Post-Op Week 86: Waving the White Flag, For Now

I think my doctors were right.  The weight range I’m in now is probably a good weight for me.  For the past 3 months, I have bounced back and forth, up and down around the same weight on the scale, and I am discouraged.  I feel like I have disappointed myself.  I’m not giving up this fight, but I’m not giving it my best, and I know it.

I am more worried that my eating has become disordered, and that’s something I need to work on.  When you are obsessing about when you will eat and whether or not you should eat certain things, this is a problem.  When the joy of cooking and eating slowly gets eroded away, something is wrong.  I have gotten to the point where even grocery shopping for myself is something that fills me with dread, because I am buying the same things over and over, and it bores me.  Boredom for me is the worst thing, because I thrive on challenge.  But I’m in a place in my life where I simply Cannot. Handle. Any. More. Challenge.  There is so much on my plate (the least of which is edible), and there is not room for any more of anything.

So for right now, I am going to plant my feet firmly in maintenance and wait until things blow over.  I’ll still track food and movement because I still need that accountability.  That, and I’ve logged 600 days in My Fitness Pal, so it’s a personal challenge now to log in every day.

I feel like I’m in survival mode most days lately, and I don’t think that I can actively lose weight while trying to keep my head above water with everything else.

If I can make it to June 6 at or about the weight I am now, I will call that a victory.  I’m giving myself an upper limit, which is only 2 pounds more than where I am now–it is a weight I have not seen in over a year and hope not to see again.  But I will use it as my red flag.  If I get to that weight, then I know what needs to be done to crawl back away from it.

So here is my promise to myself:

I live in this body, and I have to take care of it the best way I know how.  So in the meantime:

I will move as much as I can each day.  I will make it to the gym when my schedule allows me to do so.  I will do physical activities I enjoy without pain in the hopes that I can learn to love doing them daily.

I will continue to feed myself quality foods.  I am better and more than than my eating peccadilloes, and I will not let myself wallow in the mistakes I know I will make (consciously and unconsciously).  I am worth more than the low-quality foods that call to me on a daily basis.

I will not compare my results to the results of others who have chosen the same path I have chosen to get healthy.  My path is my own, and no one else’s.

I will try to be gentle and kind to myself, and I will forgive myself for my stumbles.  I am only human, and I am not perfect.