Truthtelling
This was posted on Facebook. I know I posted here with weight updates that I didn't there, but I haven't said anything July 14, and most of what I say below is still apropos.
I want to admit something to you, my friends. I made all of these posts about my weight loss success, and it was good and you supported me. That program ended on April 1. Then I fell silent, except to tell you about breaking my walking records and other positive things, but I never mentioned my weight again.
Embarrassment doesn't cover how I felt after a while following the program. Not about my weight loss, but what has happened in the last several months.
When I finished my program, my weight goal of 240 pounds was only 28 pounds away. Now it's 74 pounds away, meaning I've regained 46 pounds of what I lost, 45% of what I lost since I specifically started a weight loss journey in August 2012.
There are habits that are impossible to break, and for me, the major one that interferes is eating when stressed, depressed, or otherwise affected emotionally in a negative way. It's not something this program fixes. This also wouldn't have been fixed by the bariatric surgery, because emotional eating isn't something a physical procedure can resolve and I was warned about that when I first went to the information session. You aren't fixed by a program. You fix yourself. I did not achieve that during the program.
Other than those with medical problems, most people who fail at any dietary lifestyle change regain because they can't maintain what they did on whatever program they chose. Also, even if they keep doing what they should, there's enough variance for regain. The stomach is a muscle. It keeps growing. If you keep putting too much in, even small amounts, too often, it regains its size, and once again, you have less bodily cues that you've overeaten, and most likely, your carbohydrate/protein/fat balance is off and coupled with not enough exercise.
What feeds my stress and depression? More of it. When you've succeeded so well, but you can't maintain it, you feel as if you failed. Failure leads to stress and depression, and for me, eating again. That lovely little cycle spirals out, and everything I was supposed to be doing for weight loss or maintenance dropped out of my daily activities.
I can't go back to the program because it's popular now. Last we heard there was a two-year waiting list in Guelph. I refuse the surgery, both because I don't want to do it and it won't solve the emotional eating.
I know what the benefits are to the weight loss because I've already felt them, and now I've felt them recede. I knew how to do what I need to do. Making it my lifestyle after the program is done and I don't have the Optifast shake to rely on was a major shift and I didn't transfer to it successfully.
At this point, I'm starting again to do everything I was supposed to do. If I fail again, I'll get back up again. It's a setback, not a failure, and I have to convince myself of that. As a friend once said, "Invictus Maneo - I remain unvanquished."
Embarrassment wasn't the only factor that kept me from posting about this earlier. There are many reasons:
I am my own worst critic. I know that, but being self-deprecating is a skill I have. I can poke fun at myself, but for this it was too hard to do, to be light-hearted while I wasn't so light again.
How could I tell people who supported me that I felt that I failed, that their words might have been put to better use, knowing I was accepting support even as I ate my way up the scale again after the program ended?
Keeping it closer to my self and staying more insular than last time seemed to make sense. No-one wants to admit failure. I discovered some that revelled in it happening to others. There were those that seemed to want me to fail, possibly as they felt they had in the past, or were unsupportive generally and didn't like seeing me change. Some told me I was cheating by "using a program with a gimmick to lose weight." A few hated hearing about my success by my posting "too much". After that, I certainly wasn't going to post about the weight gain, even if I had purged all of those types mentioned off my social media lists and out of my life.
If you think this is a post about garnering sympathy, it's not. It's to establish the truth of what happened, to explain it to myself as much as it explains it to you, so there's a record of these events. If this ever happens again, I want to remind myself to get back up from my inner fall from the high of a success, to start again on a slightly different journey toward the same goal I had, and keep doing that until I reach it.