My therapist told me to think of eating from my OWN values, not from what the doctor says, because doctors only think of the health hazards. It makes me think, but I'm not sure what my values really are.
For a while there, I was happy to be losing a little weight, but I feel the old obsession coming on, and I don't know if I can lose weight, and be happy about weight loss, without the counterweight of hating my body when I do not lose. Also, part of me isn't sure if I want to lose weight anyway.
I want to be healthy. Who doesn't? I also don't want to do what experts tell me to do, just because they're experts. Some experts will disagree; some facts are not so indisputable.
But even if they were - would it be OK to choose to take the risks? Yes, according to my values it would. The question is: do I want to do it?
I have a feeling deep down that I've never been able to explain. I had this feeling before I got fat in the first place. It's that I'm meant to be fat, and this is how I am at my most happiest. Part of this might or might not be overeating.
What does that mean? Is it a real thing or just a feeling? Is there a core in me that wants to be fat, and if so, why? Does God want me to be fat? Or do I want to be fat and just make that happen by eating in that way?
These are possibly questions I shouldn't be asking yet, before I've figured out who I want to be in general. I'm just throwing this out there.
I did an exercise at a training session for work a while back that might help. We were given a stack of cards with things or descriptions on them relating to our lives or jobs. For example, location, challenge, reliability, money, etc. We had to sort them in order of importance. It forced me to think about each one compared to the others--is being near my family more important than money? Is a challenging role more important to me than recognition of my work?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you could do the same thing with values surrounding your body and food. If you list out the factors you consider when you make (or avoid) choices relating food and body, could you rank them? My list:
Autonomy
Financial cost
Time cost
Long-term health
Short-term health
Mental health
Flexibility
Stability
Variety
Challenge
Novelty
Conformity
Uniqueness
Rebellion
Visibility
Community
Independence
Spirituality
Politics
Serenity
Sexuality
Encouragement
Privacy
One other thing we talked about with this exercise is that your rankings can change as your circumstances or your identity do. Changing your priorities isn't "not following through" , but rather an acknowledgement that people grow and change. What was important to me(and good for me) while I was recovering from a severe illness was completely different from what was important to or good for me when I was working toward a promotion.
Ah, that's really fascinating! I should try to do this exercise and see how I truly feel about things.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's significant that as soon as he said to follow my values, I thought "ah, I may not want to do anything about my lifestyle". I need to look into this.