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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Cos you've gotta have faith...

Hello, blogosphere. That title isn't just a lyric from a favourite 1980s song of mine - it's how I'm treating my behavioural change program. I said this was going to be an honest blog so I'll reiterate that when it comes to the belief that one day I will be a normal, healthy weight, well, I'd say I really don't believe it in my heart of hearts. I will have to cultivate a more positive attitude to this, I can see, but right now everything is too raw and new and I'm flying blind to an extent, but admittedly I do have some good people flying along with me and that means a lot.

So what I'm doing right now is just putting my trust in the process. While my belief in my ultimate success is not strong, to put it mildly, what I DO have is a pretty strong belief that if I keep doing what I'm doing, really important changes are going to happen. Right now things are hard and uncomfortable. Eating at a table, not in front of the TV, not while I'm reading a paper or some catalogues or mucking around on my smartphone - that feels so weird and unnatural. Deliberately leaving some food on my plate when I'm finished eating, as it's been recommended I do - THAT'S hard to do as well. While I'm eating, trying to tune in to my body's signals to see when it tells me I have had enough food - well, I feel like my body and I are communicating with two old tins strung together with fishing line, so unclear are those signals. But yet I HAVE felt that little moment when it seemed very clear to me that I'd filled my stomach and it was just as I've been told - after I'd had a pretty damn small amount of food. A stomach is the size of a fist and even though I have quite a large fist, that's still not much food. When you know this and you realise how often you shovel fistful after fistful of food into it in one go, everything suddenly makes so much more sense. No wonder things have got to this state.

And this may not make any sense to anyone who's currently following any kind of conventional diet or exercise program, but I feel better about doing this than I have felt about any diet I've ever been on, and it has nothing to do with the fact that nobody has put any restrictions on my diet. Well, they didn't need to because following these rules, you naturally eat less. I know I'm not going to see fast results. I could do a 12-week challenge and probably lose 15kg or more, no worries. Hell, I've done it before. But I know deep, deep in my heart that there is no way I'm ever going to commit permanently to a program of food restriction/heavy exercise for the rest of my life. I wish I could but realistically, it's just not going to happen. And my GP and I would far rather I lose 10kg in a year and never again regain it than lose 40kg in a year and end up 50kg heavier in the next year. The madness just has to stop and I'm stopping it. So I'm not doing this because I hate myself - I'm doing it because I don't. And that makes it so different to every other time.

Enough of this philosophy. Peace out, for now. :)

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