• I have scars
• After I eat, if I lay on my side I can feel a pulling sensation
• I get mild back pain from the weight of the implant in the front of my body
• If I try to eat or drink too much in one go I get a short sharp pain at the implant site
• I need to burp more after eating
• I eat less than half what I ate before
• In days where I feel like I have overeaten, I have in fact eaten around the same, or less, than I would have eaten previously on a day where I had watched what I had eaten
• I don’t crave sweet foods much
• If I want to get drunk, I have to drink short drinks or I will run out of room and get sleepy
Stupid shit I have done trying to lose weight:
• Not eating
• Eating only rice
• Eating only instant pudding
• Eating only meat
• Liquid diets
• Praying
• Trying to throw up
• Taking dexamphetamine
• Taking ephedrine
• Double dosing duromine
• Double dosing reductil
• Viewing thinspo
• Masturbating (I was working on a theory that orgasm increases metabolism)
• Isolating myself from friends to avoid eating out and drinking alcohol
I do meditation in West End. I went recently to a two part meditation course for beginners. The instructor talks about happiness. He told a story about a football game. The game was down to the final minutes, tied, when a player gets the ball and runs toward the goal posts. As the last seconds are ticking over he is nearing the end of the field, he looks over his shoulder and there is no one behind him. He makes the goal, looks up at the scoreboard and a point is awarded to the opposing team. He has run toward the wrong goalposts.
Are you running toward the right goalposts? People have funny ideas about how to find their happiness, he says. A lot of the time these ideas orbit the filling of the body. Food and sex.
Am I happy? Yes. But I feel like I’m waiting for something. To fit my old jeans. For S to come back.
Finish uni, get a job – these were my goalposts. It never occurred to me that I would have to find some new ones.
A told me that she is waiting for something extraordinary to happen. I think we’re not quite sure what to do next.
I am happy. My happiness is warm, soft, ordinary, content.
Some days I can’t be bothered and it feels like the things I used to enjoy are not as enjoyable. This is anhedonia. It doesn’t happen often enough for me to worry about it too much. I tell myself it’s because I have been doing fuck all exercise. There’s a part of me that is tempted to think that I enjoyed life more when I was thinner though.
On the other hand I have a lingering sense that I am holding myself back because losing weight feels like a betrayal of Fat B. Mostly of little Fat B.
Losing weight doesn’t mean I will forget her. Losing weight doesn’t mean I’ll turn into some born again judgmental weight loss cunt. Losing weight doesn’t mean I have caved in to every asshole who made me feel bad about my body and it doesn’t mean that I will be more vulnerable to them and it doesn’t mean that it will be harder for me to recognise them.
Lillian Behrendt says, ‘our bodies deserve happiness, and sexual fulfillment, whether it’s with a partner, multiple partners, or alone, is part of that. Loving and taking care of our bodies is more than getting enough nutrients, resting when we’re tired, drinking water and engaging in some form of movement. Loving and taking care of our bodies is also allowing ourselves the pleasure we don’t think we deserve.’I walked to work today and then home after. I’m going to keep doing it. Maybe after a week or two I’ll actually feel like going to the gym. I deserve to enjoy exercise.
I deserve happiness. I deserve to be healthy. I deserve to love my body.
I wonder lately about the detriment we may do to ourselves thinking about goals and achievements. I know I spent a lot of my late 20s very concerned that I had not achieved what was the norm for people my age or what I had hoped to myself by then. Now, not so much. I was quite afraid I would have regrets of what I hadn’t done – death-bed-oh-my-God-it’s-too-late-I-cocked-up kind of regrets. Now, I think as long as I’m relatively happy on a day-to-day basis, the longer term goals will fall into place. I think we have a way of making happen what we want to happen – all in good time. And what I didn’t do, well, maybe I didn’t actually want it that much. I spent many years waiting for that extraordinary thing to happen, too. Now, I’m okay with savouring the ordinary moments. Goals are important, self-motivation is important, but I have learnt to not be so hard on myself for items that I will never tick off my to-do list.
ReplyDeleteP.S I love the shit out of this blog xo.