Welcome to Becoming Me, a monthly blog series where I set out to answer questions developed by Christie Inge, HHC in an effort to dig a little deeper and get to the heart of some of my esteem, body, and food issues.
Last month, I tackled the issue of hunger and fullness: whether I eat when I’m hungry and if I stop eating when I’m full.
This month’s question:
Who would you be if you weren’t the girl always struggling with food, her body and her weight?
I started crying just reading this question.
In short: I don’t know.
I think I’ve worked so long at the Weight Loss Game, now that I’m not really in it anymore, I’m not sure who I am or what I should be doing.
It seems like I’m always WORKING at something. For a long time, it was losing weight. Then once the weight was gone, it was trying to be more active (no, the two did not go hand in hand for me). Now that I’m more active, it’s trying to become more consistent with my activity.
I feel like the struggle is who I am. If everything was going well, what would I talk about? What would I ask for help with?
There are days when I feel like without a struggle, I’m lost. And it’s not just in terms of weight loss or anything. I often feel like I’m that way with my kids and with my husband. I can’t remember the last time when I truly felt happy for an entire day.
And it’s all of my own making. When I notice it in other people, I’m quick to tell my husband that a certain person isn’t happy unless they are mad or have a problem or drama or whatever.
But that’s me. I feel like I’m angry or struggling or upset or WHATEVER about so many things. And most of the things are inconsequential, really. They’re pet peeves that I let turn into huge ordeals.
There are days when I feel like I’ve taken the stress of losing weight (which I no longer have) and transferred it to everything else in my life. I always seem to make things infinitely harder than they have to be.
I seem to be stuck in this place where if I’m not struggling with my weight, I’m struggling with my food. If I think I have the food thing figured out (for now), I seem to have a problem with my working out. On the days when I have the activity under control, I let crappy eating creep back in a little bit.
And on the days when all three are in perfect alignment, I get pissed at my kids. If everything else is going great, imagine how downright euphoric it would be if they would do their chores the first third eighth time I’ve asked.
I’ve often wondered if the root(s) of my issue(s) were in my need for control. It seems counterintuitive, but on the days when I’m having a rough time with the kids…the days when I need a run for my mental health more than anything…those are the days when I think “You know what? I’m in a bad mood and I don’t wanna do anything and you can’t make me.”
Insert foot stomp here.
As much as I hate chaos, I seem to seek it out. If there’s not a problem, I create one.
Struggling has become habit. A very bad habit, yes, but a habit nonetheless.
It’s easier to hold on to the struggle than to admit that what I’m struggling with probably doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of life. I have a hard time looking at the big picture because I get so caught up in controlling the details.
The struggle, the fight, the drama is easier than the time it takes in the long run to fix the problem.
Because, ultimately, the problem is my thinking.
Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy. ~Robert Anthony
Christie Inge, HHC is an intuitive eating and body image coach and is the creator of The Body Love Alchemy Community. After years on the diet and binge roller coaster, she realized that the answers she was looking for had nothing to do with the size of her blue jeans or the food on her plate. She set out onto a quest to make peace with food, her body and her weight once and for all. She began sharing her experiences on her popular, heartfelt blog. Overtime, she found that her greatest gift was helping women, just like her, overcome their struggles, too.
She has taken what she learned in the school of hard knocks and coupled that with what she has learned in her professional trainings to create a system that has helped thousands of women to make peace with food and to stop hating their bodies. She offers support, insight, and real world tools for creating a body and life you love. You can stay in touch with by subscribing to her inspirational weekly eLetter or join the conversation facebook and twitter.
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