The weekly weigh in

I'm proud that I'm losing weight. I really am. I'm actually enjoying the Weight Watchers program. It's easy to follow, well organized, logical, medically and nutritionally sound and allows for human nature. I'm not going hungry, I don't feel deprived, and I would recommend it for any adult dieter. However, I still hate dieting.

I hate the mental transformation I undergo when I'm dieting. Food becomes too important. Numbers become too important. I become both pleasantly and painfully obsessed. This week I couldn't stop thinking about I needed to tighten the straps on my bra and how the legs in my favorite pair of khaki slacks were getting noticeably big. I loved it. I also couldn't stop thinking about my double chin. At my thinnest and my heaviest weights, I've always had a double chin. Unless I opt for some plastic surgery, which is highly unlikely, I probably always will. Since I lose weight in my face first, I've noticed it getting smaller. That's good, but I've become consciously aware of it. I'll be going about my business, and suddenly that extra bit of flesh will get stuck in my mind, and my entire being seems focused between my neck and my face. There's a lot more to me than my chin, but those times it doesn't feel that way.

I can't stop thinking about food. It's one thing to plan your meals. I've been doing that for years, and I still don't find it an easy task. It's tedious and time consuming. However, planning out my meals ahead of time means that there's always something for breakfast in the fridge that I can just grab and eat in the car on the way to work, I have the ingredients I need for the dishes I want to prepare, and I stay within a budget. Those are some real benefits. Now though, every bit of food in the kitchen seems more important.

My first couple of weeks on the diet, all I changed was my portion control. I ate what I wanted within the recommended amounts. I did my tracking, writing down what and when I ate and making sure that I stayed within the daily recommendations. I learned what was dominating and lacking from my menu. The tracking let me see what changes I needed to make. They weren't hard. Honestly, fitting in enough healthy oil is my biggest challenge. Now though, I'm thinking about what I might miss if I don't plan for it. Just feeling like I can't be spontaneous about something as simple as a burger for lunch or a piece of chocolate on a bad afternoon makes me feel trapped. When I feel trapped, I get rebellious. On a diet, this has usually meant a binge, after which I feel like I've failed yet again, like I always have before, and thus always will, so why should I bother any way? This trap is more clever and cunning than it appears. Instead of lingering too long on a decision that should just take a moment, I open the door to the defeatist attitude which is one of the most dangerous aspects of depression.

Numbers are the big obsession. This week, I gained a little less than a pound. I expected this. A person can't lose as much weight as I did last week without the body making some accomodations. Add the hormonal cycle into the mix, and I knew that I would basically just hold my own even though I was still within the diet guidelines. Despite anticipating this and making mental preparations, it still got to me. Now, I think I've done great on this diet. My weight loss over six weeks is right over 21 pounds, which falls into the rapid loss range. I'm not shooting for rapid weight loss, although it's very common for truly large women to do this in the initial part of a diet. I want to make this work and get my weight and food intake to healthy levels that I can manage for the rest of my life. Part of me still wanted to hit a 25 pound loss though when I went to weigh. I wanted a milestone, and I'm dissapointed that I didn't get it, even though I know better. I'm a woman who's used to duality in my nature, but this is driving me nuts.

What I hate the most is feeling like my priorities are out of whack. I don't want my food, my body, my clothing and the bathroom scale to be the most important things in my life. I want to enjoy food. I want to enjoy and feel comfortable in my body. I want to care for and respect myself, but I don't want to be some superficial twit who can only think about her size and what she puts into her stomach, and that's what I feel like when I'm dieting.

So here is my challenge, to live healthily and eat consciously without letting it dominate my life. It took a long time for obesity to be recognized as an illness and not a character flaw. There are many people who still don't get that. Many people still don't recognize it as an eating disorder, but my experience tells me better than that. My mentality is warped around the same items that my daughter used to nearly eliminate herself from this planet. The curve of the warp is a bit different, but it's still the same flaw. My guilt is tremendous when I look at the pain she's experienced. I know how badly I taught her. She's doing so well, but I know that it's still a struggle, and this is one of the reasons why it's so important that I get this right.

It's difficult to explain how food is actually less important to me when I'm eating in the way that makes me fat than it is when I'm consciously trying to lose weight. However, the behaviors I use when dieting (thinking constantly about food and size) are those that are considered to lead to obesity. Irony doesn't fit well on a scientist's scale, and that may be why eating disorders are so damn hard to treat.

diets
Weight Watchers
eating disorders