Mourning the Losses

I know I said I’d be writing this a few days ago but I just didn’t have the time...not just the time it took to write it but the time to recover emotionally from writing it all, as I've been so all over the place. I want to thank all of you for your wonderful comments on my blog. You guys are sweet and supportive and believe me if there was a group of people I would share the needy, desperately unhappy side of me with, it would be you. Alas, the issues in my head are a bit too strong for that, and the similarity between the way I had been feeling and the person I used to be was too much for me to deal with.
I’ve realized something about the 55.6 pounds I’ve lost since January of 2009. It’s a LOSS. Not just a loss of weight but of a part of me. That’s not to say I was defined by my weight because I don’t believe I ever really was, but losing weight the way I am is bound to change more than my total pounds. I’ve changed my life, and the recent big losses have really opened my eyes to the fact that I need to mourn my old life, my old self. So here we go, I will work through all seven stages of grief and come out better on the other side.

Denial
How many times have I posted that my clothes don’t fit on this blog? And I still continued to be surprised. I was so surprised every time I looked on the scale and in the mirror. I forget that what I’m doing is working and tend to beat myself up over making these tiny mistakes. I also denied the change in my life. I denied to myself that a lot of our life was wrapped up in food and eating, because that would make me have to admit that more of our life was changing than I intended. Denial was easy, it was a place I blissfully spent a lot of time until I was unfortunately yanked out of it mostly due to last week’s fight with Husbandcake.

Guilt
I’ve had to come to a very harsh reality. Losing weight in this way has been going so well. I have worked hard to change my lifestyle, my thought processes, everything. I’ve tested out many things and tried to realize what was sustainable long term and what wasn’t. It sounds exactly right when I write it down but I was just SO focused on that, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else. And the other things are the most important to me. I am a person who defines myself by my marriage. My lifestyle IS my marriage, I can’t honestly say that anything else comes close. Yet there I was, trying to cram my entire life into my weight loss plan. I stopped eating dinner with Husbandcake, because I eat two small meals in a night. You’re just not really sharing a meal with someone when you’re eating separate dinners and just happen to be on the same sofa. I just neglected my marriage, I neglected his feelings because he’s bound to have feelings on my changing life, my changing body, my changing everything.

Saying it brings the guilt rushing back. I claim to be someone who lives their life to make one person happy, and I have spent the past month not caring about whether he’s happy at all. It’s a horrible thing. We’re both at fault after our fight, I was not the only one to blame but neither was he. It always takes two people and we both accept our part in it, but it’s been tough for me to deal with.

Anger
Oh, swift-acting anger and how soon it came after guilt. Why should doing the right thing be hard? Why should changing my life, being healthier, getting better, walking faster is somehow leading to me being SAD. Why is it that the more I like myself in the mirror the less things are going right? We all know, deep down – every one of us that is trying to lose weight knows that taking our extra weight off is not going to solve all of our problems. Some of us even realize that it will cause new problems and we just have to hope they are more manageable than the old ones. But dealing with the reality of the new problems is something I just didn’t anticipate. It’s led to a lot of bitterness, and at times I’ve asked myself if the stress is worth it. And then my skirt falls off when I stand up and I think, oh…ok, yeah it is. See how quick the anger went by? Easy come easy go I guess.

Bargaining
Honestly for a few days I was exercising like crazy, really trying to have NO treats even my obligatory little pieces of cheese and my thought process was this – if I lose this weight NOW, as fast as I can, it will be better and it will be over. Silly Kyoko. All I did was start a cycle of being too tired to do anything at all, even the smallest amounts of exercise. I know I can’t do that, I know even if I did it wouldn’t make anything better. This is a lifestyle change that just HAS to be done. And changes have to be made on both my part and Husbandcake’s – and there is no short cut around it.

Depression
Now comes the worst of all of it. it’s the realization that no matter what I do it’s a struggle. And it is much more than the struggle of “do I or do I not have this extra cookie”, it’s just tough. I don’t want to write too much about it because I don’t want to get sucked back into that way of thinking. Depression for me is this serious all consuming horrible thing that leads to more horrible things. We’ll just leave it at the fact that it was difficult to see past my problems and on to not only the solutions but the fact that at the end of this process, no matter how rough, things will get to be better than they were when I started. I get it now. I really do.

Recovery
Recovery is where I’m at. I feel like the last two weeks of my life have been significantly over-dramatized even to myself. It’s weird to feel such a serious loss over something that isn’t that serious (I mean compared to losing a loved one or a pet, having an illness, that type of thing). It’s a loss of a lifestyle that I loved though, and I am and always will be a huge fan of letting yourself feel all your feelings, good and bad give them the weight they deserve and really work through them.

I’ve learned that a lot of what is physically sustainable with regards to eating habits hasn’t been emotionally sustainable. I didn’t ever consider it. I’m not physically craving certain things, I’m craving sharing a meal with someone, someone who is not so keen on eating the healthy food that I need to be giving myself now. And I know I’ll be able to find a solution…I just…haven’t, yet.

Acceptance
How about let’s make a deal – I’ll let you know when I get there, and in return you’ll hope for me that it’s soon!

I am doing better now.  Noticeably better.  I am ready to get back to blogging and sharing, and I'm ready to get back to a positive place where I can have this last week of my Biggest Winner competition and finish strong, have a sense of accomplishment and then really move forward.  I truly hope that by sharing this I'm helping someone else - anyone else - deal with any lingering crazy feelings that go along with changing their life for the better.  My plan is to take a long rest after getting all that out, and then go on to have a wonderful day.  I hope the same for all of you!!