P.S. ONE DAY LATER

16^th July 2020

As a post-script to my blog yesterday, I was watching one of the TV programmes I watch about obesity and weight loss. This one was about people who are extremely overweight. What was very obvious in this one was that these particular two people wanted other people to take responsibility for them losing weight. What they couldn't see was that while they were being given support, it was them that had to put the work in.

A lot of us think there is always a new solution to make things easy, but it doesn't really work this way. It is up to us to do the hard work. How we feel and the problems we have, never truly go away and it's realising this, and knowing that they're not a weakness, and learn to live with them.

While having counselling recently, I wrote the piece below and realised how this can also be applied to coming to terms with dealing with a weight issue.

THE DOG

The dog needs a name, it needs to be recognised.

It comes to remind me of what I have been through, what I survived.

In the past I have been in bad, terrible, stressful situations. I was too young and in later years too busy just surviving to even know what it was, that I felt the way I did because it was there, constantly chewing away in my head.

Times and things have changed, I thought it had gone away but it was loyal, as dogs are, and would visit constantly to trouble me. I had failed. I couldn't keep it away, it would return time and time again and wouldn't leave me in peace.

Then one day it happened. I realised that the dog would always be there, it would never ever fully go away, it had a purpose and would always be there! It was me that had to learn to live with it and know that under all that fur when it had been given a good trim it wasn't as big as I thought it was.

We could live together. I was beginning to realise that I could learn how to be the master, and it could do it's job to remind me what I had survived, that I could be strong and I was still here.

While accepting who the dog was, I had also started to accept myself for who I was, to believe in who I am, that I am the one that matters.

The dog does need a name, it needs to be recognised and it's name is Depression, but through that recognition for me it's powers have and will continue to dwindle.

When I first started writing my blog six years ago, I think I thought that I could conquer my weight gain and that would be it, but I have since realised that it doesn't work that way. Naïve, I know, but if only we could conquer something for good and it then be gone away and not trouble us. It doesn't work like that, but what we can do is put a lot of thought into what is happening, what can happen and find ways to cope and win each battle as it comes. Knowing we can do this makes us stronger and more rounded as a person. In my case I want to be slimmer and healthier, not rounded, but you know what I mean :-)

I can't always make something go away, or go away for good, but what I can do is know how to deal with it once it's there.

Knowing this helps you to feel stronger and more in control.

So, as I said in my blog yesterday, I have my plan and I move on.

Jackie

xx