A confession about the irrational

I have a confession to make.

As I've started trying to make the lifestyle changes that I need to make in order to lose a substantial amount of weight, I've been doing a lot of soul searching. During this time, I've come to realize that I have a stumbling block that I had never really acknowledged before: Deep down there's a part of me that is scared of losing weight. There's a part of me that wants to fight tooth and nail and sabotage all my efforts. The enemy within, you might say.

I realize that this is irrational because, after all, why wouldn't someone want to look better, be healthier, be around longer for family and friends, be more comfortable in their own skin, feel less self-conscious around others, and so on and so forth. Obviously nobody needs to explain the tangible (and even intangible) benefits of losing weight.

However, I've been a big guy all my teenage and adult life. I'm almost 40. And it has occurred to me that there is a certain selfish comfort in my being the size I am. It's deeply and profoundly ingrained as a part of my identity: "I AM a fat guy." I've never known anything different, honestly. It's a "defining characteristic" you might say.

Of course I *know* (intellectually) that it's not who I am. I *know* I'm much more beyond that, and that what is inside is what really counts. I *know* that no matter what happens to my body I will always be the same me that I am and that I always have been.

But deep down.... deep deep down... down where you have those little thoughts that don't always *have* to be rational... there's that little niggling, nagging voice that says otherwise. Emotionally there's a tie to me being a big guy. Emotionally there's a series of deranged sorts of comfort. Emotionally it's there. There's a bunch of little "benefits" (for lack of a better word.) It's as simple as the comfort of not having to worry about being cold all the time. It's the comfort of having consistency. It's the comfort of not having to change what I am or how I do things. It's the comfort for having a ready-made excuse for not being able to succeed in something that, perhaps... perhaps I'm just too scared to try to accomplish better or more thoroughly... or at all. Maybe it's just a comfortable reason NOT to do things. It's a comfort of complacency and laziness. (And at a lizard-brain level, who doesn't like to be comfortable?) But it's also an *irrational* fear that if I change... if I change what I LOOK like... then I won't be me anymore. And that silly, stupid, irrational fear scares the hell out of me. There's just a certain comfort of knowing the things that I'm familiar with -- even if they are anguishing, embarrassing, and frustrating.

So, obviously there are a billion reasons TO make a change. But there's this handful of little reasons which aren't talked about a lot. And there seem to be a lot of people who just assume that the positive reasons are so plentiful that the negative reasons shouldn't matter. Or that they should be easy to overcome. But that's the real issue. That's the real stumbling block for me.

They aren't.

So, I just thought I'd put this out here. I'm taking it a day at a time. I'm breathing. I'm working on it. I'm pushing forward against those fears as best I can. But I wanted anyone else that reads this and feels the same way to know that those fears ARE real, and they ARE valid. And they ARE something that have to be overcome.

-Mark