darkemeralds (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
darkemeralds) wrote2011-01-20 12:24 pm
darkemeralds) wrote2011-01-20 12:24 pm
Entry tags:
Shame shame shame
Reading dieters' blogs leaves me with the impression that nothing bad ever, ever happened as a result of losing weight. It's all good, all the time, right? Rah rah zis-boom-bah, go team!
(NOTE: I'm only referring to reasonable, intentional weight loss attained through moderate calorie restriction and good exercise. Just so we're clear.)
But it's not. There are difficulties. At least, there are for me.
Having overcome some of the initial weight-loss hurdles now, I'm noticing something that I haven't seen any dieting cheerleader mention: shame.
I'm not a big believer in psychology--I'm not even sure there's such a thing as "mind"--so this is talky-meat using psych terms for want of accurate biological ones. I feel physically vulnerable. I want to hide. I'm assailed by intrusive head-voices reminding me of past failures, and when I shut them up, the horror-movies start.
Seriously, I'm riding my bike down a quiet side street and involuntarily envisioning being run over by a bus--with all the details. This is not normal, intelligent, risk-aversive awareness here. This is crazy.
And when I manage to shake those images off, I find myself having attacks of vagueness. I brought groceries home on Monday night and completely forgot to put them away till this morning (yeah, that salmon was a big waste...)
All of these things are familiar symptoms of shame. I know them very, very well. It's just that I haven't been troubled by them much for the past couple of years.
So I'm developing a metaphor. Again, I don't believe this is literally, physically what happens, but it's all I've got: it's as if my history is bound up in my fat, and as layers melt away, I'm reliving the bad things that I put the fat on to buffer myself from.
No, I've never been hit by a bus. That's just a stand-in for general traumatic shame, horror, helplessness and damage at the hands of careless others.
Maybe I'm unusual in this. Maybe I'm hypersensitive to these particular nuances. Maybe I'm full of shit. I don't know. But if anyone else ever had this kind of reaction to fat-loss, it's no wonder they rush to regain it.
It's not life-threatening. It's not even diet-threatening (so far). But it's not nothing either, so I thought I'd write it down.
(NOTE: I'm only referring to reasonable, intentional weight loss attained through moderate calorie restriction and good exercise. Just so we're clear.)
But it's not. There are difficulties. At least, there are for me.
Having overcome some of the initial weight-loss hurdles now, I'm noticing something that I haven't seen any dieting cheerleader mention: shame.
I'm not a big believer in psychology--I'm not even sure there's such a thing as "mind"--so this is talky-meat using psych terms for want of accurate biological ones. I feel physically vulnerable. I want to hide. I'm assailed by intrusive head-voices reminding me of past failures, and when I shut them up, the horror-movies start.
Seriously, I'm riding my bike down a quiet side street and involuntarily envisioning being run over by a bus--with all the details. This is not normal, intelligent, risk-aversive awareness here. This is crazy.
And when I manage to shake those images off, I find myself having attacks of vagueness. I brought groceries home on Monday night and completely forgot to put them away till this morning (yeah, that salmon was a big waste...)
All of these things are familiar symptoms of shame. I know them very, very well. It's just that I haven't been troubled by them much for the past couple of years.
So I'm developing a metaphor. Again, I don't believe this is literally, physically what happens, but it's all I've got: it's as if my history is bound up in my fat, and as layers melt away, I'm reliving the bad things that I put the fat on to buffer myself from.
No, I've never been hit by a bus. That's just a stand-in for general traumatic shame, horror, helplessness and damage at the hands of careless others.
Maybe I'm unusual in this. Maybe I'm hypersensitive to these particular nuances. Maybe I'm full of shit. I don't know. But if anyone else ever had this kind of reaction to fat-loss, it's no wonder they rush to regain it.
It's not life-threatening. It's not even diet-threatening (so far). But it's not nothing either, so I thought I'd write it down.
no subject
This is fabulous, and right on. Also I know that any time I lose weight, I get nervous; with the weight I'm 'invisible', and without it I get noticed alot. I've always been shy and unsure of myself, so getting noticed starts freaking me out and next thing I know, I'm packing on the pounds again. It is a kind of fear of being thin, but more the fear of being seen. (that just came to me...hmmm, interesting.)
no subject
But I understand perfectly what you're talking about. I remember feelings of panic and shame, a desperate need to swathe myself in coats, when I lost weight as a young woman. I also remember a deep disappointment (kind of a slow-dawning thing) when, on losing a lot of weight in my 30s, no magic happened. I was only marginally more "marketable" as a size 10 than I'd been as a size 18, and being a size 10 utterly failed to bring me love. It was a profound discovery.
When all is said and done, however, I've never found any helpful correlation between "psychology" and weight. There may indeed be correlations, but knowing them never did a damn thing to help me stop overeating. I probably could have concentrated on other ways of feeling safe, or other ways of being less visible--and I could have done work around becoming a more desirable mate or girlfriend, too--and removed the connection between my weight and those things. I think I could probably have done that quite easily if it had ever occurred to me.
But weight--weight in all its manifestations--was everything. It was the cause and cure of all my problems. It was the angel and the demon. It was this illusory Holy Grail which I was incapable of separating from other issues in my life. I could not see past it.
The only reason I can see past it now is that all the concerns it represented when I was younger have been negated by the passage of time. I don't know how old you are, but I hope you don't have to waste as much time on the matter as I did.