YOU ONLY REALLY KNOW WHEN YOU KNOW

18^th May 2021

I mentioned at the end of my last blog about whether a person who had never had a weight issue in their life really worries about the bathroom scales. Now, I think that some people, especially in the Western world at time like Christmas and just before holidays, may think about weight, but it isn't a real issue or fear. Things have a different importance to different people, depending on their experiences, but I think what really hurts is when I see someone professing to know what it's like when their experiences aren't really to the extent that others have had.

Don't get me wrong, everyone's experience is varied and means so much to that individual and evokes so much passion, but it is that person's experience and it is not the same as someone else. As someone once said, “We may be in the same storm, but we may not be in the same boat”. When I started to write my blog, it was, and still is about me. Writing about the thing that have happened to me over the past 62 and a bit years. My circumstances are like no other persons. What has happened to me in my life has not exactly happened to someone else, and this is the same with everybody. We may all have similar experiences to each other, and things we can relate to, but things that have happened to us do not make us an expert.

I also believe that education and experience can have an equal worth in life, but someone who has both, or just one or the other is no better than anyone else, if that makes sense. It is how we use what we have that matters and the care and sensitivities we express to others in life, while being aware we may not know it all. Having said this, the reason I write is that I am a passionate person that knows that things are not always easy in life. It helps me to write down my thoughts, to put them into words rather than them going round and around in my head, and if anything I say helps someone else, then that is a bonus. I would also hope that I would not be pretentious enough to say anything that would offend, but if I did I would be terribly sorry as that was never my intention, and my thoughts were about me and no one else.

As I have said in the past, I have always been afraid of bathroom scales. I know I am not the only one that the scales bother. The fact that right from birth, weight is important for health reasons, but then for some reason it morphs into a fear connected to how we look. It creeps up on us over the years, but it is a real fear and it doesn't matter how much well meaning people tell us it shouldn't matter and try to talk us out of feeling that way, well it's just not that easy. It's a fear, a terrible fear that can affect how we feel the rest of the day. Having said that, we know that if we don't use the scales we risk putting on the pounds and living life overweight! A small problem compared to some other people's troubles, but to those of us that have the fear we have to try to live with it. I am finding my way. I used to weigh myself daily, then weekly and now, at the moment, monthly. I got weighed at the end of April-ish and I will get weighed at the end of May and see how I have done. All this while trying to change my food intake to eat more calories, If things have gone slightly wrong I will still be able to adjust things without any damage done.

we can learn to know how we want to live and conquer fear. To know that whatever happens we can have the confidence of damage limitation, and that all is not lost. We can do what we feel is right without being judged by someone who doesn't really understand just what it is really like.

I am almost at my 100^th blog, this is number 99. What will be interesting at the end of the month is to see how near I am to the 100 pound lost mark.

Writing this has been a pleasure as always.

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx