Well....hi Mel. Hi everyone. Long time is right!
I really don't know what to say anymore when I come back to MMs. Things have not been good. Food related that is. I have really made a mess of things. I don;t really know where to start, but I wll tell you a few things for certain that I have learned (again in some cases) in my absence:
1. I HATE that so many of my life's waking hours are spent focused on food and fat and body image, etc. In whatever capacity - I am just sick to death of it. I am sure I have YEARS in total spent on this tiresome subject.
2. No matter what anyone says or thinks - RTM is the most vital, most integral part of having any kind of success in maintaining your weight loss. My metabolism has been crushed by doing VLCDs, so much so that I now think that they may be the only way I can lose weight again and I do not think this is a very good thing, at all. But more about that later, and I will be making a post on the main forum about RTM and Metabolism too.
3. Use it or lose it - is a true statement. I have lost the plot I have lost ALL coping mechanisms, and feel I have reverted, possible to the very beginning again, back to all my bad habits and behaviours. All I learned in CBT and put in to practice for the first couple of years, all of which showed me success and for the first time in my life, and happiness in my heart and soul, self acceptance and pride, etc., all of that will and strength and understanding i amassed and used, the managment skills -they are all gone. All of it. And the emotional responses to food, those knee jerk reactions I fought so hard to get rid of, and thought I had - are back.
4. The hardest thing I learned is that while success has been proven, and tasted, and LOVED, - hanging on to it is such a difficult and delicate balancing act - and held together only by the sheerest and most fragile vulnerable threads....which can break in and instant and become irrepairable, leaving the only option: go back to square one. The place you swore you would never go again.
That is where I am now. I am not a happy bunny. Just as I was reaching the goal I had set for myself - I threw it all away because of an argument. It was a case of "biting my nose to spite my face" which is what I did to my ex husband.....and I did it this time because something my husband said on our holiday felt far too much like something my ex husband had said - and in an instant, the damage was done.
I have a lot to work out. While I have not regained all of the 10 stone I lost, I may as well have, for the way I feel.
Ugh - I really don;t think I can even say anymore right now. (See reason 1.
)
But I will be creeping back here, slowly but surely, bracing myself for what lies ahead. Another round and I pray the last one - I have got to get this sorted out or I am genuinely in danger of becoming one of those people who cannot walk because of their weight. My arthritis is worsening, my foot surgery a total failure, my knees are approaching the end of thie life and need replacing and my arthritis is in my hips now. I can barely get up my stairs. Its pretty bad. It is only because of the 25 years spent morbidly obese - the damage I did to them all those years is so evident because the slightest gain causes pain. Well, I am pretty much in agony at the moment.
I will come back later - this is enough for now. But I want to talk about the effect this has had on my metabolism, and how that has resulted in weight gain in what seems an impossibly short period of time - its bloody frightening.
I hope you are well Mel, and I miss chatting with everyone. I don;t know how interactive I will be just now - I really am truly sick of dealing with weight issues. I need to , but I am well sick of it.
xxxxx