Weekly weigh-in -- plus: what's eating me

First, the numbers:

• Today's weight: 216.5 lb
• Change since last week: -1.5 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 117.5 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.89 lb

Okay, that's a relief. Especially since my bod has been acting strangely ever since my week of blogging for eGullet. I don't know whether it was the physical stress of all that extra running around (because I was really maxxing out on the girl reporter/roving photojournalist aspect of blogging); the richer-than-usual eating I was doing that week (still within food plan, but still at the rich end of my food plan); or the unanticipated psychological stress of putting myself and my weight loss so boldly on display for all to see ... but boy, did I have some sort of mental/physical rebound from that week. My bad left knee was freaking out even before the week began; sometime by the end of the week, I'd managed to twang something in my right hip as well (probably due to favoring the left knee); and afterwards, I felt just generally physically run down and psychologically over-exposed, and wanted nothing so much as to crawl into a cave and hide for a few days. Which is kind of what I wound up doing.

I'm only just crawling out of that hole since this past Friday, but boy was it a bumpy climb. In fact, I had a major fear-and-loathing relapse attack just last night--or rather, sometime around 3am this morning. Isn't it just like such fear-and-loathing moments, that they wait to strike when you're trying to get some sleep? Anyway, somehow my brain got rolling on the bloated feeling in my bod and my suspicion that my weight was not only plateauing some more but creeping back up, and I suddenly found myself in this deep well of angst over having boasted so publically about my supposed mastery of this whole weight loss thang, and what a faker poseur I really was, and on and on and on in a similar vein ...

Meanwhile, some remaining shred of sanity in my brain kept trying to remind me that there were some 116 pounds worth of countervailing proof that I had too learned a little something about this weight loss thing, and hadn't I promised myself to treat myself more kindly than all that self-flagellation I was currently engaged in?

Finally I just made myself turn over and go back to sleep. And in the morning, not only did things look a hell of a lot more wholesome, but I came to discover that I had in fact squeezed out a pound-and-a-half loss for this week.

So--yeah, fear-and-loathing moments happen. But I get over them. And after all, they are just another part of this whole process of healthy weight management. People like me who were fat (or told we were fat) from early in childhood tend to have a lifetime's worth of psychological baggage from fatphobic trips laid on them by family, friends, lovers, ex-lovers, doctors, playground bullies, total strangers on the street ... and as the weight comes off, this kind of crap tends to also re-surface, requiring purging.

Which brings me to another catch-phrase I've stumbled upon that I've been finding really useful--yeah, it sounds new-agey and self-help-booky as fuck, but hey, I don't mind being corny if the corn is actually helpful, and this corn is. And the phrase goes: Sometimes it's not a matter of what I'm eating, but rather what's eating me.

Whenever I find myself feeling blue or weird or disgruntled or off in any other way regarding any aspect of my weight loss process, I have taken to asking myself "okay, so what's eating you today, Ellen?" And then I just sit quietly, and let all the negative thoughts surface into the light of day, so I can fully expose and address those thoughts rather than letting them stay inside and fester.

To use an admittedly graphic simile, it's kind of like lancing a boil to let all the toxic infected matter drain away, so that the wound can be properly cleaned out and long-term healing can begin. Sometimes I've even found it helpful to do a visualization of these psychological wounds draining of all that bad old nasty stuff, getting washed by lots of cool pure soothing crystaline water, and then healing under lots of sunshine and fresh air. Yeah, it's a little on the gross side, but it does capture pretty strongly the nastiness of the bad stuff, and the goodness of getting that stuff out of my life.

Doing shame around my weight and efforts to change it is a really really old bad wound in my psyche, so I'm pretty sure this is far from my last encounter with it. But every time I confront it and face it down, I feel a little better for it--and a little further along in my psychological healing. So--back into the sunshine this morning, I'm happy to report that nothing is currently eating me. Hurrah--and onward!

Comments

[Miss Kelly]

Miz Ducky, A wise Aunt once told me "You eat your anger". That really struck a chord with me in reading your post where you were asking yourself "What is eating you?" I think you are also on the right track in how we use food to mask our emotions. Onward and upward-great loss this week. Congrats!

[mizducky]

Thanks again, Miss Kelly! (Gotta remember that "eating your anger" bit--that's pretty danged powerful.)