Week 31 Progress Report: Loving Yourself Back to Health

So here, on time for once, are the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	234.6
Original Target*:	246.8
Adjusted Target:	232.8
Actual Weight:	233.0
Loss/Gain:	– 1.6
Total Loss:	69.6
% of Goal:	50.2%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.2
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

As I reported yesterday, I suffered an inexplicable 2-lb. spike on Thursday which took the burnish off crossing the 50% mark on Wednesday. I lost most but not all of it on Friday and had a completely awesome dinner that night which cost me 0.4 lbs. on Saturday. Compared to the plan-month target line, I’m over by 1.5 lbs. However, considering the two upticks this week, I did pretty good and am still well ahead of where I originally planned to be. One and a half pounds down for the week is much better than a pound and a half up. Take the victories you get.

This morning, one of my Lose It! friends posted a quote from Ijeoma Oluo: “You can’t hate your body into a shape you will love.” (Ijeoma, you will remember, is the woman who lost weight only to come to resent the change in people’s attitude toward her.)

I agree you can’t hate your body into a shape you will love. But by the same token, you can’t wish away obesity’s damage to your health. Losing weight is not about hating your body. It’s about treating your body with the love and respect it deserves. (It’s about treating food with the respect it deserves, too.) My body has been trying to tell me for a long time, in ways both subtle and obvious, that it doesn’t like the way I treat it and that, if I go on abusing it, it will break down good and proper.

Here’s what I can’t stand about the “victim mentality”: I am a moral agent. By “moral agent” I mean that the degree to which I possess free will is the degree to which I possess responsibility not only for my actions but also my reactions. I may have been a victim; but, by God, I am not a robot, unable to do anything other people didn’t program me to do.

Let’s agree for the sake of the argument that I suffered emotional damage as a child (the specifics aren’t necessary or relevant since this is simply offered as a moot point). Some of it was intended to help; some of it was intended to hurt; some of it was done without any regard to healing or wounding.

 

So what? Again, I say SO WHAT?

To continue to indulge an unhealthy pattern of eating is to cooperate with those who hurt me in my own destruction. It gives the demons uncontested possession of my soul. The same with hating or resenting those who hurt me — that isn’t self-love or self-respect. Whatever they did to push me into an unhealthy mind and body, it’s still my mind and my body, and I have to take ownership of pushing both back into healthiness.

That isn’t accomplished by pretending I’m okay and it’s the rest of the world that needs to change to enable my self-destructive behavior.

I can’t stand being patronized. So I can’t stand for people to tell me it’s alright for me to indulge in unhealthy behavior because I was hurt, I’m a victim, and therefore everything I do to hurt myself is completely natural and to be expected. Bullshit. Again, I say bullshit. “Natural” does not equal “good” or “morally acceptable.” As a teacher once told philosopher/writer Michael Liccione, “God loves you. Therefore, self-hatred is a luxury to which you are not entitled.” At the same time, I’m a grown-up and don’t need to be coddled or protected from ugly or inconvenient truths. Blaming isn’t fixing. In fact, playing the blame game is simply a way of avoiding the responsibility for fixing the problem.

Acknowledging injuries done to yourself by others is helpful only so far as it reveals the wounds that need to heal. But at some point, you have to stop picking at the scabs, put on some Neosporin and bandages, and put the injuries on the path to healing. If you allow them to fester, they become infected and possibly gangrenous. That’s why, if your obesity has been part of your life since childhood, you should seriously consider cognitive therapy to help you heal and recover your self-respect. I am.

I don’t mean to be unduly harsh toward Ijeoma Oluo. She means well; as I should have said before, I can’t help but sympathize with her. (Empathy is more problematic than many people suspect.) However, the Franco-English statesman and author Hilaire Belloc once wrote — I paraphrase — that heresies are known not by the errors they propound but by the truths they retain. Ijeoma’s quote falls under the “broken clock” rule: Taken by itself, it’s true, but taken within the context of her previous article on obesity and weight loss, it’s misdirected.

We do our best to take care of those people whom we love. If we love ourselves, we try to take care of ourselves, not destroy ourselves. So no, you can’t hate your body into a shape that you will love. But you can love your body into a shape with which you can live a healthier, more fulfilling life.