The Road between Here and There

I had significant weight loss in 2014 - 80 or so pounds.  And I felt worse.  So gradually, I gained it all back.  Now, I am trying to regain a healthy body weight in a way that doesn't make me feel more unsafe, more vulnerable, more uncertain, more afraid.

The reading today in Voices of Recovery is, as usual, helpful.  It reads:

My old way of thinking was that I was either an utter failure as a human being, or I was a saint.  I saw myself as an utter failure:  my attempts at controlling my weight and my eating only strengthened my view of myself.  I dreamt of a glorious change in me:  a totally compassionate, intelligent, and, of course, thin person.  The trouble was that there was no road between me, the miserable failure, and me, the thin saint.  So I retreated to eating and daydreaming.  I used to envision a sudden flip into a different me -- as if by magic I would be transformed.  But OA has taught me that recovery requires patient and persistent commitment to a glorious, but hard, journey.  OA has taught me how to acknowledge my shortcomings and how, by working the Steps to change, I can drop the self-hate and humbly rely on my Higher Power.  I am journeying to recovery with OA's 12 Steps.

I remember seeing an internist who specialized in obesity.  I expressed my fears of being thin, feeling more vulnerable, being unwilling to risk it.  And she said, "you know, if you lose the weight and you don't like it, you can just gain it all back.  I'll even deliver you a dozen chocolate chip cookies every day to help."  I left her care because I couldn't do lose the weight then.  When I had some willingness to try, I did lose the weight and I didn't like it and I did gain it all back.  I bought my own cookies. 

So the quest now is how to be at peace in my own mind and work towards a healthier body weight at the same time.  I am not sure I know how to find peace around the change.  I know I can lose the weight if I work really hard.  But the mental, the emotional element is still something I don't understand.  I am praying and working to understand it.  It has something to do with feeling broken or damaged.  And so I am working towards feeling whole.  Then, I pray, I can be whole and a more healthy size.  For the truth is, I am not whole at a large size.

Blessed be.