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April 12, 2005

Hey Adriane!

My weight, even when I was thin, has been a constant battle. As far back as I can remember I had a strange relationship with food, a whacky self image, and suffered from anxiety and mild depression. By mild depression I mean “never too bad and never too great.” It’s a daily effort to keep myself in a good place and I’m so easily effected by circumstances and people surrounding me.

I am so familiar with your feelings of no energy. Some days I don’t have the energy to get out of bed, not to mention workout or do anything else for myself. This happens mostly on weekends, during the week I’m like an automaton and it can be more mindless, but the weekends is when I should be doing stuff for myself and sometimes I just can’t. It’s like I’m avoiding the responsibility I have to myself to be good to me. I have about a million theories as to why I am like this but at this point it doesn’t matter, it takes all my energy to try and change the way I am now.

I always have thoughts of what I’d be like right now if I were thin. Sometimes it feels as out of reach as my fantasies of winning the lottery or being the lead singer of a really cool punk band. I don’t think that dreaming about size 4’s is so bad, really, because it’s good to envision yourself at your goal (as long as it’s mostly plausible).

I also, in fact, was waiting for that kick in the ass before I started this website. Not only was I waiting for the kick to lose weight, I was waiting for the kick just to start this site. I kept thinking that I wasn’t ready. Another weekend would go by and I ate like crap and I thought “OK, can’t do it yet. Who’s going to care about my site if I can’t show any progress?” To this day, I can’t tell you what made me just set it up. It doesn’t even look the way I wanted it (I wanted to do more graphics for it, etc.) but I just did it, the bare minimum. Maybe I was hoping it would motivate me.

Even when I had the site up and running I wasn’t exactly ready to lose the weight and it was kind of hard dealing with people who have had success and feel positive about how they’re doing. I kept thinking, $h!t, the light switch just isn’t going on for me, how am I going to keep this up. Even now, I don’t feel like the light has gone on. It’s more like I’m going by the light in the hall way that’s creeping in here. I’ve been surprised by how I’ve embraced peoples comments and now they are my favorite thing about this website. People’s progresses are like a soap opera I love tuning into and their insights and experiences get me thinking. I file away advice as a frame of reference and don’t make any promises to myself to follow any of it (takes the pressure off.) I’ve actually learned a lot from every body here and sometimes I do follow the advice. I’ve read every comment to my husband, they all just make me feel better.

Before I go off on another tangent… the first week or so, when I was going back for that extra serving or looking for a snack, I would occasionally think “hmm, if I just don’t eat this one, that’s one less than I would normally eat so it has to have an impact.” In my earlier posts I described myself as whittling away at the amount I ate. I’m still taking things in moderation as far as the diet is concerned and it’s slowly taking effect. I didn’t feel great the first week, but the slow progress is making me feel better and better. I pretty much take the same approach to exercise.

Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t feel great every day. Writing my posts makes me feel better, so literally the moments I’m writing I feel more positive and it comes across that way. I still have more not great moments than I do great moments. So don’t think you’re alone and that we’re all having a grand ‘ole, easy time. We’re all in the same boat, up $h!t’s creek, either, without a paddle or a defective one.
:-)

Thanks for sharing your feelings with us, I hope you continue to.

Posted by hopeful @ April 12, 2005 5:19 PM