I'm losing weight with a friend, which is wonderful and yet complicated. I have much more weight to lose than she does, and though them are the facts, it carries an emotional charge for me. So yesterday she lost 5 pounds and I had lost 2 pounds. I didn't feel successful. Yes, I told myself you lose more at the beginning and I had been watching my weight for a month. Didn't help. I did not feel happy and proud. I felt discouraged. Now, all this grief is coming from my own brain: competitiveness, jealousy, suspicion that she was eating less than she stated. And this is my dear friend.
I took a time out from thinking any more about this while we were together, and then faced my own charged feelings after I'd returned home. My own worst enemy is my own thoughts, and my sense of unworthiness has nothing to do with my relationship with my friend and everything to do with old patterns. Of course, all the destructive messages are going to surface when I must discipline my eating behavior and treat myself kindly. The old judgments from my parents, which I internalized nicely, rear up their ugly heads and shout at me. "You will fail", "You always lose the weight but you'll never keep it off", "You don't deserve to be healthy".
This morning I stepped on the scale and I'd lost another pound. Luckily, my self judgments don't make me gain weight. I'm scribbling away in my eating journal and eating healthily and wrestling my mind to the ground. It's exhausting, but at least it's exercise!
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