Out of Control
I realize that when I am nastiest to myself is when I am out of control. I say I’ll eat properly but almost immediately I’m eating something I wouldn’t have eaten if I hadn’t made that decision…almost spiting myself. It drives me crazy. Something about witnesses. I am my own witness and am not good enough to prove anything. Or maybe it was the proving. I drove myself crazy with psychologizing as to why I can’t take control and do something about it. It…It being my hideous body…the thing that I hated, like it was the enemy and look how it kept spiting me…getting fatter and fatter until I couldn’t do things like tie my shoelaces with comfort, lift my leg to my other knee, walk up the stairs without puffing. I was so ashamed…
When eating is out of control, it becomes a vicious cycle of trying to take control and losing control. It is a recipe for disaster. This is where my thoughts of dieting have finally come to. To diet is to say, I’m going to take control of myself and only eat what this diet says I can eat. In fact this is not you taking control, it is someone else taking control. This author is telling you what you can or can’t eat. It is a bit like having a friend giving you a prescription for the symptoms that you describe. “Take this, it worked for me.”
It is known that most diets don’t work in the long run. What’s worse is that not only the weight you lost initially comes back but usually more. I have tried almost every diet invented from two hours to two months. I look back and remember always blaming myself. For most of the diets I was on, I felt awful – hungry, nauseous, faint. All I ever thought about was food and when the next time would be that I could put something in my mouth according to the “plan”. Some diets make you think about food so much in planning and buying special ingredients that end up in your fridge for months after the diet has ended, or obsessively counting calories, points or carbohydrates. Surely eating is not supposed to be this complicated.
Nothing is more boring than being with a dieter on a new diet and I include myself in this one. I remember being predictably enthused and self righteous for every new diet that I was on. I would watch disdainfully as people would eat all the wrong carbohydrates or mix certain foods together that would surely add cellulite. I so wanted to believe that what had worked for thousands, according to the book, would also finally work for me. Who were these people that it had worked for? If diets fail at the rate they claim, then these books are lying.
The thing that really suckered me in were the before and after pictures. I would imagine myself in that bikini in no time. Of course when I had given up on the diet, I knew it had to be my lack of determination and weak willed character. What I really couldn’t understand was that nowhere else in my life was I like this except exercise.
Of course the clue lay in the fact that it was all about the body and my desire to have the “after” body. Like diets, I would set a date to start exercising. I had such plans to go to the gym at least three times a week or go out walking for at least a half hour every day. In my head I could see myself do this and couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work. The difference between the exercise and the dieting was that I always felt great after I exercised. Can’t say I felt great while I was exercising, but there was no doubt, my body loved the “effects” of moving but unlike many people, I wasn’t thrilled with the actual moving part.
I always could find excuses from the mundane to the highly creative. I would listen to my brain work away at why I couldn’t go out just now, but for sure later, and then tomorrow and then adding the days of the week to fit in the three days of gym into Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It became amusing to see how I would believe myself at the same time know bloody well that I wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t want to do it. On the surface, of course I knew it was good for me, and that I would feel so great after, but damned if I would go. What was going on? Again, I felt out of control, like some evil tyrant was controlling my brain forcing me to overeat and exist slug-like.
So here I was, a fairly intelligent middle-aged woman who’s body was totally out of control. I lived in guilt at my failure to take control and do something about not only gaining weight, but also becoming unhealthy and weakened. I hated my body for betraying me and growing ugly and fat. It seemed unfair that I would have the genes that gained weight so easily while others could eat twice as much and stay thin.
The inner dialogue of blame took up a great deal of my time. There was rarely an hour that went by that I wasn’t aware of my body’s faults. Just getting out of a chair was starting to be work. I was quietly eliminating things from my life that made me feel foolish and fat. Out of sight out of mind. There was an acceptance that went beyond being too old for some activity. I would watch people older than me do it so there was no excuse but there was an odd resigning to this fate of a fat person.
I never spoke of this to anyone. I was much too ashamed. I knew they were thinking it anyway. Man was I screwed up.
