It's Me, I'm the Problem

I’ll be transitioning into my “talkin’ to the NGs” mode next week so I want to let out this final emotional struggle that I’ve been dealing with for a couple of weeks. I’ve mentioned it in passing and I’ve tried to assign it to different things in my life that I thought were the root. But it finally hit me today that I was trying to do with emotions what I had done with my weight for so long: find an external blame when the problem was myself.

It wasn’t intentional, of course. Valid things like toxic friendships, a sudden relapse into debt, a toddler hitting the terrible phase, husband going back to work full time (and a half), my smell and taste issues… they all seemed completely reasonable things to attribute my sadness, stress and anxiety to! It finally struck me this morning as I was pushing my fevered and aching body through the water of the pool—I’m the fault for these feelings. I don’t trust myself. Even after 16 weeks of consistent progress, I don’t trust myself. I always feel just one small misstep away from the woman I was when I started this. I still see her in the mirror, I hear her in my thoughts, I hear her footfalls in my steps. I have come to fear her. I’ve become so afraid of ever becoming her again, that I’m actually setting myself up to do just that.

As the water chilled me to the bone this morning, I realized I was only there and only pushing myself to be working out when I should be home in bed because I was afraid if I missed two days of my routine, I’d never start back. And I know that’s not true, I’ve proven that on more than one occasion in my time here when back pain has kept me home. But today, when I thought about staying home a second morning in a row, I panicked. I know why and how to fix it, but that lack of trust in myself has opened the door to the lack of confidence to fix it and feeling overwhelmed at the idea of diving into yet another attempt to rewire my brain.

I have the mind of an addict. I didn’t discover that truth for a long time because I didn’t have the classic addictions. Never used drugs, despise alcohol, I don’t even like taking cold medicine. I wish I had known sooner that food could be an addiction. That any type of pleasure can become an addiction. Even once I found out, I wasn’t warned that an addiction doesn’t usually just disappear, it tends to get a reassignment. My transfer addictions have varied. Food, affection, video games. I’ve never been able to just drop a habit. I traded my food addiction for a shopping problem. I traded video game addiction for my morning workout addiction. So, this is why my fear of falling out of a routine has become forefront in my mind. Between knowing I haven’t done what I should, and knowing if I don’t, I’ll just move to a new addiction, I’m terrified. And that has created a hurricane of emotions hurling through my mind at terminal velocity, threatening to crack my recently barricaded fortress. The idea of opening the shutters to try to quell the tempest frightens me right now, but I have to do just that, and soon.

Anyway, that was a lot to try to get out, and difficult to admit. I promised some result pictures today. Even though I know I’m not where I should be, I could also be still at the starting line, afraid to take the first step, so I’m grateful for what I have accomplished. So, face offs from the end of last round to now and the start of last round to now as well. I’m verrrry tired after pushing myself so hard today so I’m going to nap a bit. Enjoy your weekend!