I’m walking through the airport on a 3-hour layover. Make that a 3-hour pastry hunt. I feel more hopeless and out of control than I have at almost any other time in my life.
I am continuously hungry, even though my stomach is bloated with starch and fullness.
But I have totally lost hope and this feels like my last hurrah before I don’t have unlimited access to sugar. (Jeez, does this sound like an addict or what? Load up before you can’t get anymore! I was ill in a lot of ways.)
And I am embarrassed.
So instead of ordering each new sweet at the same kiosk, I am buying it and then walking away to eat it elsewhere, and then walking somewhere else again to a different kiosk with different people to buy my next fix.
If you’ve ever been on a gorge-fest, whether in public or at home, you know that despite occasional relief from a very brief endorphin rush, the entire ordeal is pretty much a misery pit. You feel like a failure, and you can practically feel the fat puffing up in your body in places it doesn’t need to be. Let’s just say my cheeks were bloating at a rapid rate that afternoon!
Fast forward one more leg of the journey. I am walking back in through the international arrivals gate to meet my family. So far the people I’ve seen on my travels homeward have only seen me in my current state. My family, though, will immediately notice the difference. And I’m about to see their reaction.
My mom is stunned and then looks incredibly sad for me. My mom, I knew, had been where I was now and didn’t have to hear how I was feeling – she could feel it for me. My dad and brother also look slightly saddened and try to cover it with their excitement to see me and have me home.
Much of this response is due to the look on my own face, of shame, sadness, and defeat. When you put on 2o pounds of fat in 5 weeks, you don’t exactly feel strong, free, and powerful. At least I didn’t.
And so the emotional onslaught commenced.
Every symptom of shame I listed in Lesson 3, I went through. With my poor family putting up with me!
They did their best to be kind to me as my moods turned a different corner every hour.
One day I would beg my mom to lock me out of the kitchen and help me figure out some kind of green bean soup diet that would take the weight off. The next day I was pontificating about the fact that I was normal, and natural, and happy in my bloated body and the women in magazines were unnatural and materialistic. I was ‘above’ this thin obsession.
Until the next day, when I was spending hours searching online for how those ‘materialistic’ thin women ate.
I was reeling from my own highs and lows, going back and forth between obsessing over my body and working to convince myself that how my body looked and felt was of no importance – I was perfect as I was.
I’ll give you a quick answer: neither way was right or healthy.
So what was I supposed to do?
For one thing, I had no awareness of the concept of shame. So the thoughts and emotions I was going through, I thought were all true emotions and feelings, not symptoms of something deeper that was too painful to deal with.
And because I had no understanding of this, I had no way of basing these emotions and thoughts on a foundation of what was true, and then being able to sort out where I was being fooled and lying to myself.
If I’d understood shame, and known the Biblical basis of this better, I would have known what to do: parse.
Parse the emotions and the thoughts and their roots and our reactions. Because some of what we’re feeling is truly true, and some of the things we are reacting to are most definitely lies. And many emotions that may feel perfectly justified can be reactions and coping mechanisms that are blocking us from freedom just as much as the lies are.
Great, that sounds awesome, but what exactly is true and what is a deception?
There are two main distinctions I have found in emotions and thoughts that pertain to body care:
1) our bodies crying out for health and balance, vs
2) our insecurities feeding us deceptive nonsense.
How can we tell the difference?
The first – and an extremely important step – is that we need to learn more about what a healthy body feels like and runs like – objectively. Then we need to see how our body is doing, to the best of its individual and marvelous ability, in comparison.
This is a very different comparison than that between ourselves and what culture says is perfect, or beautiful, or even, potentially, healthy.
Anoxeric culture – and if that is a foreign term to you, it exists, believe me! – for example, shows and says that an extreme degree of thinness is desirable and beautiful (though rarely is a claim made that it is healthy). While many people are naturally very slim if they are caring for themselves well, for many others, this kind of extreme-looking slimness is not what a healthy body will look like.
On the flip side, the growing contingent of groups claiming that overweightness is a healthy body type may not be as correct as they’d like to be either. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) writes, “Being overweight or obese isn’t a cosmetic problem. These conditions greatly raise your risk for other health problems.” These problems can include coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancer, sleep apnea, and infertility. Yikes!
Now if you’re reading this and you already know you have a good bit of weight to get off, don’t be discouraged! You can do this! Instead, be incredibly excited that as the fat begins to drop off, you are going to feel better and better and better!! Your body will be thanking you for its improved environment every day! 🙂
If you’d like to know where your health stands, the official resource is, of course, your primary care physician. They can do weight and body fat checks, and let you know whether you fall in the range of healthy measurements.
Blood tests can reveal if you are deficient in any nutrients (be sure to ask for a vitamin B Complex blood test, especially one that includes a vitamin B12 reading!), and a monitored physical fitness test (generally a combo of a timed run and counted push ups and sit ups) can give you an idea of your physical strength, if that suits you.
Other potential ways to suss out your overall health are to simply pay attention to your body: what are your energy levels like? How stable are your moods? Are you sleeping well, or having trouble?
I encourage you to consider checking out any of these options for learning more about your objective health. If you know you need to lose weight, you may not need anyone to confirm that for you, but more subtle health issues can and should be reviewed by a doctor.
And what about those insecurities? We’ll talk about those soon! 🙂 For now, do a thorough personal wellness overview and try to identify any areas where your body may be crying for help and attention.
Love and Freedom, 🙂
Jackie
Sources: “What are the Health Risks of Overweight and Obesity?” National Institutes of Health. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/obe/risks.html
