Slipping

I’m slipping. Badly.

Actually, I’ve already slipped.

I’ve been orienting for my weekend job since immediately after Memorial Day. My week long orientation led to 2 weeks and now I’m at week 5 and still training 40+ hours a week. On top of trying to keep my grades up in my classes and the plethora of other obligations I have this summer. 

This has led to noticeable stress weight loss and the onslaught of comments. “You look so good!” or “You’re so skinny!” are thrown around the most.

But I don’t. Clothes that I bought at the beginning of orientation are (literally) hanging/falling off of me right now. Logically I know I look unhealthy. Stress weight loss is never good and I know I’ll eventually get back to my ideal weight.

When I tell people that, they tell me that I should just hit the gym more and I’ll be able to maintain the loss.

Not helpful. I shouldn’t want to maintain an unhealthy weight loss, I should want to maintain a healthy weight.

I know they’re just trying to be encouraging. But I already go to the gym. Every day. For at least an hour. And it’s a slippery slope to end up back in the place where I’m at the gym 3+ hours a day and injuring my body in ways that I’ll never be able to repair.

It’s harder for me to workout right now. Not because I’m intensifying my workouts or because I don’t have the time but because I just don’t have the energy. The change in schedule and associated weight loss are making me weak. I find myself skipping workouts all together and yet I’m still shrinking.

My parents handle this differently. Dad tells me how many more inches his arms go around me when he hugs me and asks me if I’m eating. I’m eating, I promise. I’m also walking well over 5 miles a day at work on top of my normal workouts. Mom brings more and more food when she visits.

And despite how logically I’m trying to look at this situation, I slipped. What’s worse is that I didn’t even realize that I had sipped until I was in over my head.

When I hear these positive comments about my weight, and such negative comments at the prospect of me gaining some back it only translates into one thing in my mind: they all thought I was fat and ugly before. 

Now I’m weighing myself every morning. 

I know this isn’t a healthy behavior, but part of me keeps thinking that I have my physical on Monday and my Endo appointment on Tuesday. That’s two days in a row of having to get on that damn scale. Part of me wonders if I can keep the loss going. Part of me knows that I will feel like a failure when I gain this weight back and my body gets back to where it’s comfortable and healthy. I’ll feel fat. And I’ll hate myself. And I know that.

And it’s scary. It’s scary to know that I’ve ended up back here again and I couldn’t even see it before it was too late.

I’m back in a place where getting back to a healthy weight will make me feel like a failure. It’ll make me feel fat (compared to where I’m at now) and gross and ugly. It’ll make me feel less than and I hate it. I hate that I know better. And I hate that even if I kept losing weight, I’d still hate the way I looked.

Until I stop defining my worth in numbers, whether they’re on a meter or on a scale, I’ll never be able to love myself and stop this nonsense.

And I need to love myself. I deserve to love myself.

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I encourage everyone to read this article: Why You Should Think Twice Before You Praise Someone for Losing Weight