First Comes Love...Or Does It?

A friend of mine recently started a weight loss program, and my initial reaction was something like shock, and maybe a little terror. I felt judged somehow because SHE could no longer handle her eating and weight gain - and she is nowhere near my size. If it was that bad for her, what did that say about me? Was she as horrified by me as I am?

My way of handling it was to spout off my "firm" belief that body acceptance and love should come first, and weight loss would naturally follow. I silently criticized the notion of prescribed meals, telling myself that it was no way to learn how to eat - after all, that wasn't the way to manage one's relationship with food. And I sat back on my high horse, secretly waiting for the whole thing to blow up.

What I didn't see coming was that as she learned, very early on, what her triggers were and how this eating plan forced her to realize how she had been using food, I began to see parallels in my own eating habits. I began to see how all the junk I'd been preaching had been nothing but a bunch of fluff designed to distract me from reality: I have a problem with food. I am not alone in that, but it's still my problem. And as for the "first comes body love, then comes weight loss" idea, says who? What if, by doing things like exercising and eating better, for myself and my body out of respect and caring, I end up loving it and accepting it?

One of the things I have been afraid of is allowing myself to be motivated by shame. It might work in the short term (as evidenced by every fad diet and workout program ever advertised), but it doesn't get to the core of the issue - why we eat. So I have been seeking out other motivators, ones based on positive things like self-love and -acceptance. As I write this, I am still trying to find that formula, that motivation that speaks to my values and goals. But what I recently realized is that I don't have to find those things before I start making changes. It's possible that by doing it, by getting started and making value-based choices (rather than choosing for immediate gratification), the answers to the bigger questions might just find me. Maybe I have to be doing the work to be open and ready to receive the "answers".

And so I begin on this journey - one choice, one step, one change at a time. It's already uncomfortable, and I don't exactly like how it feels to be so damn mindful of every choice, but I'm here. I'm on the path.