It's Alright, It's OK, Nothing's Wrong

I have tended to gravitate towards a very defeatist attitude in regards to diet/weight loss in the past few years. I think I can attribute it to my hypothyroidism to some extent, because there were a few years there were I wasn't changing anything in my diet/exercise habits but started gaining a lot of weight inexplicably. That got me pretty down, because whats the point if nothing you do seems to change anything? You can work your ass off trying to cut back and lose, and one day with one slip up completely destroys any work done, when there wasn't much accomplished to begin with. I struggle with that a lot. I'm on synthetic thyroid medicine now, but even that contributed to this defeatist feeling. Everyone, I mean everyone, was telling me as soon as I went on the medicine I would lose weight, my metabolism would speed up and things would feel normal again. This didn't happen. At all. Almost no notable change. It's hard for me to work up the proper motivation when NOTHING I do seems to make the tiniest bit of difference. If I'm actively watching my diet/exercise and trying to lose, I maintain, but if I loosen up at all I gain. It's very hard for me to get past the disappointment of this.

That being said, I have a fairly normal relationship with food. I love food. I love good food. I don't tend to binge, I generally don't overeat, and I don't have too much emotional baggage that comes with the food I eat. I do have guilt when I slip up and eat something that's not on the "good" food list, or eat to the point of being stuffed, and there certainly is shame attached. I hate people watching me eat something that is "bad", like ordering a huge plate of pasta at a restaurant. I feel like people see that and think "well, that's why she's overweight, she brings it on herself ordering pasta." I could order something better, but it's hard to when I know (or at least think I know... experience has shown me) that NOTHING is gonna change for me, pasta or no pasta. You gotta go for the good stuff, in that scenario, right?

When these thoughts are doing their job of shaming me to the point that I feel weak and gutless, fat and lazy, I do have a couple things that help me. Mostly I just think about the food itself, in positive terms. Food is such an important part of our lives. It connects us to the past, it's so full of history and culture. So many of our good experiences and shared experiences come from food. People come together when they eat, people enjoy themselves with food in a way that you can't get with anything else. I love being able to share a great meal that tastes amazing with the people around me, and I would hate to think that I was missing out so totally on something so enjoyable and integral to our relationships and our society. I think about Molto Mario. He is fat as can be, poses for comical pictures with sausages around his neck, and he LOVES FOOD. The look on his face when he's cooking something is a look I want to have. I love his passion for it, I love that simple joy that comes from preparing something that people enjoy. I think about all the good memories that are associated with food. A good meal you can remember for ages, and certain foods can be a link throughout your life (a certain spaghetti sauce comes to mind). There are family recipes that really are a little bit of immortality, as they get passed through the generations.

When I start on this train of thought, food seems like such a positive and happy thing that the shame and guilt get kinda pushed aside. It also prevents me from overeating, interestingly, and I attribute that to the feeling that I will always have more good food to eat in my life, I don't need to get it all right now. It makes me feel full sooner, makes me OK with ordering veggies instead of fries, makes me feel like I should choose the real food over the fast food, and MOST IMPORTANTLY makes slip ups and overeating and bad decisions seem so much smaller in the scope of things. It helps me regard it with a touch of humor, instead of the crushing self-criticism.

Now, THAT being said, it doesn't erase the feelings. I still get tons of guilt. But it helps lighten the load for me, emotionally, and helps me avoid the "well, it's already blown so I might as well just run with it and kill that gallon of ice cream." Or, if not, at least makes me feel better about the gallon of ice cream. Who doesn't love ice cream?