Last day of the decade. Woot...not so much. All of the weight loss commercials are kicking in to high gear; not really something I'm looking forward to being bombarded with for the next two months. Normally advertisements for weight loss products are not big triggers for me (I find negative talk about others, or a person's own body much more troubling), however the sheer number of the ads is what slowly wears at my healthy mindset. I'm gaining right now. I'm working on accepting it. But every time I see a commercial or a print ad for some weight loss quick fix, that nasty little disordered thought starts to worm it's way into my brain. "Well perhaps just this once," it reasons; "We can do it 'right' the first time and then we'll never have to worry about going on a diet again.", "Just think about how much more comfortable you'd feel in jeans that we just one size smaller."; "We just need to lose a little weight; no need to worry about going overboard."; "You don't want to feel the way you did when you graduated high school, right? I thought you promised that we would never get back to that weight. Let me help you keep that promise."; "It's FDA approved; you can't tell me that it's bad for us."; or my all time favorite: "We did this whole weight loss program thing before...and look how successful we were! We lost so much weight together." That last statement is laughable, but it lets me know when it's my eating disorder talking not me. I did lose a lot of weight on a diet program once; I lost a lot of other things too. A couple pant sizes (that was nice), any sense of my own hunger and satiety cues (not so great), a healthy perspective on the importance of ones weight (gone), and an already shaky self esteem (vamoosed). I did gain one thing though; an eating disorder. I gained an eating disorder trying to fix something that was never really broken to begin with. I still am struggling to undo the damage that my diet mentality wrecked on my life. I work every day now to accept myself lovingly for who I am now; not the person I will be 10 pounds lighter. When the those New Years Resolution commercials get that diet beast stirring in my brain; I breathe, and I remind myself: "Nothing to fix." This year I resolve to accept that a larger waistline does not mean that I am any less lovable or worthy of a human being....so shove it diet ads.
