Stuck inside myself

I don’t know what’s wrong with me – I had fully planned to participate in NaBloPoMo, and I managed all 30 days last year, and yet every time I thought about it this year, I freaked out a little bit and invented an excuse to not post.  Or just pretended that I’d forgotten I signed up or that I even had a blog.  I have no real excuse, actually.  But I do have things I wanted to write, and blog avoidance is keeping me from writing them down (using the internet to help me organize my thoughts).  So I have to just get over myself and clickety-clack away, or else I’ll never work through my stuff.  Maybe part of my problem is that my blog is a little like therapy, and therapy involves looking closer at the deep dark stuff inside myself that I really prefer not to look at most of the time.  Not that things are terrible (read: last year this same time, when life totally sucked).  Things are actually pretty good, I’m happy; I just dyed my hair red and cut myself cute sideswept bangs and I’m whittling away at those college credits, about to do the credit for lifelong learning thing which should shave 21 more credits off and get me that much closer that much faster… 

But my weight is, to be punny, a weight upon myself.  Still.  I haven’t managed to drop anything beyond the 25 or so pounds I lost almost a year ago.  I can feel that I’m stronger and more flexible, I can do things I couldn’t do a year or two ago (like a successful, if very short, crow pose, which I was incredibly proud of).  My waist curves inward ridiculously, very hourglassy, and would be utterly sexy if I didn’t have a big ol’ Buddha belly still hanging off the front, and I have these great big biceps which you can’t actually see because they are buried under a layer of chub.  I know that I want to lose weight for all the right reasons, I know that it’s not that I think weight loss will make me happier or something unrealistic like that.  I am happy, and I’ve been thin, and I was in one of my most depressed phases when I was thin.  But I know that losing weight will make me more confident, will help me feel better about myself, will open up a whole wealth of clothing opportunities that are closed to me now.  Even when I was all weepy and mopey and thin, I knew I looked hot and I dressed to accentuate that, and I had major body confidence because of that.  Now, I just can’t feel that same way – I’m cute, but I’m fat.  I have a great new hairdo, but I have chins.  I can’t separate the two things – the way I look has to do with the way I look, and my face and my body can’t be split apart, my chub and my muscles are both in the same package as my eyes and my chins, or my (niceish) boobs and my big butt.

The truth is, I have been lazy.  I have backslid.  And yet, in some ways, I haven’t.  I stopped walking every lunch, but I do yoga every day.  Or else I don’t, I skip a few days because life is so busy, and then I feel so guilty.  I eat healthy meals, but Halloween candy and I were far too intimate.  And last night I ate a pint of ice cream.  But in general I am still on track, I am still doing the right things – just not enough of them.  It’s so freaking hard and I get so down on myself, and then I remind myself that I really have made those lifestyle changes you’re “supposed to” make, I just need to make more of them, which sucks because I am happy with my lifestyle right now.  It’s so confusing, because I want to accept HAES and remind myself that my weight doesn’t define me and do right by myself and all the body acceptance blogs I read… but I also want to wear a cute dress sometimes and feel awesome about it, not all self-conscious about fat folds or how huge my calves look without jeans over them. 

So I had expected to feel somehow refreshed after writing all this – like I’d conquered something in myself, the block to the writing or the weight loss block, or the part of me that hates the way I look sometimes.  But, honestly, I feel just as confused as I did when I started.   Just as unsure and tangled up and wishing someone would hand me Jillian Michaels on a platter and just force me to change my body, instead of leaving it up to me.