Groovybabe

My weightloss nurse keeps telling me not to be so hard on myself even though I don’t know where she gets the idea that I am. It is true that I am hard on myself but I just don’t know where she would get that from, it’s not like I confide in her my deepest darkest thoughts. I guess she sees it a lot in obese patients.

When I was at my highest weight I was very good at being hard on myself. I guess you don’t get as big as I was without being hard on yourself. The way I thought about myself I would never have thought about another human being, whether they were friend or foe. And if I did I should have been locked up for a breach of human rights. I was outright nasty to myself. At one point I wouldn’t even leave the house because I thought I should not be seen in public. I consciously had that thought.

And they were just thoughts. If I were on a diet and had a slight slip then I would eat for England telling myself I am a fat pig and this is what fat pigs do. I had a one-off session with a counsellor last year and she asked me if I self harm. “Only by compulsively eating,” I told her. If I’d started an exercise regime and came down with the flu, I’d cease going to the gym because I’d missed one or two sessions. Instead I would prefer to wallow in self pitying thoughts that it is Just Too Hard.

I think it has been a gradual effect but slowly and surely since I have started this effort I have been trying to combat those thoughts and feelings. It has not been easy. I had a packet of crisps yesterday after the gym because I was on minus calories having only had a sandwich all day and even while eating them I was beating myself up for giving in to them. But with every negative thought I told myself it is just a packet of crisps, it is not the end of the world. And with another generous loss on the scale today they didn’t show up anyway. This is my point, being hard on ourselves, while unavoidable at times, is pointless. We only hurt ourselves. And I have found the more I stop myself from thinking bad about myself the easier it is to lose weight.

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