TW: Weightloss, dieting, self-loathing
I’ve been trying to be healthy. I’d slowly gained some weight after my weightloss surgery in mid 2016. I knew why. I was home all day. Feeling bored and despondent about my lack of employment (and increasing weight). Which led to comfort eating and more despondency about my weight and apathy towards life and my health. My weightloss surgery meant I couldn’t eat massive amounts. Just regularly and badly.
I have new sneakers. I know that’s not a big deal for most people. Indeed once it wouldn’t have been for me either. When I was a regular gym-goer and exerciser I used to get new sneakers (aka: sandshoes, runners, joggers) each year. I was – back then – a Nike addict so the brand was usually a no-brainer and often I had several pairs, cross-trainers for sport or gym classes; and running shoes for… well for walking.
Regular readers would know however that my exercise regime has been sporadic over the last decade (or two). When I’m on a fitness roll – as I was before my seachange – I attended gym classes 4-5 days a week. And sometimes walked as well.
[TW: Disordered-eating]
I want something from food that it’s not giving me.
It’s been two years since I was employed full-time and I’m fairly sure I’ve spent most of that eating. In fact, it increasingly feels as if I am constantly scouring my cupboard and fridge for fodder but it’s finally come to a head.
Because nothing is tasty enough. Fulfilling enough. Nothing lasts long enough.
I often feel uncomfortably full. Over-sated but unsatisfied.
I was going to call this Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc but the title I’ve used is an abbreviation of that. Apparently. It’s a phrase I only know from watching The West Wing. I don’t think it’s actually the right phrase for what I’m trying to say here, but the only other one I can think of is something from the lessons we had at school when computers were first being introduced in the mid 1980s… IF <something> THEN <something else>. Clear as mud?
Which doesn’t bring me to my point which is actually about exercise, fitness and ageing.
I started going to over-50s exercise classes a couple of months ago. My main motivating factor was that they were being held IN MY SUBURB…. or at least the neighbouring one. Small group, low impact, inexpensive. So, perfect.
See what I did there? In that title? Anyone who read my (former) Diet Schmiet blog knows food, fitness, exercise and I have a long and tumultuous history. You wouldn’t know it now but I was fairly athletic when young. I played representative basketball and netball and at one point exercised obsessively for hours a day.
I was struggling a little on the weekend. There was nothing major, just a few things colliding Bermuda Triangle-style making me edgy and irritable. The ongoing unemployment thing is obviously ever-present… as it’s almost a year since I finished my contract. Interestingly a similar position has come up with the same government agency but my confidence isn’t quite what it was, and I continue to ponder on how I was perceived.
Completely irrelevant backstory: I developed an irrational hatred of men (anyone, but mostly men) with clefts in their chins because when I was at University (living at a residential college) a guy – who was perfectly nice to me – made a comment that has stayed with me. It was during a game of netball and I was an okay player so I’m assuming he was just trying to be funny when he said…. “We’ve made her better, stronger, fatter than she’s ever been before….”
Last year I had weight loss surgery. I’ve talked about it briefly here and there and I temporarily opened a separate Instagram account so I could share stuff and follow similar accounts. But – before starting I knew that account would be short lived. I know myself pretty well you see and knew that it would take over my life if I let it. And I did not want my life to be about my weight loss surgery, as it had been (perhaps still is) about food and weight and so forth. (Indeed, I eventually ditched my Diet Schmiet blog for that exact reason!)
I DID NOT WANT IT TO DEFINE ME.
