October 2007 Weight Loss Journal

October 2007, Weight Loss Journal

1 October 2007

Weight: 172 (lost 28 lbs.)

BMI: 31.5

(This will be my only entry this month. Because it's a long therapeutic one. I'll start weekly entries again in November. I think I need to focus more on mental health than exercise right now, and here's why...)

So I took half of August off and all of September off from my weight loss journaling. I did continue to weigh-in every week, and I stayed right at 172 for every weigh-in. After all the ups and downs this year, I needed to figure out why I've been struggling so much this year. So I decided to stop focusing on dropping pounds and start figuring out what was going on with me emotionally. I've been doing much more emotional eating that I should. Looking at my weigh-in chart, it's obvious that my current plateau started in December 2006. So what happened during that month.

In December 2006, I went back to my hometown to visit some old friends, my mother, and two of my siblings. It was then that I realized that the "harmless" mental disorders that afflicted my family were no longer harmless. Actually, they were never harmless. I had spent my entire life being hurt by them (mostly by verbal abuse and manipulation by people I love) and not even realizing it. Now, those quirky mental disorders have grown into full-blown mental illness. Now, I'm learning how to face reality and set emotional boundaries to protect myself, my marriage, and my children. The whole process has been very painful for everyone.

For me, the process has left me with a heap of anxiety, guilt, anger, grief, and exhaustion, and all of it has left me feeling like "I deserve that candy bar, dammit, and don't tell me I'm not allowed to eat it" rather than "I deserve to be healthy." Right now, I'm going to focus on stopping the emotional eating by working through the roots of those emotions. Then I will once again go back to focusing on exercise and watching the pounds burn off.

Thank you for your patience.

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