In my opinion, bad hair days don't hold a candle to feeling-fat days. You open your eyes in the morning and feel sick to your stomach. Then you remember last night's dinner: fried onion rings, pizza with pepperoni and four kinds of cheese, and bread pudding with orange sauce for dessert. (Was there anything green on your plate? You can't recall.)
You sit up and gaze at your middle. A groundswell of flesh is drifting toward the fluffy area that used to be your stomach. You haul your legs out of bed, and as you waddle to the bathroom, your thighs rub together. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Bad mistake! Your eyes are swollen, your wrinkles have procreated during the night, and your skin is lackluster from a lifetime of not drinking 8 glasses of water a day. Only 5 minutes have passed since you woke up, and you are already wondering if it's time to go back to bed.
Sound like you, too? When I read the above excerpt by Geneen Roth, I thought she snuck into my bathroom and caught me grumbling to myself over a fat-and-ugly attack. She says, "On bad-hair days you can wear a hat, but because body bags are not an option, on feeling-fat days you have to find an alternative way to put yourself together." Okay! I'm up for that so I read on. "Wear red and wear a belt, preferably at the same time." Huh? I mean, given the gravity of expanding flesh and thighs that seem to have taken on a life of their own, the LAST thing I want to wear is a belt.
On feeling-fat days (which are quite often) I want to hide. I want to cancel all my appointments (for you it may be calling in sick to work) and stay home. If I do venture outside, I will probably be wearing a muumuu-like article of clothing (or at least an oversized sweatshirt and elastic pants) that I think hides last night's eating escapades. But Geneen says that the best thing to wear on days like this is a belt!! She says a "belt reminds you that you have a body and that it actually has a shape." Ummmm.....yeah. I can SEE the shape it is!
Moving on to Geneen's advice to wearing red: Geneen says, "Red is a happy color. Red also evokes bravery and the ability to separate from what's keeping you stuck, which is important to do on a feeling-fat day. The truth is, feeling fat has less to do with last night's bread pudding than it does with your old beliefs about the connection between fat and self-worth, and between the size of your body and what you feel you are allowed to do or say or be." Hmmmm.....has she been reading my diary??
Red symbolizes bravery, strength and power and I know these are qualities I DO have. Time to get them out and put them on (does a red sweatshirt count?) and begin the journey of losing the four-month-pregnant-looking bulge in the middle of my body! As a dear lady said long ago, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." - my journey will unfold moment by moment, one step at a time beginning 01-01-10. I hope you will join me on my health goal journey - people who have some sort of partner lost twice as many pounds as those who tried it alone! Please share with me your weight loss stories, feelings, tips, advice, recipes, and most of all your encouragement!
Goals
Short-term:
Lose 5 pounds in January with diet and exercise
Make a dream board with inspirational thoughts/pictures
Long-term:
Lose 25 pounds
Lower bad cholesterol
Raise good cholesterol
From Tammy C.
ReplyDelete"My biggest hurdle is knowing that I will only stick with it for so long and then revert, so why try. But, those feeling fat days are disgusting and happening more and more (so I pull on the shapeless dress (jeans remind me more of my fat than dresses) and go about my day. But I still don't like the feeling. I've started cutting back on food and begged for a cheap exercise program to see if I could be motivated and disciplined enough to use it faithfully and then I could ask for a more expensive one. I knew I needed to get more exercise. So now, I just need accountability. I'm with you, Darlene, and I think I like your goals, 5 lbs in Jan and long term 25 pounds (although you don't look like you need to loose 25. You look like you've lost a lot in the last year but I keep forgetting to tell you how good you look and how I have wished I could do the same.) But, for now, I will go find a baggy red dress to don but I'm not ready to wear the belt).
I'm with you, Tammy. It's better to work at achieving goals if we have a buddy system set up. In an editorial I read, "...most of us never buddyup when it comes to the practical, essential health goals we try to reach. Big mistake. In a study of people who really succeed at losing weight, it showed that people who had some sort of partner lost twice as many pounds as those who tried to go it alone." It makes perfect sense, when you think about it. We all get by - and do better - with a little help from our friends. Let's DO this! I got your back!! Just don't break it. :-[
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