Being on the wrong side of weight loss

There’s a problem when your goal is to lose weight, but instead you keep packing on the weight. So how does this happen? It happens the same way that everything else falls apart—you get careless.

At first it’s subtle. A pound or two. And that’s easy to lose. The problem is, with each pound or two you gain you think, it’s just a pound or two, I can get that off in no time. I’ll just run a little harder. I’ll watch my calories a little stricter. I’ll drink more water. No worries.

And pretty soon, you’ve gained 10 lbs., 20 lbs., 30 lbs., or maybe you’ve gained all of your weight back. You know what’s happening all along yet too many lbs. down the road you wake up one day and think, where did all of this weight come from? How did this happen? How could I LET this happen?

But yet you still just see a pound or two creep up on the scale. The number gets closer and closer to your pre-weight loss weight. Somehow you keep thinking that you’re not going to be able to stop until you get to that weight again, maybe more. It’s horrifying, but you know it’s possible. It’s almost like subconsciously you want to be fat even though you hate everything about being fat.

You hate the way that you feel like a monster when you walk. Like your legs are tree trunks and your feet are cement bricks that shake the floor with each breathless step. You try to cover your rolls of flesh with dark colors and excess fabric. But it doesn’t make it go away. It’s still there, haunting you, yet tempting you to keep doing this to yourself.

Is it some kind of punishment that your subconscious is inflicting upon your poor excuse for a body? The little voice in your head telling you that you don’t deserve to be happy. That where you belong is in a corner with your head down in shame. It points an ugly crooked finger at you and tells you you’re not good enough. And you crumple to the ground in defeat and helplessness. And the voice cackles an evil laugh at your tears of misery.

And so, like death, the fat slowly takes over your body. It attaches itself to the clavicles you so happily discovered on the other side of weight gain. It smothers the shape that had started to show in your arms. It rounds your  face and drowns your cheekbones. Your eyes begin to sink along with your smile.

But there’s a flicker of life somewhere in your eyes. You don’t see it when you look in the mirror anymore, but once in a while you can feel the warmth of the flame that used to fuel your strength. Sometimes you think it’s gone when the ugly  face of obesity shadows over you. But in those moments when you stand up tall and proud and scream into its shameful face that you won’t back down, you start to see a little flicker of a flame.

And so you kick and you scream. You stand up and shove it to the ground. It raises its ugly finger at you again and you begin to doubt yourself. Am I destined to be fat? Will I ever be good enough? Is it possible for me to prove to myself, if not only TO myself, but FOR myself?

A part of you wants to hope that it’s possible to come out of this battle alive. But a part of you just wants to lay down and die, succumbing yourself to its terribleness because you don’t know any other way and you’re not sure you’d know how to live any other way.

It’s really up to you choose. You’ve found yourself on the wrong side of weight loss, and you have a choice. You can choose life, or you can choose to let obesity control and destroy every single moment of your life—until eventually it takes it from you.