Body work

So, I'm fat. Ooooooo. That's a 3 letter word in industrialized nations!!!! Alert! Alert! I figure there are a few different interpretations for that statement:

• I'm objectively overweight. Which I am.
• I feel fat. Which I do.

I read all this material and see ads on TV and bla bla bla about just going on a diet, and my two best friends that work out an hour or hour and a half every day are like "it's just calories in/calories out." Well, that's great, but for me it's more than that. People can make fun of it all they want, if they want to, but I bet there's a lot of people out there that would know what I mean, if they ever read what I just said. Food is more than fuel for my body; it's got a whole emotional component to it that's got very little to do with just the physics of food and nutrition.

I could look back and say it's my mom's fault or my dad's fault or my sister-who-helped-raised me's fault. Not to say that my childhood caregivers don't play a role in things, but it would be a bit of a copout at this point because I am well into adulthood and so have had years already to make my own choices and change old habits.

Well, I am actually taking a class on habit change. I don't drink except on occasion, I don't smoke, and I don't do drugs. So food is really my sole addiction, and I use it. I don't care what anybody says, there are times when I am upset (had a bad day at work or got stressed out over at my mom's or whatever), and I will come home and eat. Not even a whole lot, necessarily, but it will calm me down. I can feel it.

The other habit I need to change is exercise. I used to get a lot more exercise every single day, walking my dog, the parking lot was far away from my office building, and my old job required a fair amount of walking and standing, etc. That has changed, and my scale is informing me of that.

I've taken other classes, done diets, meditated, fasted - you name it, I've probably tried it. I have stayed away from fad diets but have tried to make healthier dietary choices. That works for a few days, maybe a week or two, and then BAM! Right back to my old ways.

I learned as a child to separate myself from my body, in order to survive a few things. But I can't blame it on that, either, as that was also years and years ago. It's a coping mechanism that's there, though, so it's part of what I fall back on now when I get stressed out.

So it's something I continue to work on and work on and work on. This morning, I had an insight. I've known for a while that I don't like to exercise in part because it makes me re-connect with my body, and that scares me because of the stuff I survived. But that happened a long time ago, so what the heck am I afraid of now? Assuming I've processed some of those emotions, that are understandably hard to get through? Weeeell, my insight this morning is that I'm nervous about connecting with my body as it is now.

Take my physical space (meaning my house and my office). I don't mind them looking a little bit lived in but when they get too messy, it starts having an impact on me. I get stressed out and edgy and uncomfortable. So the way I avoid that is by keeping my space relatively in order. Well, if I think of my body in the same way as my physical space, it would be like my physical space being totally out of control, mess-wise. It's like I haven't cleaned or dusted or picked up or washed the dishes or done the laundry or taken out the trash in a long, long time. A long time. So what that means is there's a part of me that's all stressed out about the current condition of my body. So I dissociate (I think) so that I don't have to face that reality. And exercising makes me realize how out of shape I am, so I don't exercise. How's that for a conundrum?

So if I'm correct, then maybe I could go the other way, too. That is, if I had bought a house to flip or something, I would have to go room by room to clean it out, make repairs or renovate or whatever, to get the house ready to put back on the market. Maybe I can do the same thing with my body, like just take things step by step rather than biting off more than I can chew.

But if I put in crap, I'll just get crap, so I have to think about what I eat to. Again, the analogy would be trying to clean a house or room out and then just keep bringing more crap in - it would never work. You have to stop bringing in crap and then just work on getting the existing crap out. [let's see how many times i can use the word crap in this blog entry].

Anyhow, I have to internalize this realization as I think it's pretty big for me. It may just be the achilles hel of this crusty old coping mechanism of mine...