Acute vs Chronic

My condition is chronic. It will require treatment for the remainder of my life. This was initially a hard pill to swallow. But even before I was aware of it as a possibility, I ran from thoughts that could lead me to this understanding. 

I wanted to treat fatness. Fatness has plagued me since my earliest memories, the first half of which I had diets done to me as a punishment for my fatness, and the second half of which I punished myself with them. But I always believed they would work, and in fairness, they did. 

Had my fatness been an acute condition, it would have been solved many decades ago. I can lose weight, and much like the plaster cast is a useful solution to a broken bone, diets produced weight loss for me. However, unlike a broken leg, my fatness just returned, time and again, or stalled well before I was anywhere near satisfied with its reduction. 
My stubborn fatness, like a perpetually broken leg always returned. Losing weight through so many fad diets, simple fixes, and by doing what I now think of as 'get rich quick schemes', I continued on the hamster wheel of loss and regain for many years. The easiest most efficient solutions (which come with such great marketing!) were those that I gravitated towards, whether in my reading, discussions with the myriad of doctors and nutritionists I consulted, and even in the media I consumed. The easiest most efficient solutions did actually reduce my fatness! So I returned to them time and again. 

        But these solutions were nothing more than band-aids, useful for the short term, but worthless in addressing my chronic condition. Worse, even then dealing with my excess weight, was the idea that the weight itself wasn’t the problem. Dieting is hard, but harder still is confronting the fact that for me, dieting was only addressing the symptom, the byproduct of my issues. 

The only positive change I’ve seen in all my many years/decades, of dieting, has been submission to the idea that I will forever be managing this condition. The minute I stopped struggling against this idea, trying to rationalize it out of existence, the moment I accepted it, I was ok. I was at peace.

I invite you, to step off the hamster wheel of fad diets, and do some introspective reflection. What’s your relationship with food like? Are there any compulsions or habits there that assist in an undesirable predicament? Like me, do you use food to assuage discomfort? Have you ever felt the euphoria of binge eating? I used to stop only long enough to make room for more. I am a sneak, eating in secret has some allure for me. Digging into this stuff was the first step onto the path of management, and I hold no hopes that this condition will miraculously disappear either, I submit to that. I relax into the understanding that escape will be a daily practice, and there is no finish line. It’s not easy, but there’s more satisfaction in my life today, because I want to see all those aspects I hid from for so long.

Ethan Suplee