"I refuse to fall victim to the horrible weight obsession that grips so many people. An obsession with numbers that are given so much power that the person can no longer determine who they are and what is truly important in life. I do not want my life wasted by spending all of my day thinking about my weight. Actually, I don't want to start my day by weighing myself. Maybe at night, once a week. That's all I'm going to allow."
This certainly gives me pause, because as I sit here today, I find that I spend a good deal of time thinking about my weight and I'm weighing myself twice a day, in the morning and at night before I go to bed. The exact opposite of what I said I would do. Now, I still very much know who I am and what is important in life -- that has not changed. But the scale has firmly entrenched itself in my daily routine and shows no sign of leaving anytime soon.
What's clear to me is that, in my case, because I have lost a significant amount of weight, I have changed -- dramatically. This goes way, way beyond being a smaller size, buying "regular" clothes, and now following a healthy diet. It is much deeper than that. Now, I'm a very "cerebral" person and analyze things quite a bit (if you can't tell already!). There are pros and cons to this, but I would say it certainly lends itself to my hyper-sensitivity to scales and my weight. The way I view these two things now is vastly different from how I looked at them before Optifast. Some might say this is good. But me, I am more cautious. I am "hot-wired" to jump to worry, to jump to anxiety. So I need to pull in the reins a bit. But how?
I do find that the MyFitnessPal.com food tracker is very helpful as far as providing structure to my daily eating routine, keeping me in the allowable caloric/carb/fat/protein range to maintain my weight, and subsequently giving me some certainty as to what could otherwise be chaotic. A friend on the Facebook Optifast Support page said there is a MyFitnessPal weight tracker that I can use to begin inputting my morning weight each day to see how it is trending. Although this is initially sort of overwhelming for me, I am pushing through my techno-fears and following this path. Sometimes I wish I was younger and more comfortable with this stuff, but I'm learning. So here's to that.
I guess I just have fears of the unknown, and in this case it is the unknown world of maintenance/dieting. I keep trying to remind myself that things will become more familiar in time. I also know that I have the capacity to be highly focused and committed to anything I set my sights on -- and I truly want to keep this weight off for the rest of my life. So that means I must be willing to "go the distance," get through these ups and downs (literally), and keep living each day to its fullest. I'm nervous, a little bit scared, but moving forward as best I can. I'm a tough one, when push comes to shove. Patience and time. That's what I need.
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