Emotional Hallucinations

Although there is certainly a physiological element to being overweight, to being a lifelong overeater, i think the more challenging...by far for me...the mental/emotional elements.

I was born to an overeater, grew up learning to be one, and have lived my entire life either thinking about what to eat or what not to eat. Dieting or eating anything I want. Developing sedentary habits that were only reinforced by my upwardly spiraling weight.

After years of losing and gain hundreds...no, I have committed to honesty....thousands of pounds I became convinced that one more weight lost "program" or "diet" of any sort would only result in an eventual weight gain of everything lost, plus an additional amount of weight, which I certainly could not afford, so I stopped trying. Stopped hoping. Stopped living...I think.

Until March of 2011. I sat listening to my sister talk, yet again, about how she had lost weight, was eating healthy, and she was clearly enthused. I apologize to her for what I thought that day. She's so naive. She continues trying even though it will never work.

Than it occurred to me how amazing it was that she had struggled all these years just like I did, but she never, ever gave up. I had no right to call her naive. To mentally criticize her tenacity, because, after all, isn't continuing to try what life is all about?
You know, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, get back on the bike, never let go of the reins, blah blah blah. I just didn't have the energy. Where did she get it?

It was that day, though, that I started thinking about the plasticity of the brain and how much I have relied on my own brain's plasticity to to do so many things. Study, take tests, learn new skills. I mean, I have always believed (enormously) it the brain's ability to adapt, assimilate, accommodate, to learn.

Huh.

Why didn't I believe it work with my eating? My behavior relating to food? To exercise? Why?

Even if I don't believe in "dieting" or in "weight loss programs" and I do not...NOT. AT ALL...brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain, of my brain to change physically, at any age – for better or worse. Oh my....I had been changing my brain, physically, for years, and finally, it was my own brain convincing me that there was no hope. No point in trying. In saying, "what's the use?"

And, if my brain could change to the point that it could totally and completely convince me of that, then it could also change, with hard work, and convince me that I could absolutely, positively make any change I damn well chose to make, if only I made a decision over and over and over again, my brain would actually change. It had changed for the worse, it certainly could change for the better, if only I was willing to try, over and over and over again, even though I didn't want to, Eventually, the seemingly impossible would become difficult , the difficult would become pretty hard, the pretty hard would become challenging, and eventually, the challenging would become commonplace, automatic. Notice, I didn't say it would become easy. I don't think it ever will become easy, but I am willing to accept that. It it could at least not be so horribly, painfully difficult every moment of everyday, that would be progress.

So, here I am now, 62 pounds lighter. I seem to have lost a "fifth grade child," and what a difference already. I am not even close to thin, and I am so much different, inside and out, body and mind...and emotion, than I was that day in March when my tenacious sister, who never let go of anything without it having scratch marks all over it, inspired me, finally.

But, I find that I am worried. I feel as if I am a at a crossroads, I think because I have been at this level of weight loss before, and here, or thereabouts, is where it always took "a turn for the worse."

Am I going to lose this inspiration? Will I find out that this has all been another sad hallucination telling me that I could actually make changes....for life rather than for awhile?

Or is the hallucination that I must fail at this point because I always have before? I choose to believe the latter. Partly because I think it is true, but even more because I insist on recognizing how cunning, powerful, and physically designed my brain is to make me believe that I must fail. If my brain is so extraordinary that it can change itself and convince me I must fail, then it is easily extraordinary enough to change physically and (eventually) convince me that I must succeed, and that I will continue to succeed each day that I choose to.

I really is all up to me and my fancy little brain.