking. We come up with the questions and it's the other persons job to ask us those questions on a weekly basis. This way I am honest with myself and with another person about where I'm at and what I'm doing to keep myself in line. Knowing that the other person is there to support me no matter what. My food intake is something I need to get ahold of. I know that strict deprivation is not a good idea for me. I know that strictly abstaining from certain food groups only makes me want them more and as a result I cheat. I don't want to cheat myself. I want to succeed.
All of these things I've said before, I want change, I want a better life for myself. I said it when I started this blog and I'm sure that this won't be the last time I say that. I need to be ok with saying NO, saying YES has always come so easy to me. I'm always willing to put in extra time and go the extra mile, that's what's gotten me this far in life. If I put as much YES into myself as I do other things and other people, I'd be a frickin super model by now. Cindy Crawford here I come!
I promise not to be a stranger, this is therapeutic for me and I need to remember that.
