The F Word

Last week I got back in the saddle, and I emailed my nutritionist at school to let her know that I would like to schedule an appointment.

At the end of Spring semester of 2012, I decided to take advantage of the student health center on campus and see the nutritionist on campus. There were only about three weeks left in the semester, but I figured better late than never. I made a lot of progress with her...I lost about eight pounds in three weeks, which is pretty impressive all things considered. I was in a time crunch to fit into my maid of honor dress for my sister's wedding, and I just barely made it (if you count getting the dress let out as far as it could go as "barely making it"). I spent the last half of summer eating my way through Europe and basically ignoring all the basic principles of a balanced diet.

I started last fall ready to begin anew with a clean slate, which was fine. I went back to the nutritionist and confessed my sins, and we moved on to make a lot of progress. I saw her for the whole semester, and felt really good about my eating habits and overall health. The only problem was, winter session was coming up, which meant almost two months without student health benefits. PLUS it was holiday season. PLUS PLUS my nutritionist was about to go on maternity leave for the entire spring semester. So I went into the holidays not really knowing how to handle things and completely derailed all of my progress. When winter session came along, I had fallen off of the wagon so hard that I wasn't even walking alongside the wagon. I fell off the wagon in the middle of the desert and started drawing pictures in the dirt and making friends with all the desert creatures. And since then I have been half-heartedly attempting to pick myself up off of the dirty desert floor.

I thought this time around I was too far gone, that I would be forever fat. And you know what...that's fine. I respect people that can do that, and feel totally comfortable in their skins being that way. I'm not even being facetious. I wish I didn't care so much about this health and fitness stuff. There are plenty of people in this world whose physical sizes are secondary to the size of their talent and character, so why can't I be one of them??

I already know the answer to that question. I have been taught ever since the time I was a chubby little toddler, that fat is failure. In my family, being overweight, and struggling with health and fitness has always been seen as a result of laziness and no motivation. I was so terrified to email my nutritionist and let her know that I was coming back because I fucked up. I didn't want her to be disappointed, and frankly I was a little embarrassed. Embarrassed of my failure.

When I finally built up the courage to email her, I almost cried tears of relief when I saw her response:

It's really easy to get stuck in your own head, and to project your own insecurities onto your expectations of others. No one is judging me harder than I am judging myself, and it had been a really long time since I'd acknowledged that.

One of the first things my nutritionist said to me at my appointment was that she was proud that I hadn't given up. And I'm definitely proud of myself for not giving up. I've been kind of faking my way through these health and fitness goals that I set last month, and honestly my heart wasn't in it. I wasn't committing to eating well and working out, and I definitely wasn't holding myself accountable. There are a couple of things that I needed to be reminded:

1.) Losing weight is really hard. No really...it is. There are shortcuts, but those aren't sustainable, and to develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle takes a lot of patience.

2.) The all-or-nothing approach doesn't work. At the beginning of this year, I stated that one of my goals was to find some balance in my life. Deciding to be super productive one day and then spend then next day lying on the couch watching Netflix for sixteen hours straight is not really ideal compared to spending every day being productive with time for leisurely activities. Same goes for food...I can't decide that OH I had a doughnut for breakfast, so now I'm going to spend the rest of the day eating shit. Life doesn't work that way.

3.) Eating shouldn't be mindless, and neither should anything else you do. I've always been really annoyed that losing weight required me to be obsessed with the food I eat...because how was that any different from being obsessed with unhealthy food? The only problem is, when I am not focusing on what to eat every day, then I'm just putting garbage into my body. What I've learned over the years is that it's not obsession, it's mindfulness. I'm mindful of all of the things I say and do when important schoolwork and friendships are involved, so why wouldn't I be mindful of my health and fitness? My body is just as important as the rest of myself.

I'm not a failure. And I'm not a lost cause. I'm just a work in progress.

Look out for an upcoming entry about checking in with my health and fitness goals from last month!