Billy Joel said it best. "Darling I don't know why I go to extremes. Too high or too low, there ain't no in between."
I started my fight against food noise and quest for better health keeping a few things in mind. I was always going to love food. I always wanted to continue to love food. I was not going to restrict myself. I was not going to get caught up in the scale, or in appearance. While body-positivity at absolutely any size is essential to our society, and I will stand up for anyone at any size to be respected and not discriminated against, I need to admit and work on my own internalized fatphobia.
Part of why I never wanted to count calories or look at labels is that when I've done that in the past, I became obsessed with calories or the scale or my clothes size or all of the above. And I didn't start out that way this time. But my personality works in extremes, and not just in the arena of what food and what quantities of food I eat in a day. I knew that going in.
I am often teased by friends and family members for the fact that if I am going to commit to anything in my life, I am going to commit. In the "before times," I ate in extreme amounts and made extreme food choices. A half of a basket of bread, a sugary mocktail, a shared appetizer with my husband along the lines of nachos or beer cheese dip, a main course that was usually pasta or steak or pizza, and then coffee and dessert... was a normal weekend night out for me. Food noise relentlessly told me I wanted it all, and that I deserved it all, and no one was going to stop me, and if anyone tried to... it was time to get angry. Besides, look at that doggy bag I'm taking home.
Now, with not many more pounds to lose before I reach my first big goal (first of many but it's definitely a milestone), I feel myself becoming obsessed with counting calories again. During the first few weeks of this experience, I wasn't doing that. But I want to lose weight faster. I am impatient. And that isn't what I set out for this experience to be about. I might be losing the food noise, but instead, I'm going to extremes.
This week I'm going to get back to listening to my body, which Wegovy is allowing me to do for the first time. The calorie deficit will happen. While I can't just eat with reckless abandon and expect Wegovy to do all of the work, I need to trust the process while keeping in mind that going to extremes is perhaps part of my indigenous nature. However... neither extreme, in this case, is sustainable in the long run. If I'm going to get healthy for real, that's what the focus has to be.
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