Recently, the tabloid magazines have caught my eye. “How I Got My Body Back” one taunted with an imagine of one of the stars perfect bodies splashed all over the cover.
For years now, I’ve consistently carried a good 15kg of excess weight. Interestingly, a friend recently commented that you’d never know. “You carry it well” she said. Of course, I know this only too well. One of the more annoying reasons I haven’t been inspired to lose it yet. But of course, its not the only reason. Yes, its spread evenly over the entire body, a little bit here and a little bit there. I’m aware of how much healthier I’d probably look if I lost it.
However, I have enough self-belief to know I can live with it right now. But it niggles at me. It nudges me to have a look at it a bit closer. Delve in that much deeper.
I wondered, if I lost the excess weight, I’d probably be pretty good at maintaining that healthy weight range. Or would I?
I came to realise that it’s a journey. Weight loss is not about simply overeating and putting on excess kilograms. We are not just ‘the right diet’ away from the body of our dreams. This is a journey into ourselves. An exploration of why we have adopted the habits of a lifetime. Why we are drawn to one particular indulgence or many.
As a child, I remember my mum taking me to the local shops. She loved spreading her shopping around, the butcher, the grocer, the deli, the corner shop. This would of course take time and I was always rewarded with a bag of potato chips. To this day, potato chips are the one thing I crave like a drug. When I hear about a potential idea to help me break this cycle, I get nervous. What if I never want to eat them again?
When I am brave enough, I dig deeper. What is this association with chips and my mother? Its possible I am tapping into a comfort there and when I’m feeling unsafe I immediately am driven to consume? Once consumed, I have proven myself safe. However, why am I feeling unsafe now and how can I change this?
I realise that this is where I need to explore. Its not going to be the incredible diet pill that removes excess kilos or the new diet that everyone’s having success with that achieves that goal for me. Its going to be a proper exploration of my needs at any given moment. We’re all so busy in life that we have little time to think about what we need.
We are only driven to what we want. Often it has little to do with meeting our personal needs and much more to do with our wants. With the help of journaling and digging underneath our emotions, we can uncover some insights into our habitual patterns that create unhealthy patterns and undo them.