
Making Room For Change
One area where I had to rewrite the script was about my weight. Over the last 7 or 8 years, I’ve been steadily gaining weight and not doing anything about it. Oh yes, I did try the gym, and walking, swimming and yoga, but nothing lasted for too long. I always had an excuse for not exercising and my choices about what I ate too where not always good. My health began to suffer – high cholesterol and high blood pressure started to show up at my medical tests. Yet, I hated people telling me that I had to lose weight, I knew I did. But it seemed that the more they told me, the harder I resisted.
It was not until recently, that I reflected on why this was. As I looked at old pictures of myself I saw that I wasn’t always fat, but that’s what I thought I was. I realized that I had very deep-seated issues with my perception of myself. More reflection, made me aware that these notions had come from significant people in my life saying to me: ‘You’d really look good, if only you lost a few kilograms….’ My image of physical self was further reinforced by someone telling me that I was ‘too fat’ for him to marry me!More reflection on this issue, made me realize that I had kept putting on layers of fat as a protection from hurt and being let down. And then even when I had made peace with these experiences and let them go, the fat still stayed on. I asked myself if I was going to let past hurts dictate my future life. Was I going to put my health and happiness in jeopardy? No!
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