I’m sitting here thinking about what you said, Alberta – that I have a “straight on approach to all this”. If I do, it’s only because I spent the first 46 years of my life
failing at weight loss. I’ve got hundreds of diets and countless years of failure under my belt. Now that I found what works for ME, I don't give a damn about what anyone else thinks of it. I’m finally succeeding at weight loss and maintenance and that is
ALL that matters to me. All those years of failure have given me a very profound appreciation of success.
Do I feel obsessive? No, I feel driven to keep the weight off, but not in any kind of dysfunctional way. I simply put a very high priority on maintaining my loss and am willing to do “whatever it takes” to keep it off.
I think that having my children watch their obese, unhappy mom lose the weight has been an extremely positive thing for them. We’ve had a lot of conversations about it and I’ve never gotten the sense that it’s had a harmful impact on them. They understand why I'm always going to need to be thoughtful about food and exercise.
What I want to say to anyone who gives me a hard time about what I do is: look, people, I’m doing it.
I’m doing what everyone told me is impossible. I’m living my dream and I’m loving every minute of it. This is the hardest and at the same time, the best thing I’ve done for myself in my life. How on earth can anyone say I’m doing it wrong???
To everyone who thinks that:
I eat too much (my popcorn bowls full of salad)
I eat too often (5 - 6 times a day)
I exercise too much (1 – 2 hours/day)
my muscle aren’t feminine
weighing and measuring my food is obsessive
writing down everything I eat is an eating disorder
etc
I DON’T CARE!!!
My fingers are in my ears and I’m singing “La La La”. I can’t hear you and I DON’T CARE!!!
I’ve had to deal with my extended family on vacations and heard all the snide remarks, too. I’m guessing that it wasn’t worth those five pounds to keep up appearances with your family, Alberta?
That’s a pretty high price to pay and I bet you didn’t enjoy having to lose those five pounds again. It doesn’t do any good in MY family to try to explain myself so I’m quiet and just do exactly what I know works for me. I don’t try to justify myself or convince anyone that I’m right. I just do it.
Perhaps an “expert” would say that I -- and others here -- have traded one eating disorder for another or that I’m obsessive. I disagree and prefer to think of it as “ordered eating”. It’s controlled and orderly – I’m in charge of my eating; food isn’t controlling me. It’s certainly not intuitive eating because it takes thought and time and planning, but I don’t think it’s disordered in the least. If we’re healthy and fit and not obsessive in a way that interferes with life, like Funniegrrl talked about – so what?
When you stop and think about it, there’s a tremendous amount of irony in people (often overweight themselves) feeling that they have the right to criticize what we’ve doing. We’re beating the odds and changing those dreadful statistics about weight loss and regain.
We are doing it, people!
Once in a while, we all need to stand back for a minute and appreciate how far we’ve come and what we’re doing each day of our lives. IMHO, that's all that really matters in the end. I hope that we can all find the confidence and the strength to continue to make the right decisions – for ourselves.