Is this it?
This is it!
Well, I approach Week 12 with something bordering on elation – I did a little review of how the weight went on due to the binges and unconscious eating and it all seems to be a pattern. I put the size 8 jeans on again today...weird.
I seem to have been entirely reeducated in terms of my attitude to food. After week 7 – in fact once pulses were introduced, my binges have been completely in check – I get them, but once a week and they are more restrained. From the sugar cravings of Weeks 1-4, to the rediscovery of cooked vegetables (although I have loved all fruit and veg since I was little, last year I couldn’t face anything other than fatty, stodgy, carby processed food – the healthiest thing I would eat was pak choi or the odd lunch from Leon) and a new found passion for lentils and beans (I could never be bothered with all the faffing, now I crave cannelini beans in tomatoey home made sauces. I have the patience to make fresh soup when I get home! Now that that style of eating has become the norm. I wouldn’t choose a white ham salad baguette and soup as my lunch now and some stodgy readymade meal or takeout in the evenings (it was always my default in the old days). The best thing about RtM is that as long as you keep going, you reach a world where food is there again and it does eventually stop being quite such a battle of will as it can be in the first month after abstinence.
I started RtM planning a wonderful golden path where I did everything perfectly. Well that would have been great, but I wouldn’t have learned anything about why I fail, why I binge, what the symptoms are, and how quickly I can get to obese again if I really set my mind to it (about a month of all out bingeing would do it, I reckon).
Y’know what? The lesson I had to learn about food was that it’s okay not to be perfect. We all hear about the 80/20 rule, but for those of us who have lived the 20/80 way or even the 100/100 way (ie a day’s balanced diet, plus a day’s worth of calories of junk!) it makes a lot of sense, but doesn’t work practically.
It’s also taught me a lot about what ‘weight’ actually is. Being slim is nothing to do with numbers, it’s about how you feel. And unless you’re feeling it, in your step and in your bones, it doesn’t matter what the dress label or the digital display says.
There’s an HG Wells story called the truth about Pyecroft in which Pyecroft wishes to lose weight. His wish is granted, but he remains enormous, but light as a feather – so much so that he floats and has to weigh his pockets down with coins in order to carry on with his daily business! The person who cast the spell or gave him the potion, I forget which’ says ‘You English never call it what it is, it was mass you wanted to lose’ or words to that effect. We refer to it as the weight we carry, but isn’t it also about the mass we appear as – the space we take up.
So now I have about the right mass I need for my bones…it’s a heavier weight than I would have chosen, but within 7lbs of my bottom line, and I think that as I stop stressing about food and my body realises that I will NEVER starve it again, my body will let go of the emergency fat it made me put on (I’m not denying all responsibility, but I do think it’s a serious biological urge!) On the other hand, my mass feels about right for now, for someone who is now full of glycogen and – sorry to be so explicit, poo and half digested food again.
I do have a couple of food things to sort out, like – will I really be able to keep hard cheese in the house – I’ve only eaten cheese away from home in RtM! Will I ever be able to have just a bar of chocolate? My guess is yes, but I my battle is partly that my body doesn’t need it and my body knows it doesn’t need it and my brain gets annoyed with my body not needing it because it knows that for all it’s rubbishness as an object of nutrition, it does calm my nerves. I was using chocolate to self-medicate all through RtM. If things seemed too much, chocolate, if I needed to walk away from work, chocolate. Problem was, I was using chocolate the way I used to use cigarettes.
Stephen Fry wrote a wonderful blessay (his word, not mine) on addiction this week in his blog, and he quoted Wilde’s description of why smoking is the perfect addiction. So clever, isn’t it? For me, chocolate creates the need for more chocolate. Whilst I can’t get a hit as pure as those first few bites on my first Dairy Milk when I was almost giddy with glee, I must remain aware that my brain will remember that glee for a very long time.
And life? Well, one starts to realise the impact an addictive personality has on so many aspects of one’s life. I think I became addicted to being incompetent (not that I actually was, but I did set myself up for failure in so many ways) The simple truth is – I did it. I really and truly did it. And I find, underneath the fat girl there really is a thin girl and they are both exactly the same girl, but the thin girl doesn’t know about the fat girl – but the fat girl – she knows about the thin girl alright.
I’m officially 10 days from the end of RtM, but I know I’m there now – I’ve come out the other side and I can take or leave food, can make balanced choices, am not dependent on bread (although RtM doesn’t get you to sit in the house with a fresh baked loaf and a tub of Philadelphia so I’ve still got a few lessons to learn!). In essence my life is the same as it was when I weighed 6 stone heavier this time last year, but it is completely changed – because by letting go of the addictions and sitting with them for a while, I realise that nothing gets you by in this life better than just getting to know yourself. Properly. Take the food away and your habits and ‘needs’ become very transparent.
A person in my group said that what she got out of LL having done and dusted the whole process was self respect.
What I think my LL journey has been about is that same self respect, but I think all my struggles and moaning and petty rebellions have been about getting things into perspective. There’s no magic wand, no fairy godmother to make it alright, you have to get on with life and keep on getting on with it and just as some days are brilliant and some days are rubbish, most of them are okay – and some days you will be bloated and heavy, somedays you will feel light and most days you won’t need to think about it.
Don’t think of the weight you once carried as a curse or a punishment that you’ll get beaten with if you misbehave, or that being slim is the reward for all your hard work – neither is true, both are possible and you can choose which one!
