I came to some important realisations recently. The first of which is that there is no point imagining how bad the problem is. Go and find out. You can fret about the unknown until the cows come home, but you'll never really know whether it is worth the effort or not.
I felt I was grotesquely overweight. That I had put back on all the weight I had lost and looked like a heffalump. This despite the urgings of my beloved, my family and my friends that I was smoking crack and had no idea what I was talking about.
But in my head, the problem was so much worse. I had no control. I had undone all that work. I had bitterly disappointed myself. I was a pig with no self-discipline who had wasted all that money and time and effort.
I was unworthy.
Was I INSANE?
The problem was insurmountable in my head. I didn't want to get on the scales to find out how much damage I had done. But I realised that until I did get on them, I could never face the problem. So I went to a meeting and got on the scales, my heart heavy in my chest.
And discovered that I had put on .2 of a pound.
3.5 ounces.
I'd put on bugger all.
It was all in my head.
I WAS insane.
Looking back on the stupidity that was the last few weeks, I learned another lesson. One of the reasons that I was so disappointed in myself was that I felt I had failed to break my habit of eating emotionally.
I really must stop beating myself up for this. It took me 25 years to cultivate that habit. I'm not going to break it so quickly. It's going to be an ongoing process that I will have to deal with all my life. The fact that I put on .2 of a pound tells me that I'm getting better at it.
The lesson I learned from this?
If hunger is not the problem, then food is not the answer.
Seems simple, put like that, doesn't it?
But in reality, it is the hardest thing I have had to learn.
Just to put my previous post in perspective, there is a good deal more weighing on my mind (pun intended) than what sort of gastronomical damage I've done. Ghost and I still have a rocky financial road ahead of us, we are still waiting on the government to tell us if he can stay and if he can work and my job is still ghastly. But now I know that things are much worse in my head than in reality.
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