jsfantome's Notizen, 23 Apr 12

This journal entry has been a LONG time coming. Something I have been thinking about a LOT over the last six months or longer, but didn’t want to ‘discourage’ anyone…so I kept it to myself. Well, now seems the right time ‘for me’…to begin to deal with my ‘stuff’.

The desire to get to my goals – well, it drove the engine – it was the fuel that propelled me – daily. And I did it! I reached my goals on Oct 30, 2010. By one year later, I was up by roughly 10 lbs. What a disappointing and exhausting year… of trying to counteract whatever the heck was going on. I couldn’t stop the runaway train no matter what I tried.

I would go up, down, and around in circles…but in the end it eventually kept going in the wrong direction.

I honestly feel the ‘desire’ to reach my goals… had escaped like helium does from a filled balloon. By the time I got to the Fall of last year I was depleated, frustrated, and felt largely defeated. I recognized it, but didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do about it.

I was self-sabotaging – falling back into ‘old habits’ – well, not the same ‘old habits’ but similar ones.

I was overeating…not yummy carb filled comfort foods like before, but still, I was overeating the foods that I had adapted to eating on a daily basis.

I was getting tired of exercising. Tired of the daily ‘grind’ of heading to the gym…and feeling each time I stepped on the scale (and it went up, or stayed the same) that the ‘payoff’ just wasn’t worth it.

I have spent the better part of the last four years of my life – focused on learning. Learning how to lose. How to maintain. How to get back into shape. Etc. I have had my ups and downs, my successes and failures – and FINALLY – have reached the point in my life, where I just want this madness to stop. For my own mental health, for my own emotional health – I realized while doing my Tues night classes, that I have put off, set aside, and back-burnered some of my ‘other’ life goals… to work on this one.

I am content to accept myself as I am. Willing to define my own success as ‘short of’ my stated goals here on this site. If I never reach 135, or 140 and level off there… oh, well.

I am happy where I am. Happy w/ my family and my life. But I was lingering in the land of ‘unhappy’ – because it felt so ‘defeating’ to not have reached my goals and stayed there.

I have started Groups, Challenges, Friendships, Journals, Forum Posts and all that stuff… and absolutely none of it has impacted me more – than just having this one place everyday to come to. Whether it was to reach out to a new person, or to try to lift up and old friend – it gave me the opportunity to place VALUE on myself, my efforts, and the efforts of those here as well.

I sometimes think about taking a break, or leaving the site all together – because I don’t feel like with everything else in my life, I can keep up very well. I have missed soooo many journals, and people’s lives just keep on going…whether I can pause my life long enough to show them I care. I do care. I just wish I could be here a little more often, than I have lately.

But this is my accountability moment of my day. The time when I take a few minutes to touch base w/ myself and be sure I am not spiraling out of control. I don’t always step on the scale everyday. I am far more a ‘people-person’…than a scale person. So it’s easier for me to interact here, to deal w/ my issues w/ friends… There’s nobody in my bathroom giving me a pep talk w/ that scale goes back up in the wrong direction.

I just want to say that the 5-10lbs I struggle with are every bit as frustrating and hard, as the 95 lbs you struggle with! (or whatever amount.) That’s why I have made the personal journey to stop struggling. To let it go. To accept that I am WAAAAYYYY better off where I am, then where I came from. I may never know why…what once worked, doesn’t seem to work anymore. I may never know why some people can…but my body doesn’t seem to be the same. I may never know why it all started to go in the other direction… but I do know… I could make myself insane if I continue to focus on it.

So, I am just going to take a deep breath, and linger here… I’m going to learn, just like I did in the beginning, how to LOVE MYSELF – somehow, I instinctly know … this is key.