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The Reduction Diaries
The diaries of a woman shedding 57% of her body weight by December 24, 2006. She'll also be shedding clutter, bad habits, toxic people, and probably a few tears along the way.Age: 30 Height: 5'9 Starting Weight: 381 LBS Goal Weight: 165 LBS Total Planned Loss: 216 LBS
360 LBS
Exercise Goal: To be walking 65 Minutes a day by December 1, 2005 Current Exercise: Trying To Walk 15 Minutes A Day E-mail: thereductiondiaries at gmail dot com |
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Friday, May 20, 2005
Who Me? I Don't Feel Anything Something my Self says to me on a regular basis: "What's that? Did you sniffle? Don't you dare cry. Have some chocolate. Pizza. Eat a whole box of Viva Puffs. Just don't cry." Fool that I am, I've been listening to her for over five years. Don't get me wrong... it's not like I was fine my whole life and then my Self just decided I was no longer allowed to cry. The admonitions to swallow my feelings have been there for more than ten years, but common sense always won out. I knew it was better to face things and deal with how I felt when I felt it, but... Self wore me down. It also didn't help that about six years ago my life crumbled into something I no longer recognized, nor something in which I wished to be a continuing participant. Nothing particularly disastrous happened. No one died. I didn't get pregnant (although that was kind of catastrophic in its own way). I just left home to get married and my parents and brother left the country. See? Nothing serious. People do that kind of stuff all the time. And people deal. But it was serious. It was so damn serious. All of a sudden, I was walking wounded. There was a ragged, gaping hole in my left side trailing blood and I was trying to pretend nothing was wrong. And we all know what happens when one ignores a ragged gaping hole trailing blood. It gets infected. I got infected. My husband, who is a wonderful husband now but who was, at the time this was going on, a sadistic bastard who loved nothing more than f-cking with my mind and who had no clue what I'd given up to be with him, did not help. I had moved out of my home city to be with him and felt completely cut off from my own "family culture". The support, the inside jokes, the easy rapport... it was all gone and he was my sole companion. His constant needling and mind games, coupled with the enormous hole in my heart, led to a complete mental breakdown in early 2001. Things just got worse after that - whenever I had a problem, he insisted it was because I was on medication... when I quit the meds, he insisted I was being irrational because I was off my medication. The emotional stress was unbelievable. I had already started to eat to numb myself to what was going on around me, but it got worse and worse until just last year when I just knew I was killing myself and had to stop. I have done some calculations based on the things I used to eat daily, and have learned I was eating close to 5,000 calories a day. Five. Thousand. Who me? I didn't hear anything. Did you? No? Have some chocolate. You know what would be awesome right now, after such a heavy pizza dinner? Cheesecake. Ah, you know you want to. Just keep chewing. And swallowing. Swallow. It was bad. But you know what's worse? The pain. I have had a week where the hunger comes in with such breathtaking force that it feels like a punch. Having nothing in the house (in pursuit of my "no-fail environment"), I have thrown things in sheer frustration at not being able to find even one candy bar, one can of Coke, something, anything... well, anything but tuna or salad. See, that's not hunger. That's emptiness. That's loneliness. That's emotional pain. I'm infertile. My family is so far away. My husband and I have had a fight. I'm scared of the way my future is so blank. My awful Self comes back and tries to tell me: You're hungry. It's been the hardest damn thing in the world to take my Self by the hand, look her in the eye, and say, "No, dear. You hurt." Then feel the crumpling deep inside, the wrenching and tearing. And cry. But I have to hang on to the hope that in time, healing will come. |