Till Now I Always Got By On My Own

From my SparkPeople blog:

I've been trying to lose weight for as long as I can remember. Literally. I distinctly remember the moment I became painfully aware that I was fat. It was hard to miss; a Grade 8 boy told my Grade 3 chubby body quite abruptly "You're fat." I didn't know that I was until that moment. But from then on, I was always aware of my size. And it hasn't improved since then. Of course my weight has changed, I've been heavier and I've been a bit smaller, but never have I been less than overweight. I don't know what I would look or feel like at a healthy weight.

At the moment, I still have about 40 lbs to lose to get to where I want to be. I've been 25 lbs heavier, and before Christmas I was almost 10 lbs lighter. I constantly go up and down. I have a great month, then I undo all I've done the next month. It takes a lot for me to really get ahead, but overall, I have stayed the same weight for over a year, despite painstaking efforts otherwise, surrounded by binge-eating.

I am obsessive. I know that. Until last month, I had spent one night a week at Weight Watchers, one night a week carefully meal-planning for the next 7 days, and every hour thinking about food, exercise, and any tactic I could use to help keep me motivated to lose weight. The result? A year of up and down on the scale to ultimately stay right where I was to begin with, $1000 gone to WW, and a husband who was now annoyed with the obsession with little result.

 Nick has always been supportive, but he's never struggled with weight and food issues, so he has a hard time truly understanding my woes. But for years he has listened to my new ideas, my promises to myself that fell flat, my speculations, my triumphs, my failures, my desperation, my despair, my vows to let this be the last time, my recipes, my news articles, my new gym schedules, and everything else in between. He has truly been wonderful. But I managed to coerce it out of him that he's kinda had enough of hearing about it. And I really don't blame him, I'm sick of it too. So while I'm not mad that he doesn't share my crazy obsession enthusiasm for healthy living, I suddenly feel bad for inundating him with the constant barage of information. And although he in no way asked me to stop sharing, I have decided to stop flooding him with it all. However, that leaves me alone in this.

I've never been good at making new friends. I'm shy and self-conscious, and I've always had trouble connecting with my peers. I've tried making friends at places like Toastmasters, church, and at work, but it's always with people not within my age group. And while that's ok, and they were all lovely people, I seemed to have a tough time truly connecting and sharing with someone who was just at a different stage in life than I am; I wanted a friend, not a parent figure, and that seemed to be what I ended up with. But people my own age intimidate me. I feel inadequate, that I don't have my life together, personally or professionally. Which means I don't want to share my needs or challenges because I will seem weak. I can't win. And thus I am alone.

I tried WW in hopes of getting that personal contact of people in the same boat. Again, everyone was friendly, but when the new PointsPlus debuted last year, tons of new people flooded in. With the meetings so busy, I let myself just fade into the background. No one really noticed or cared if I was there or not, myself included.

Maybe I will never be very good at making friends. But I feel like if I truly want to lose weight, I need to have someone I can talk to every day, someone who understands, who can offer help and ideas, who can sympathize and get me through the tough times and be proud of me for even the small things that are a big deal to me. And I want to be there to be the same thing for them. But I know this can't just be a random person, it has to be someone I connect with.

I joined a Biggest Loser challenge at work in hopes of having some accountability, figuring I would hate having to submit a weight gain, and thus avoid gaining. But since it was across the entire school board, I ended up on a team of strangers. We email in our weight results every Wednesday. There was no real personal connection there, so when I first ended up with a gain on the scale, I just didn't bother to email in my results. No one cared.

I've spent the morning looking for a Spark buddy, browsing teams and message boards, I feel like I'm starting to sound sad and desperate. But I truly am tired of not having the motivation to choose long-term success over instant gratification. It's like I go into a trance when it comes to eating junk food, and can't talk myself out of it. I need help. And I hope I find that help for the long term.