I realize that when I am nastiest to myself is when I am out of control. I say I’ll eat properly but almost immediately I’m eating something I wouldn’t have eaten if I hadn’t made that decision…almost spiting myself. It drives me crazy. Something about witnesses. I am my own witness and am not good enough to prove anything. Or maybe it was the proving. I drove myself crazy with psychologizing as to why I can’t take control and do something about it. It…It being my hideous body…the thing that I hated, like it was the enemy and look how it kept spiting me…getting fatter and fatter until I couldn’t do things like tie my shoelaces with comfort, lift my leg to my other knee, walk up the stairs without puffing. I was so ashamed…
When eating is out of control, it becomes a vicious cycle of trying to take control and losing control. It is a recipe for disaster. This is where my thoughts of dieting have finally come to. To diet is to say, I’m going to take control of myself and only eat what this diet says I can eat. In fact this is not you taking control, it is someone else taking control. This author is telling you what you can or can’t eat. It is a bit like having a friend giving you a prescription for the symptoms that you describe. “Take this, it worked for me.”
It is known that most diets don’t work in the long run. What’s worse is that not only the weight you lost initially comes back but usually more. I have tried almost every diet invented from two hours to two months. I look back and remember always blaming myself. For most of the diets I was on, I felt awful – hungry, nauseous, faint. All I ever thought about was food and when the next time would be that I could put something in my mouth according to the “plan”. Some diets make you think about food so much in planning and buying special ingredients that end up in your fridge for months after the diet has ended, or obsessively counting calories, points or carbohydrates. Surely eating is not supposed to be this complicated.
Nothing is more boring than being with a dieter on a new diet and I include myself in this one. I remember being predictably enthused and self righteous for every new diet that I was on. I would watch disdainfully as people would eat all the wrong carbohydrates or mix certain foods together that would surely add cellulite. I so wanted to believe that what had worked for thousands, according to the book, would also finally work for me. Who were these people that it had worked for? If diets fail at the rate they claim, then these books are lying.
The thing that really suckered me in were the before and after pictures. I would imagine myself in that bikini in no time. Of course when I had given up on the diet, I knew it had to be my lack of determination and weak willed character. What I really couldn’t understand was that nowhere else in my life was I like this except exercise.
Of course the clue lay in the fact that it was all about the body and my desire to have the “after” body. Like diets, I would set a date to start exercising. I had such plans to go to the gym at least three times a week or go out walking for at least a half hour every day. In my head I could see myself do this and couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work. The difference between the exercise and the dieting was that I always felt great after I exercised. Can’t say I felt great while I was exercising, but there was no doubt, my body loved the “effects” of moving but unlike many people, I wasn’t thrilled with the actual moving part.
I always could find excuses from the mundane to the highly creative. I would listen to my brain work away at why I couldn’t go out just now, but for sure later, and then tomorrow and then adding the days of the week to fit in the three days of gym into Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It became amusing to see how I would believe myself at the same time know bloody well that I wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t want to do it. On the surface, of course I knew it was good for me, and that I would feel so great after, but damned if I would go. What was going on? Again, I felt out of control, like some evil tyrant was controlling my brain forcing me to overeat and exist slug-like.
So here I was, a fairly intelligent middle-aged woman who’s body was totally out of control. I lived in guilt at my failure to take control and do something about not only gaining weight, but also becoming unhealthy and weakened. I hated my body for betraying me and growing ugly and fat. It seemed unfair that I would have the genes that gained weight so easily while others could eat twice as much and stay thin.
The inner dialogue of blame took up a great deal of my time. There was rarely an hour that went by that I wasn’t aware of my body’s faults. Just getting out of a chair was starting to be work. I was quietly eliminating things from my life that made me feel foolish and fat. Out of sight out of mind. There was an acceptance that went beyond being too old for some activity. I would watch people older than me do it so there was no excuse but there was an odd resigning to this fate of a fat person.
I never spoke of this to anyone. I was much too ashamed. I knew they were thinking it anyway. Man was I screwed up.