There has become Normalcy in Craziness (trying to grasp the Big Motivation).
 

There's no way around it, my situation of FAT has become a literal prison. I feel compromised in almost every aspect of my life, yet, I overeat. I have been a race-fit cyclist (merely 13 years ago), I have felt what it feels like to be like a panther waiting to pounce in it's freedom , that glorious feeling of grace that comes with streghth, litheness, .... care to one's body. What happened? I just took a tumble somewhere and let... myself... go. I mean GO ! I don't want to litter this post with a bunch of ordinary emotional baggage, as the reasons I suspect, but I do want to invite those of you like me, to join this thread and have a big pow wow. Why do we do this? Why do we purposefully choose the prison , the straightjacket, the pain and immobility, , the social judgement, which results in a soul deep acceptance of failure....but what's worse, much worse... why do we accept meandering down the path toward disease and injury related to obesity ??? :?: :dizzy: :devil: :( :mad: :?:

Matters not if we choose to be 30, 50, 100, or more pounds overweight, it is all just different prison sentences. I know many of you here are past the point, and into change for the better, but so have I been on this forum, about 4 times in 2 years. I come back again, ready to bargain with myself, I'll give up my insanity for some results for a change? I have talked about this StatusQuo of Obesity with friends and on various forums, many times. I cant count how many times a helpful person suggested I journal my food intake. It goes way deeper, much, much deeper than pencil and pen and just being clueless about the calories I consume. In fact, I am not clueless at all. I willfully choose to 'enjoy' a couple extra thousand calories in a day, of mostly healthful snacks, perhaps to sooth my angst, to find pleasure in the food, but always there's a lurking sabotage at the point I take my empty plate back to the sink. What kind of pleasure was that? That is what is the craziest thing, the wreckless abandonment of any amount of discipline.

Every night I am up to pee (perimenopausal sweats and sleeplessness) and when semi-conscious I feel the dread as frightfully as a demon come to visit me in the night , feeling like a beached whale as I try to get out of bed. As I waddle to the toilet , I feel the obesity like a festering diseased reality I've created, and every night I vow to not go another day. I could easily guess this promising and breaking of my promise has been going on for years. Hundreds of promises broken, every day, only enforces the sabotage.

I know exactly what to do, what to eat, and I exercize a lot, yet, when under some veil of fuzzy perception, I lose my way. Prefering the comfort of the known, the imposing, painful, constraining walls of the FAT prison, over the utter joy of freedom, is very crazy. But, there has become normalcy in craziness.

I choose to be free ! I need to surround myself with watchful friends, so that I can get past day one, into day two tomorrow. Might I find that help here? :hug:

Holy crap. I could have written this. Word for word.

I really don't have any answers, but you sure have my support.

Perhaps because we're both named ' Jen ' :D

thanks for joining the pow wow....:hug:

Not Jen, but when I started reading I was like...who's been in my head. I think I could've written this too.

Why do I do it, I don't know, yet i still reach for that bag of chips and cookies. I seriously think I am addicted to food. I don't smoke or drink but if this is the way it feels then no wonder people have a hard time giving up smoking & drinking.

Doi, I hit post before I was finished!

I am in. I need all the watchful friends i can get. This time I am 100% commited, no half hearted bull stuff I've done before. it's all or nothing baby. It's either commit or lay down and give up like the beached whale that I am. I don't give up easily on anything else so why do I give up so easily on this. Not this time!!!

Hi Hermit Girl, I remember reading some of your past posts, and always wondered where you went. I'm glad your back. I really wish your magic switch would turn on, because when I read your posts, I become a little anxious. I guess it stirs up a little of my past struggles in reading them. I wish there really was a way to make the *switch* turn on at any given time, but I'm afraid that just wanting to want it doesn't make it happen. You have to want IT...not just the desire to want it. Talking about it, rehashing it, making charts and graphs, joining clubs, groups and even web sites has never made the switch go on for me...But once it's on, all the rest seems to fall into place. I don't know if you are a spiritual person or not, but I remember a few of those beached whale trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night. When I couldn't go back to sleep...I prayed. I owe this time around to the Big Guy.

I hope this is your time.

Maybe ask yourself if you are benefiting in some way from the angst of the situation? Maybe you are more comfortable mulling over it than in stopping all the reflecting on it & actually doing something.

This big task is going to require a different kind of engagement. You stop thinking & you just start doing. There's a kind of animal joy in sheer physicality, which is very different from losing yourself in mazes of inward contemplation.

HG: You are an excellent writer. :-)

I have a set of friends at the gym -- I'm doing a "Biggest Loser" competition for 10 weeks -- that really keep me accountable. There are a variety of groups like that on 3FC, too, I think.

I post in this group when I need motivation, mostly when I'm up at about 9/10pm thinking about snacking.

