Day 11: Where Did This Belly Fat Come From?
I’m a big girl. I know this, anyone who looks at me will know this, its not really a secret. You can’t tell how healthy I am from the way I look but you can tell that I’m fat.
Despite that I’ve never really had belly fat. I’ve always really been well proportioned even if those portions were on the larger side.
Now, quite suddenly it seems, I have belly fat. Its very disconcerting and more than a little embarrassing.
I’ve only noticed my growing flabbiness over the last year. Prior to that I wasn’t exactly toned and terrific, meaning everything surely did wobble, but there wasn’t the great big … excess of belly that there is now.
It turns out an increase in belly fat is a result of weight gain following a diet. I’ve been listening to a CD by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole Intuitive Eating: A Practical Guide to Make Peace with Food, Free Yourself from Chronic Dieting, Reach Your Natural Weight
Studies have shown that diets don’t work over the long term. Up to 95% of people who lose weight will regain the weight they lost within five years.
Of those who do regain, up to 66% will regain more weight than they originally lost and most likely that extra weight will be packed on as belly fat.
I went on the weight watchers diet in 2009 and lost about 10 kilos, or 22 pounds, which was about 10% of my body weight and about a third of what I wanted to lose.
I maintained that weight for about a year but then there were some major changes in my life. I went back to full time work and started a long term relationship after 15 years being single. I was a particularly stressful time for me.
Most of the weight was regained within two years. Over the last year though I’ve not gained weight so much as had a steady increase in padding around my middle.
Got to say, it feels awful. My shape has changed and I don’t like it. I also feel substantially weaker and I think that’s a factor of compromising my core muscles.
This all sounds like a great set-up to start exercising frantically and go on an immediate diet. Alas, its not to be. I’m committed to living a HAES lifestyle
So what’s the point of going on and on and on about the many different ways in which I wish things were different?
All this feeling of worthlessness and failure and being so completely ugly and unacceptable; its rubbish. It comes from other people, not me. I think I’m great. So I have belly fat? So what? So I fear that my size is impacting my health? So what?
My choices are jump back on the self hatred roundabout, other wise known as going on a diet, or accepting myself the way I am and dealing with myself as I am right now.
Yes I’m having health issues and yes it is a good idea for me to deal with them. Yes I dislike the way I look, but not enough to submit myself to a program that will make me miserable and stands a substantial chance of dumping me right back here in a few years time.
I want something different for myself.
I want the fantasy. I want a life.
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