Hi Anne and all! Something Anne just said really struck a chord with me:
I think the problem is I was "on track" and squeaky clean for such a long time & now that I'm struggling I feel like a failure - back to all or nothing thinking.
I often have to fight that 'feel like a failure' thinking too. It's the darndest thing - something relatively minor, like a small food lapse or the scale going up one pound or one of those
look in the mirror and think FAT days - can make me feel as if I was right back where I started. All those same horrible feelings of sadness and worthlessness and hopelessness come rushing back. It doesn't make any sense at all but I think I know exactly how you feel!
For me, I have to do some Serious Talking to myself to get my perspective back. You know, reminding myself where I was and where I am today. That one slip isn't going to automatically put me back where I started and that it would take a whole series of lapses to become a relapse. To the rest of the world, I don't think I look like a failure so why should I beat myself up and inflict all those awful feelings on myself?
Scratch the surface on just about any of us and I'll bet you'll find a perfectionist. We want to be perfect dieters and perfect maintainers. Sometimes we want to fit into the smallest sizes out there just because they're the smallest (that's me; isn't that the stupidest thing ever?
- although I think I just want to get as far away from fat as possible, if that's any justification). So on the one hand, we want to be perfect and always in perfect control. And then on the other hand, we have the reality of LIFE, which isn't perfect at all most of the time. Big collision, eh?
Anne, don't beat yourself up for not functioning like a 'normal person'. In fact, don't beat yourself up for anything, please! The roller coaster of emotions that you talk about is something that I'm guessing all of us here at Maintainers experience. Our reality is going to be a little different than 'normal' people's ... how we eat, feel, think, and live is always going to be special, as they say
. Within each of us is the heart of an overweight woman who struggled and struggled with her weight and finally won.
My opinion is that our inner overweight woman never goes away - she's part of who we are today and affects how we think and react.
I don't know if any of this makes ANY sense at all (not enough sleep lately) but what I'm trying to say is that there's nothing at all wrong with how you're feeling. Like Mel said, we've all been there. In MY world, that emotional roller coaster is totally normal. Of course, the question is who wants to live in MY world ...