The Dreaded Scale

Not the scale!! The exact feeling I have every time I step on that fucker. Every damn time. 

The reason for my fear, is for the last few months, every time I stepped onto that thing the number kept going up. From 250…to 260…to 270…and finally to 280. Yes. I weighed 280 pounds. That is embarrassing and believe me it is not easy putting that out there for the world to see. But if I am going to share my journey with you, I need to be honest about it. 

Now, it’s always easy to judge a person by their weight. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. We’ve all done it. But the truth is, we don’t really know their struggle. We don’t really know why they are that way, and we probably don’t want to know why. Because then that would require compassion and understanding rather than just easy, immediate judgement. 

I have now learned my reason for why I am overweight. I am an emotional eater. I think I always have been. And boy do I have a lot of emotions! So, at times, I found it easier to just stuff my face instead of facing those emotions and dealing with them. It was easier to just eat instead of process. That may not make sense to all of you, but I know it makes sense to some of you. I know I am not alone in that feeling. 

However, I don’t ever like to play the blame game. I am responsible for my own health and if I have issues with my emotions then I need to do something about that. So I did. 

Thank God for therapy! Yes, I go to therapy, and I absolutely love it! I go once a week and don’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone thinks about it. It helps me and that is what’s important. I’ve shared that I go to therapy with a few of my clients and they are always surprised by that. I am not always sure why, but that is the usual reaction. I once had someone say to me, “You don’t look like someone who needs therapy!” I laughed at that because I don’t really think there is a “look” required to go to therapy. It’s more a mental health thing, and that is something that no one can see. 

Through therapy, I learned all about emotional eating and was given tactics to try to avoid doing that. Even though they were the simplest thing, like drink a glass of water before every meal, they started to help. And slowly, but surely, I started to lose weight. Having a personal trainer kick my ass has also helped with my weight loss, but anyone trying to lose weight knows that most of the problems come from the kitchen, not the gym. So, even if I worked my ass off with my trainer, if I went home and binged a million calories, I was defeating the whole purpose. 

I had to get my mind right to be successful with my weight loss, and by doing the work on myself that I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I was able to do that. I was way more conscious about when and, most importantly, WHY I was eating. I had to actively ask myself daily, “Are you really hungry or are you bored? Are you actually starving or are you anxious, nervous, worried, etc.?” The more focus I put onto that, the more I realized how many times I wasn’t actually hungry. So, in place of those feelings, I started walking and jogging. Whenever I was feeling the impulse to binge, I would go for a quick walk/jog around my block. It wasn’t for the exercise; it was for my mental health. And every time I would get back from my walk, that urge to eat had subsided. Every. Damn. Time. 

Now, I am not trying to make light of this subject, but it felt like I was a food addict. That may sound silly, but it’s the truth. I would eat and eat and eat until I literally couldn’t feel anything. This came in handy, especially around the time my mom died. I didn’t want to be sad, so I ate…and ate…and ate. Ultimately, gaining over 30 pounds. Luckily, I am tall and voluptuous, so when I gain weight, you can’t always tell. I hide it well, but I got to the point where I was uncomfortable. I didn’t like how I looked in my clothes and I hated to go shopping. And who on earth hates to go shopping?! The biggest factor in gaining weight for me though was that I just didn’t feel good. I wasn’t being my best self, and I am very competitive, so that started to piss me off. So, I had to start making these changes. 

Thankfully, the internet has a million healthy food recipes out there and my personal trainer is a badass. Since I started doing those workouts and changing my diet, I am down 10 pounds!! Woo hoo!! I definitely have a long way to go, but hey, you gotta start somewhere! 

Now that I have made these changes, I can tell you, I feel great! I have more energy, I feel more confident, I’m sleeping better, and I just feel better in my own skin. The biggest win I’ve taken from this is getting my son more active too. We sometimes forget as parents that our children learn everything from us. Literally everything. So, if I had bad eating habits, guess who else was going to have bad eating habits and develop a poor self-image? My precious little boy, and he doesn’t deserve that. He deserves to be strong and healthy, and it is my job to teach him that. So, I had to teach myself. 

So, cheers to new beginnings and losing more weight! Cheers to women everywhere who have this same struggle! Cheers to personal trainers who devote their lives to helping women like me! Cheers to our children for wanting to be like us!! And cheers to us being worthy of what they want to become! 

By next month, I hope to be down an additional 10 pounds, and by golly, I’m gonna do it! 

Happy trails, 

Em