I have a new goal for August first. It’s a weight loss goal. It’s to lose 5.5 pounds in order to get halfway to Queen’s Club. I get to join Queen’s Club when I lose 25 pounds. I just want to get halfway there.
Couple things: First, I have a very very sticky complicated mostly negative history when it comes to weight loss, the ability to talk about it and how I treated myself around those subject. Huge source of shame. Huge huge huge. I do believe I grew up, like many of us, with an unhealthy relationship to food, felt much judgment about my worth according to my looks and weight, went to my first Weight Watcher’s meeting with my mom when I was 12, she passed along to me whatever haf-baked weirdness around food and eating she was taught along with the standard secret dose of shame, and the rest is a sad sad sad history around body image and self-hatred. Yay American mass media beauty marketing, the 80s and being a girl!
So, the fact that I am announcing on the internet that I have a weight loss goal and that I feel no shame or guilt or self-hatred around writing and saying such words? Who even am I? How did I get here? Who do I think I am that I’m not apologizing for taking up space in the world of matter, space and time? I’m stronger. I’m better. I’m growing and letting go of old bullshit. I’m deciding that I’m actually totally fine and I’m worth it. What a concept. It took me from the ages of 40-44 to calm the hell down and get rid of that old story.
So I’m going to use my blog (because it’s mine and it belongs to me and I’ve found lots of benefit from blogging practice), to document the three weeks.
I’ve never made a weight loss goal with a deadline. This is a first. I’ve never had good, healthy kind of thinking to help me succeed. I’ve never really had too much of an interest in taking it too seriously, because, the thing that shame does is that it disqualifies you from ever getting to have the joy of participating in life in a way you enjoy, it also judges the SHIT out of others who are doing things to participate in their own lives that especially rub up against your own deal about good and bad and stuff. I had a lot of judgment around diet culture, diet thinking, diet recipes, diet everything. Fudge that.
But now I’m better. I’m (mostly) over that. I know what that was a symptom of and I’ve let it go so I’m unburdened and feeling pretty good. You know what I’m looking forward to besides losing the 5.5. pounds? I’m looking forward to taking my days, hours, moments really seriously like I matter and like this life matters.
Between now and August first, I’m looking forward to noticing and paying attention, being aware of what I’m thinking and what I’m doing. I’m glad to be working on a goal that lets me make every moment matter and offers me moment to moment access to a successful choice and/or a better choice. WE always say goals are something you do FOR yourself, not TO yourself and I’ve been working on that thinking for long enough now that this goal feels exciting, light, free and cool. Who even am I??
So I’m going to check in every day and let you know my wins. One more minute added to the jog, one more 8 0z. water, one more bite left behind from my sandwich, one more planned ice cream or treat four days from now because I’m never giving up ice cream, one more timer set for 15 minutes to see if I’m really hungry or if I’m just bored…all that stuff. And notice, 5.5. pounds in three weeks is not an Iron Man Extreme Sports type goal. It’ll be slow and measured and forever and I’m going to eat peanut butter and chips while I do it. YAY!