Self loathing doesn’t help

So I’m fat — again.

I never thought I’d be here again, but I am.

I’m older, which is the excuse I made for the weight gain. I was post-menopausal, later there was a hysterectomy. And the desk job, of course. Then the pandemic, when I was blessed to work from home for 14 consecutive months, but averaged about 500 steps a day; from my work-from-home desk, to the bathroom, to the refrigerator and back again.

All really valid excuses….all just excuses. The truth is, I gave up smoking and became addicted to sugar. And if sugar wasn’t available, then any carb would do!

And I’m so angry with myself! I huff and puff my way up the stairs to my second floor apartment. My knees hurt, my back hurts, I can’t breath, and I’m so tired. All the time I’m tired. The simple act of rolling over in bed has become a challenge. Even the 3x clothes I’ve bough look like crap on me, because I’m busting at the seams.

My go-to emotion is self-loathing. Playing the negative, shaming eight track that my mother “gifted” me with. “What’s your problem? You’re such a fuck up? Can’t you do anything right? Look at you, you look like a cow!” This is my go-to place. As horrible as it is, it’s comfortable. I’m in hell, but it’s a hell I spent so many years in, that it feels like home.

But Mommy Dearest is dead five years now, and I know that going to that place does not help. If I give into the self-loathing, then I binge eat, proving to myself that I am all the horrible things my mother said I was.

So I will bypass the anger and self-loathing. I will make it a conscious point — and remind myself repeatedly — that I can’t change what happened yesterday, or a year ago, or five years ago. I can’t go back in time and stop myself from binging on [insert just about everything here]. All I can control is what happens in the future. What happens in the now.

And right now, I’m six days without sugar and six days without diet soda/soft drinks, and that’s pretty awesome. As long as I stay in this now place, I’ll be okay.

I’ve gone without sugar for days on end, but I’ve never been without a Diet Pepsi for this many days. And honestly, I never thought I could do it. Yesterday, I felt like a heroine addict; sweating and clammy, jumpy and jittery. I didn’t sleep well at all last night and I know that’s withdrawal from the Diet Pepsi. I hated that feeling so much, I’ll never go back to soda. It truly is addicting.

“I am embracing change,” is my affirmation for the week, and I will write about it. Because writing is life and life is writing (and because you can’t shove food in your face while you’re typing!)