I Have A Dream

When I was a little kid, I believed that there would come a day when I would have my act together. Of course, I didn’t put it that way at the time, but I did have a clear picture of myself at maybe thirty years old, confident, knowing everything I needed to know, at peace with who I was, living a balanced and satisfying life. It was what I thought every adult achieved eventually, once the folly of childhood was shed.

Ha!

Here I am, fifty-five years old, still wondering if that day will ever come. Not surprisingly, I thought the same thing about losing weight. That belief led to a vision of me, finally thin, eating with ease, enjoying a diet that was tasty, satisfying and good for me. Food was no longer a source of guilt, failure or agony. As with my dream of being a fully realized adult, I saw myself calm, relaxed, and possessed of a rarified state of being where food was handled once and for all.

Well, that didn’t happen either. I’ve been successful in maintaining a one-hundred pound weight loss for about four and a half years, but it’s never become easy or effortless or “handled.” It’s important that you know this because the diet industry promises us the exact opposite. We are told that each new wonder diet, each breakthrough drug, each revolutionary program, guarantees that on their plan, you will lose weight and keep it off without difficulty or anguish. Success story after success story are paraded before us, each newly slender and jubilant (transformed!), vowing that they will never be fat again.

Hate to be a party pooper folks, but if you think that maintaining your weight loss will be effortless, then you are setting yourself up for a big disappointment. And possibly a big weight regain. I know this from bitter personal experience. I’ve lost large amounts of weight several times in my life and, except for the last time, I’ve regained every last ounce and then some. In fact, that was my pattern. Lose twenty pounds, gain thirty. Lose those thirty pounds, gain fifty. I was a serial dieter for most of my life, losing and regaining too many times to count, until at last I was one-hundred pounds overweight.

So what’s different this time? This time, I’ve abandoned the dream. I’ve accepted that maintaining a large weight loss is no picnic and never will be. I don’t always like what I have to do to keep my weight in this lower range, but in desperate moments, I channel the wit and wisdom of my mother. When I was a small girl, crying over some terrible heartache, how many times did she say to me, “If you’re going to get upset about that, you’re going to have a very hard life.” Indeed. It seems that the best way to deal with the hard stuff is to accept that it’s hard. Be a bit of a stoic. And then move on.

I’m sure this is not what you want to hear. You want to hear that there’s a magic bullet, a cure, an answer to obesity that doesn’t involve a measure of pain. But there isn’t. All I can say is, if you’re going to be upset by that... Well, I think you know the rest.