Confession:
this is not the first time in the last 2 years that I’ve gotten serious
about getting healthier.
My first trip down “fix this” lane began the day
after Christmas 2015, and I was pretty laser-focused until April-ish, when
business travel followed by trip to the Caribbean followed by trip to South
America followed by busiest and most stressed period of my year, every year,
derailed me.
I regained all but about 7 pounds of my 20+ pound
weight loss, then jumped back on the wagon at the beginning of 2017. I was
pretty good through March. Then I was home 6 days in March, went overseas in
April, had a blah blah blah you know how these things go.
The significant thing, at least to my fearful
reptile brain, is that all 3 times in the past 2 years that I’ve reached the
nadir of my weight, it’s been the same weight. In other words, the scale
gets to a certain number—one that’s still about 30 pounds more than my “ideal”
weight, btw—and stuff happens and I backslide and I never get below that
weight.
That weight is coming again, and it’s due the
same week that my 30 day no carbs/no alcohol challenge expires.
You do know what’s going on in my head, right?
“I’m
going to get down to xxx pounds, and I’m going to let my control slip, and I’m
going to start on that downward spiral where I let ‘one taste’ and ‘just this
time’ become a daily thing, and I’m never going to get below that weight, and I’m
going to feel like an idiot. Again.”
That number on the scale has taken on the heft of
a superstition in my head.
That weight feels like the farthest some psychic
rubber band will stretch; like if I push it to that point, there’s no forcing
it further, and if I get distracted for even a second, it will launch me
violently and irresistibly back in the direction from which I came.
That weight has me all psyched out.
The smartboy was quick to point out that this is
all just a mental construct. He says that the magic weight has no real meaning,
that there is absolutely no power in it, but I fret about it anyway.
I wonder whether
it triggers some sort of “weight set point” at which my body thinks it needs to
be. I try to remember exactly what got me off track the other 2 times, and I
can’t really grasp it.
It seems less like I fell off the wagon than like
I passed out and slid bonelessly off and onto the road, where I was run over by
the wheels of a hundred plates of pasta and the treads of a dozen bottles of
really good bourbon.
The difference between the last time and the time
before and now isn’t my level of motivation. I think I was just as determined 6
months ago and 18 months ago as I am today. What I didn’t have then that I do
now is this accountability, and I hope it gets me through.
Because the irrational, illogical part of me that’s
got control of this set of thoughts right now is telling me that there IS
something to this number on the scale; that I might spend the next 76 days
doing all the right things and never break through it, or not break through it permanently.
That something is bound to happen (illness? Injury? Something so bad that my #1
goal gets put aside out of necessity?). Yeah, it’s that crazy.
I guess I see now how fear of failure paralyzes
people. I’m amazed at how powerful and frightening it is, and in regards to this
relatively minor thing: I mean, really, if I stayed the weight I am right now
for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be the worst
thing I can think of, either.
I’ll keep telling myself that the magic number
isn’t magic at all, that it’s not an immovable enemy to be overcome, that I’m
going to just power through it and out the other side and barely notice it was
there. I have to admit though, right now it’s looming like an evil ogre in the
road, and it’s got me spooked.
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