It was only last week when people all over the world took down their 2014 calendars and replaced them with new 2015 calendars. With this advent, there’s one conversation that often seems to dominate New Year’s resolution chitchat, and that’s talk about trimming one’s waistline.
The main feature I note about this conversation is that this talk is often done willingly on the part of the person seeking to lose weight.
Personally, I could hardly count the number of times I’ve had such conversations over the years. It’s in these instances that I have always willingly admitted my need to shed the pounds.
‘Because I care about you’
Talk of weight-loss resolutions brings to mind another sort of related conversation that I have participated in, but far less willingly. In fact, it’s the sort of conversation that is liable to cause me to do some figurative kicking and screaming.
What conversation is this? It’s the conversation where someone feels it necessary to point out to me my need to lose weight.
Frankly, I find such conversation irritating and unnecessary. Yet there’s always someone who feels it necessary to bring the subject up.
Usually it’s the same people, over and over, saying the same thing in different words on a different day.
I hate this conversation.
It’s always delivered with words, “because I care about you” or “I don’t want you to die before I do.”
It’s hard for me to write that without rolling my eyes – in fact I think I just did.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate that these people really do care for me and really don’t want me to die young, but all of that sentiment is overshadowed by my annoyance for the rest of the conversation.
Fortunately for me, it’s been a little while since I’ve last had this conversation. It was sometime in the middle of 2014 when I found myself having to explain, more than once, just how unhelpful this conversation was to me.
It’s quite possible that some people respond well to confrontation. Although as I write that statement, I have a hard time convincing myself that such a thing could be true.
Well-intentioned family and friends don’t always know how to really be of help when someone they know has a serious need to lose weight.
Thus begins the confrontation.
My number one response to such confrontation has usually been, “Do you not understand that I am aware of my weight every moment of every day from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed? I’m aware of it every time my knees hurt, every time I get out of breath, every time I try to put on a pair of pants and they don’t fit. I’m aware of it, more than anyone could know – and because of super-morbid obesity, this awareness literally consumes almost every area of my life.”
The problem with confrontations about my weight is that I’m more aware of the issues of my weight than anyone else is, no matter how I may act or what I may say. Putting up a front that everything is okay can possibly be just another way of saying, “Don’t go there. It’s not okay to go there.”
I’m sure it can be frustrating for those loved ones who just don’t know what to do to help when they see obesity ravaging the body of someone they love.
There’s no instruction manual on how to react in such a situation, and not every person is going to react the same way to a confrontation. However, if one has already confronted a person about their weight, personally, it strikes me as somewhat unproductive to keep going there with that person if it hasn’t been well received before or even been helpful. It’s simply doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Confronting confrontation
The last time I was subjected to such a conversation, I knew I had to do something. So after it was all over, I went for what I call an “angry swim.” Rather than doing what I usually would do in such a situation and eat an entire pizza in one sitting, I went to the pool all filled with emotion and hurt feelings. I got it all out in the water.
Thankfully the pool was empty and I could fitfully swim and exercise until I felt better. It took time, but it worked. It was then that I realized that I had to explain to some of my loved ones that such conversations usually drive me straight towards the behaviors that they would like me to avoid. They needed to realize that I was more likely to overeat because it’s so easy to deal with hurt feelings with a doughnut than it is to deal with it any other way. Unfortunately dealing with those feelings with doughnuts doesn’t make the hurt feelings go away permanently – as they are bound to come back if not dealt with by changing the thought patterns that lead to the hurt feelings in the first place.
Troubled relationship with food
I also realized that I had to explain that there are other opportunities to be helpful that don’t involve confrontations or hurt feelings. I can look back over my life and spot such opportunities in my own life that no one else saw. And no – it doesn’t involve making food decisions for that person. That’s another thing that irks me to no end. It reeks of distrust.
I know from experience that it’s far better to treat me the same as everyone else because the moment that I sense that I’m being deprived, I get mad and have to wrestle with the temptation to go out and buy for myself the food that someone is trying to deprive me of. And for one piece of withheld cake, a whole cake may take its place.
I’m aware of the issues that arise when I face such a situation, yet, even though I know how to deal with these situations in a healthy manner, I still struggle. With some people, I now find myself unable to trust the motives of certain actions that people take. Go out of your way to place my favorite food – cheese – as far out of my reach at the table as humanly possible, and I’m liable to suspect it was on purpose, whether it was or not.
The truth is that I have had a troubled relationship with food, and right now I’m working that out of my life, but it doesn’t always take much to stir that up.
I wish that people would can the confrontations and start treating me like anyone else at the table, because then maybe I could feel like anyone else at the table and not feel compelled to emotionally overeat when it’s all over.
I don’t always give in to those compulsions anymore, but I’m not perfect. I’m a work in progress.
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If you want to follow my weight-loss journey, read about it occasionally in my column, “Healthy steps” or you can watch my weight-loss journey unfold and show your support by liking the page www.facebook.com/GretchenGetFit on Facebook or following me on Twitter @GretchenGetFit. Contact the writer at gbalshuweit@thedailyreview.com.
Healthy steps is written by Gretchen Balshuweit, news editor and Health & Wellness page columnist for The Daily Review as she pursues her own journey to health and wellness in hopes of losing a total of 200-250 pounds of excess weight.
