I weighed myself for the first time since at least Monday, and I did it at night, after dinner. Why did I do that? Why? I can think of nothing more bone-headed than what I did. There are no words for how much I wish I didn't do that. First, I'm freaked out by the weight. Second, I am sadangrydespondent that I'm so freaked out by it, that it makes me feel panicky, shamed, trapped. And why the sadangrydespondent feeling? Because there's no good reason for the weight to freak me out, to make me sad, to scare me, to panic me. There's no piece of reality in my reaction to seeing the scale. I'd be tempted to go through a mantra about the amount of food in the digestive system and the time of day being important factors in consistent weigh-ins, but the whole basis behind that mantra (that the weight I saw tonight isn't an accurate representation of my current body mass - and it isn't) misses the whole point. It should be moot that the "high" weight I saw is not my bones/muscles/organs/skin/fat. The only thing that should matter is that my instinct to reject an arbitrary number makes no sense. But I cling to the likelihood that in the morning I'll see a more arbitrarily comfortable number once again.
Sometimes the uphill battle against myself just feels like a parody. Sometimes I feel downright Sisyphean.
And then sometimes I check the mail late and find a piece of momentary salvation from a demented babydoll:
Now to skip the whole rolling-the-stone-up-the-hill thing, and jump right into the air, and simply forget to hit the ground. Hm....
Why do we do that to ourselves? We know, we just know that we can avoid the aggravation by waiting a day or two, by making sure to weigh in the morning etc... but instead, with the knowledge there - front central in the brain, we do it anyway.
ReplyDeleteThen we spend the rest of the night wondering...hating, loathing, feeling like a dough rising, getting bigger with every passing hour.
Why are we our own worst enemies?
I predicted correctly. This morning the number was right back down where I'm used to seeing it lately.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me at a meta level isn't the NUMBERS per se. It's the arbitrary and irrational way I'm bothered BY the numbers. Also the fact that if I'd just waited until this morning to do a weigh-in, I wouldn't have had the whole "hating, loathing, feeling like a dough rising, getting bigger with every passing hour" thing going on last night.
Sigh. Let's run away to the Galapagos and live with the tortoises.
Please lets! I'll bring books and cocktails!
ReplyDelete