Mental Sabotage

I found myself in a real “fuck it” moment the other day.
I’d been traveling for a few weeks for work, and I felt really fat. So fat that I was beginning to become convinced that the amount of effort I exerted into my “health” wasn’t worth the results.

I hadn’t been anywhere near a scale in almost 3 weeks and I knew I was up by at least 10, but suspected it was closer to 15 pounds. And I hadn’t been crazy, I hadn’t been binge eating, or drinking milkshakes, but I knew that when I got home I was in for a real defeat on the scale. I could see the number in my head, and it was devastating. My clothes were tight, I was uncomfortable, and so dissuaded with trying to hold onto something that was surely impossible for me. With the imaged number on the scale flashing in my mind, a voice in my head also said, “You know you’re going to get fat again, you’ll be a huge disappointment to your friends and family, the media will make fun of you and wonder why you don’t just get on Ozempic.”

By the time I got home, I’d shaken off most of the nonsense, the giving up nonsense, the defeatist nonsense, but I was still down in the dumps on my way to my bathroom scale to weigh-in. But I’d already mentally laid out a path back for myself and was looking forward to getting on with it.
I’d lost 3 pounds.

Moments earlier I was looking at a picture of me from 3 weeks before, thinking “I look really good in this picture, and now I’m fat.”
AND I WAS THREE POUNDS LIGHTER!

So much of this battle exists only in my head, the myriad of reasons to give up and cry about how hard it is are all still there. I don’t think I will ever truly believe I’m out of the woods, but I am getting better at recognizing the nonsense, putting one foot in front of the other, believing the noise I’m making for myself isn’t real, and getting on with it.