I think it's time to revive this blog. I'm, yes, you guessed it, back on the wagon to weight loss. It seems to be my lifelong story but this time I really want it to stick. Permanently. Which is why I am trying to learn to be kind to myself, to have grown-up boundaries and not eat like a 6 year-old on Halloween night, and at the same time to be patient and understanding. If it took me 25 years to reach this point, I cannot expect my body to return to a normal weight overnight, or even within six months!
Which is extremely difficult for me to do. I'm good at waiting for most things in life. Waiting for the sermon to be over, waiting for my turn at the cash register, waiting behind the tottering lady with the cane and granny cart to make her way down the narrow sidewalk so I can pass. Yet somehow, with weight loss, I expect it to happen magically and instantly.
Like the snap-your-fingers-its-done society we live in today.
I found myself mindlessly scrolling through YouTube shorts the other day, more than slightly irritated at the fact that they were now 3 minutes long instead of the 60-second limit they were before. Unlike my husband, who had no qualms flicking through short after short, barely waiting for the reel to start before swiping up to the next one, I felt obliged to watch every reel until the end, almost as if the creator were peering over my shoulder, making sure I did so. My attention span now had to triple and I had no patience for that. Just like I had no patience with this agonizingly slow process I was going through.
I started this new phase of my weight-loss journey back in October. The end of October, to be precise. There were a lot of ups and downs, not just emotionally but also reflected on the scales. Yet I'd started to see a downward trend and that was super encouraging for me.
Until this week.
"My stomach is empty but I don't want to eat a meal now and have to stay up several more hours for it to digest," I complained in the family group chat around 10 pm at night. My mom suggested keeping it empty to sleep better, using the power of the mind over hunger pains to manage until morning when I could eat again. My sister suggested a handful of nuts or fruit to tide me over. Even ChatGPT got in on the advice-party, recommending yogurt or hummus for an easily-digestible snack.
I rummaged about in the fridge and found boiled beets. After snacking on 1 1/2 medium sized beets, my stomach was no longer grumbling and I went to bed feeling justified in my choice of healthy food. The next morning reflected my virtuous choice—I had finally dropped out of the obese BMI category into the overweight category! I was overjoyed!!! Granted, I had lost 0.8 kilos overnight because all my stomach had to process was a cup of produce, but I was elated. After slogging away for 3 months, I had finally reached the first major goal. I told my aunt; I told my husband. I was waiting to tell the rest of my family and friends until they saw me in a few months' time.
The next day my weight went up.
And the day after.
By Friday, at the end of a very tedious Turkish class, I was ready to call it quits. I hurried home and, after doing the weekly produce shop at the nearby fruits and vegetables bazaar, hauled my granny cart up two flights of stairs, parked it in the hallway, and headed to the kitchen for my well-deserved snack. I reached for the light blue-lidded plastic container on top of the fridge and popped it open. I moved the cookies aside until I found the largest one and then headed for the lounge where I sat down in relief. A few moments later I was savouring my homemade snickerdoodle as the sugar rushed to my brain for some extra stress-relieving endorphins.
I'd done it. I'd made it through another week without sugar and I could now enjoy my sugary treat.
The treat didn't end there. Over the next 24 hours I had another cookie, a large Snickers bar, an entire bar of white chocolate and an entire bar of Dubai chocolate. About 2,000 calories in total.
And the weight went up.
I was now a kilo up from my lowest weight. My BMI had jumped from 29.9 to 30.2 in a matter of 3 days. I felt lousy, my appetite was gone, ironically I didn't even find myself craving chocolate, and I hated my choices. I knew logically that even 2,000 calories of chocolate and cookies could be balanced with calorie-dense foods such as spinach and mushroom stir fry and still not push me over the edge weight-wise, but my brain was refusing to listen to logic.
I hated myself.
Instead of praising myself for the 3+ months I had diligently exercised and started shifting my eating habits to more healthy ones, I chose to focus on the 24 hours of sugar binge-eating I had indulged in. Instead of being proud of the 4 kilos I had lost, I beat myself up over the 1 kilo I had found again. albeit it was most likely from a late-night meal the night before.
And I realized, in that moment, that weight loss was a whole lot more than the food you put in your mouth. Weight loss started in the mind, not the stomach, not the mouth, not even in the refrigerator or cupboards. It started with a positive mindset that refused to be discouraged by little setbacks or minor challenges. It started with a mindset that was committed to the long-haul, okay with the occasional Snickers bar or even the occasional 2,000 calorie binge, but able to see beyond that to the long-term healthy lifestyle that was slowly being sculpted out of the daily choices to be healthy.
I had lost 2 inches around my weight. My pants were getting loose; I was down 1 belt notch on my belt. I felt lighter, my face looked smaller, and my husband was regularly remarking that I looked pretty. I no longer suffered from heartburn, I knew what it felt like to have an empty stomach, and my cravings had disappeared.
I knew I still had a long way to go, as I planned to lose another 16 kilos to reach a normal weight, but I was confident I could do it. After all, time was going to pass by anyway, so why not do something about it while time was passing? Even if it was a very slow process, I would much prefer to see the weight on the scales dropping slowly, rather than incrementally increasing.
And so I picked my chocolate-drunk self back up off the floor of defeat, dusted off the cinnamon-flecked snickerdoodle flour from my face, and decided that I would give it another go. It was time for a 3 minute short.
