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I don’t typically do resolutions but I have one this year, and it’s the opposite of what it’s supposed to be: I am going to try to accept my weight is not fully under my control (do not give me advice, I beg of you) and here is why:
Since I was about 13 and told relentlessly that I was fat, I’ve believed (in my case and mine ONLY) that weight loss is about willpower to sustain a careful diet and daily exercise. But 25 years of actual experience in my body have given me NO data to support this.
The only time I’ve ever lost weight, despite a 25 year diet, is under extreme stress. When I got surprised-divorced I lost 30 lbs in two months (while continuing to eat the same diet, and definitely not exercise.) I was running 25 miles a week before that and losing NO weight.
Conversely, my weight gains over the years have had little to do with diet or exercise. When I had my follow-up surgery after my heart, I gained 6 lbs while in the hospital for 12 hours. Fluids, right? Except it didn’t come off. I just stayed there.
Through all of this I have beaten myself up continuously for the gains that seemed to happen despite my very intense efforts, and the losses that happened by magic. I couldn’t win. Somehow I was causing it all, in my brain.
But it’s not my brain. It’s my body. And a decade of chronic illnesses and surprise heart defects has taught me - you actually don’t, to a large degree, control your body. It can decide to develop cancer or fake a pregnancy without your input.
So I’m trying to let go of the idea that whatever my weight is is a result of laziness and failure. It’s just...the weight it is. My thin friends are beautiful. My fat friends are beautiful. Why am I the only one I’m condemning to a life of blame and misery about my weight?
I’m trying to focus on eating what feels nourishing and exercising when i feel I can (which, thanks to a dozen or so injuries, also varies widely and is frustrating.) It will be a day by day thing. But I’d really like to stop hating myself for a thing that I can’t control.
And all of this applies to me only and my own brain and my own body, but if you are dealing with a similar fight in your own circumstances, I’m around.
Oh just to head off the usuals: it is not my thyroid. It is not my cortisol. It is not because I need to go keto. It is not because I am secretly eating too many calories. It is not because my mother’s father was bald. It is very very very not calories in calories out.
