Ambivalence

I've been feeling very ambivalent about my blogging recently. Perhaps it's just that I'm a bit ambivalent about my life right now: too much stress on many levels and the realization that I need to find a way to deal with it.

Food is not much of an issue compared to stress. It's been almost a year since I started changing my attitude towards food and how I eat. Although I don't think I was ever a particularly emotional eater, now food is even less of an issue. My stress comes out in other ways. My challenge is to deal with bad, stress-induced habits that have nothing to do with food, but that must be dealt with nevertheless.

I'm also feeling ambivalent towards blogging because I know the food message I advocate here is quite unorthodox. No plans, no planning, no calorie counting (of either food eaten or calories burned), no bad foods, no good foods--just lots of "soft skill" development: listening to and answering the hunger signal, listening to and respecting the fullness signal, legalizing all foods (thanks for the term, Francesca!), moving your body, loving yourself just as you are now rather than beating up on yourself for falling off the wagon, not looking perfect not getting results fast enough...

It would be great if I could say to everyone, "Look at me! It really works! I've lost all the weight I wanted to and kept it off!!", but that's not the case. The wall I've hit is totally related to my handicap and how it prevents me from doing the exercise I want and need to do. It's frustrating to realize that now that I have finally found what is right for me, I can't put it to work entirely. So the results, while good, are not all that they would have otherwise been.

People want to see results. I can't blame them. Weight-loss blog readers like numbers--preferably if they're going down. No numbers...yawn. No tangible change...yawn.

I think I do have a success story to tell. But it's not exciting and the real success lies in the long term. What if I manage to maintain the weight that I have lost (about half of my ideal goal) for two years, five years, forever, but never manage to lose the other half? In the "Biggest Loser" universe, I am a dud. In the weight-loss universe, I'm not very exciting.

I intend to just keep plodding along.