Good luck. It sounds like you have all the tools.

Hi Hermit Girl. I completely understand what you are talking about. Your name here kind of suggests that maybe you are doing this to yourself in part to have a reason to remove yourself from life in the "real" world, so you can say "I'm fat, so I'll stay away from engaging with other people". You have a protective covering, so to speak. Me, too. And I've had two health crises: high blood pressure a few years ago (which caused me to lose 10 lbs. and then I just relaxed again and let the meds do the job instead of going through the discomfort of weight loss) and cancer (I'd lost 22 lbs. before my diagnosis and about 15 lbs. since my radical hysterectomy, but I'm stabilized at 166 lbs. and I'm terrified of becoming comfortable with this situation, too). I've once again rebooted my diet efforts today. I get so hungry and it is absolute suffering to me to not be able to dive into something comforting. Anyway, I'm starting again today, too, and I feel your pain. You can do it this time.

Lori Bell and Saef both said what I was thinking already. I mulled over the whole problem in my head for years then finally one day I got fed up and quit thinking about it and just put my nose to the grindstone and did it. It was a definite switch in my head that went off. I wish we could bottle it and share it. I do believe in faking it until you make it though. I think there was a little of that at the very start too. I think I had to prove to myself that it would work. Once I saw that my plan would work there was no stopping me.

I'm in a similar boat to saef, Lori Bell and h8cake.

For me, successful, steady and permenant weight loss could not occur until my desire to be thin outweighed the desire for the food. But prior to that, I realized that I just didn't want to be fat anymore. Not for another second. I was sick and tired of settling for second best in life. I was sick and tired of not living up to my full potential. I was sick and tired of feeling like that beached whale you speak of. Gosh, was I sick of it. Sick. Sick. Sick. I hated it. And I realized that I didn't have to be fat if I didn't want to be. That is WAS within my power. It was something that I did control.

Being overweight is a choice that we make. Being fit and healthy is a choice too.

That says it all!!!!

Yes, you've got it!

HermitGirl, you expressed it so beautifully. And Lori's counterpoint is, as always, the tough love spoken as only one who's made it happen can speak.

I have to agree - there IS a switch somewhere that needs to flip before things can permanently turn around. I suspect that we all want to be thin because that's the "societal norm", but especially for us ex-jocks (I was a swimmer in days gone by), there's a primal thing that reminds us that our bodies were DESIGNED and EVOLVED to move, to be graceful, to be strong, and that being overweight and out of shape actually requires a lot of work!

Food, for me, fills a gap in my happiness - when I have the moments of joy, fulfillment, and engagement with my life, food loses its power. I can binge with the best of them, but if I am writing down a great story idea, deeply involved in a manufacturing mystery at work, or in the groove in the pool, hours fly by with nary a thought of potato chips or the half gallon of ice cream. I read a wonderful book titled "The Money's Just the Gravy". Won't tell you why I picked it up, but suffice to say, the word Gravy attracted me. Turns out it was actually about people who have found their passions and are spending their lives DOING what they love. That's the origin of my ID - "ICUWishing" - because my "switch" is the quest for that passion. I recognized that for me, the weight is a result of unhappiness - and when I address that "root cause", I won't need the distraction of food any longer.

Maybe ... it's easier to think of food as fuel when you have a kind of life that screams to be fueled like a bonfire, instead of one that needs protection and a soft place to land?

Out of the craziness, we rise like Phoenix. :) We're here for you.

Why did I let myself gain weight and stay at nearly 200 lbs for over 5 years? I didnt even really TRY to lose weight during those five years.

There were a couple of reasons. First, I had dieted and failed in the past. I had lost weight, then regained it. Regaining weight took an emotional toll, I went from feeling like a motivated success (when I was losing weight) to an out of control loser (when I regained).

I didn't think I could ever live without my favorite foods. A life without weekly pizzas, big cranberry walnut muffins every morning, venti lattes, chips, loaded nachos? For me, dieting meant hungry deprivation and I dreaded it.

Resolving both issues was the key for me. I realized I had issues with carby foods (crackers, chips, cold cererals, baked goods make me want to eat more and more and leave me restless and bingy all day). I realized that there were a lot of healthy foods I liked. My crystal clear "a ha" moment was realizing I could change how I ate forever (resolving the lose/regain issue) by changing my diet to focus on healthy foods I liked and looked forward to eating (resolving the "I hate diet food" issue). I am actually living that life without scones, chips and it feels pretty okay in my size 6 pants.

I remind myself that eating whatever I wanted did not make me happy. I tried that and ended up a lethargic, depressed woman who avoided all pictures and who didn't want to visit friends/family. Now, I eat about 95% on plan (with some planned treats) and I am slim and healthy.

We all have to fight our battles, because they are all unique! There is no one right answer, definitely.