Watch Out, My Inner Fat Girl Is Hungry

After working so hard over the last year to lose weight and find a piece of myself that I knew I had lost, I also found out that my inner demon is an overweight young woman who sits at the depth of my brain ready to raid an ice cream shop at a moment’s notice at the first sign of weakness or smell of failure.

And, wow, can she smell it — weakness and fear, that is. It’s like when a mother knows something is wrong from the sheer quiet of her children, that something is either broken or someone’s demise is being plotted.

Earlier this year, I was thrown a curveball in my life, that sent me backwards in my journey, grasping at straws and really wanting to not go down my usual path of emotional eating. But as most of us know, we tend to go back to what is comfortable and soothing when we are upset, angry and unable to make sense of much.

After all that hard work, I now find myself almost starting from square one all over again because I let that overweight young woman in my head get the better of me and she raided that damn ice cream shop and ate every last morsel of ice cream (and the toppings) in the building, then went and had a few pizzas, bacon cheeseburgers, a few chocolate cakes and everything else she could find that came across her path.

It is hell to find myself a part of that statistic that starts to regain their weight back after losing an incredible 65 pounds in a year. I told myself that I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be another success/failure story. I wanted to be an inspiration to other people, but most importantly I wanted to be an inspiration to myself to keep moving forward no matter what happened.

While the last 12 months have not been easiest walk in the park with my mother’s dementia diagnosis, too many people continually telling me that being myself is wrong in some way, losing my job, having to find a new job and everything that comes with starting a new job, I am now determined to put my Inner Fat Girl to rest since I’m hoping she will be in a food coma soon and ready to hibernate for the winter.

Realizing that a majority of my hard work was almost 90-percent what I was eating and about 10-percent exercise, I know so much of my problem is mind over matter – grilled chicken over a cheeseburger, a sugar-free popsicle over a hot fudge sundae, and a fresh salad over a fried chicken dinner. Life is about compromises. Sometimes you have to hurt a little to get where you want to be, knowing full well the end result is well worth the pain to get there.

My Inner Fat Girl will truly never go away. For some, much like that fat girl, their own inner demon is that asshat who torments you when you’re at our lowest, that skinny Barbie on your shoulder who whispers in your ear that one more cookie won’t kill you or that bully who pulls the rug right out from under you when you feel like it can’t get any worse.

At this point, I am not angry at anyone other than myself. No one can take credit for this downward turn, no matter how much they think could. My self-doubt, self-loathing and innate ability to eat my emotions has gotten the best of me, leaving me with no prize for failing rather a swift kick in the ass and fast pass back to sensible eating until everything feels comfortable again… my clothes, my pride and, most importantly, me.

While my journey continues, the main goal will continue to be finding myself and figure out who I want to be for the remainder of my days. But this journey was also to become a strong female role model for my boys. So setbacks, that’s just another part of life. Learning how to rise above them and continue to move forward, that’s the true test we must overcome on our own two feet, head against the wind, sun in our face, and smile from ear to ear.

Now back to the basics…