Losing Weight

Losing weight is a weird process. This is something that most people, who have not lost weight, or who have lost only a little and so did not have the same sort of experience, cannot and do not understand.

It's not just becoming lighter, and it certainly does not feel like becoming healthier- not at first.

What happens is that I lose a few pounds and I feel fatter, I become looser, flappier and feel less womanly, less human altogether.

I am a person with full lips. You could not tell that, today. The flesh on my face is looser, so my double chin is more droopy, the flesh around my jaw hangs and wobbles; and, my lips, which normally jut forth in a manner that inspires idiots to quack at me, online, sag in on each other until they are naturally in a position that usually only happens with annoyance-laced deep thought.

So, thanks to losing a little weight, I am a flappy, saggy, thin-lipped cellulite-ridden joke of a human being. That is how I look to myself and that is how I feel. That is how I know I appear to others, who do not understand the process.

I have to hold onto this understanding, now that I have it. I have to embrace the change and celebrate it, even as it flaps about and claps behind me while I hurry down the hallway.

There should be no shame. I should rejoice with each waggling movement of flesh, because it is a sign of changes occurring.

It is much easier to type than to do, I assure you; but, to learn to do it may make all the difference between whether a person continues on and learns to be healthier or decides to run to a 3 -layer chocolate cake for comfort, feeling defeated before the battle has properly begun.

Battle, did I say? Aye, battle. It is a battle. Not with my body, not with society. My body will do what I tell it to do, and allow it to do, based on my understanding of its needs. Society can get bent. I do this for me!

The battle is with my own mind. I have PTSD. It is my belief that most people have it, at least a little, if ever they were born a woman, or gained weight, or have been a different ethnicity than persons around them in a manner that involved it being pointed out to them, or had a horrible teacher, or etc. It's not just for soldiers. If there was a traumatic event and it altered the way you live, the way you feel you can behave, instilled any fear in you or feeling of low self-worth, then you are having stress based on the aftermath of that trauma. That's all PTSD is. Some people have it stronger than others.

My body wants to be healthy.It is not my body that says "Let's sit quiet on the couch and eat yummy, cheese laden things until the pie arrrives." It is my mind.

Why? There are many reasons. Let's start with not wanting to be tricked into thinking some guy likes me, again, when all he wants is my body. How about inappropriate relatives and relatives of friends, who leer and make one feel as if tearing one's flesh off would not be enough to feel clean, again?

How about the general fear of failure that stems from having the sort of teachers who treat you as if you are a worthless piece of something they'd like scraped off their shoe, for no discernible reason?

How about all the alleged friends and alleged supportive relatives who constantly misunderstand motives and attribute bad actions and bad thoughts to one, when they are so far from the truth of one's nature ... until one begins to get the feeling that it doesn't matter what one does or says or thinks, because, regardless of what one tries to be, one is  simple born to be looked down upon?

There are so many reasons why a person might shrink away from change and not all of them are readily apparent. Yet, if one looks deep enough, one finds that there are fears, there is trauma.

Don't you know that when a person is severely injured in a particular place, especially repeatedly, that the body generally responds by growing extra fat in that area, for further protection?

How fat are you? That's how much you are injured. Not all injuries are physical. However, diabetes is certainly injurious to the body and it causes weight gain, as does excessive cortisol production and a number of other things. So, even if you know you were abused as a child, cheated on, treated like crap by the court system during your divorce or have a horrible boss - or whatever mental trauma it is you know you have - that doesn't mean you should overlook the possibility of physical trauma, as well.

See, I am seriously overweight. I am seriously traumatized by life. The why's and wherefore's of that might be a fit subject for another book. Just trust me, I am.

The fattest part of me is my abdominal region, and the second fattest part is my upper back. Well, some of that is attributed to my wacky cortisol production, due to decades of extreme stress brought on, primarily, by having gotten married.

But, it so happens that I have a weak immune system, and I have allergies, and I got butted in the gut, several times, by a goat. All of these things, including the stress, affected my digestion and caused trauma to my digestive system. My digestive system is in my abdominal region, of course; so, here I am, most of my fat being where most of the injury occurred.

I was shaken around by persons, more than once, in ways that caused injury to my upper back. I was in car accidents that caused whiplash, many times, which was untreated. Also, the neighbor boys used to come down and throw snowballs that had chunks of ice or rock in them, and they mostly hit me in my upper back. Not to mention that stress often severely affects the upper back, due to the tension caused in the muscles which are attached, also, to the shoulders, neck and arms.

So, again, a place with much injury of a physical and a mental nature, which happens to be one of the more fat-laden parts of my anatomy.

Of course, not everyone will have exactly the same results. By that I mean, mostly, that there are genetics to consider, as well as environmental concerns. If you are a female with large breasts, it does not mean your primary emotional trauma is related to them, or that you are physically injured there. It means you have large breasts, and, more than likely, it doesn't mean a thing, else.

It is a battle. One battles to conquer one's fears. Consider the fears to be the roguish bandits one meets on the way to the celebration. You are out there, making your way to the party, and they are out there, ready to waylay your stage coach and force you, by fear or beguilement - but, most likely both- to stop, perhaps even to turn back.

One can give them what they want, and stop them, for a time. They will only come again, the next time the journey is attempted, if given into, though. They will never be satisfied with a one-time capitulation. At some point, one must fight them and win,, or give up altogether.

Your biggest fear should always be the one looming behind you, blocking your point of egress, and that should be fear of turning back, stagnation, remaining in your unhappy  and unhealthy state of being. It is the only one that should not be fought against, and it is the only one that will become your ally against all the other fears that may attempt to thwart your efforts.  It is both your drive and your footman, and it is well-armed, so let it do its work against your foes and guide you to where you need to go.