It seems to me to that an important part of making and implementing our own weight loss programs is being prepared for all of the positive and negative reactions we will get from the people we must interact with. We all have people on our lives that make us nervous. You know the ones. People who may be a bit jealous and poke at you each and every time they get the opportunity. Well meaning friends and relatives who live by assumptions that are not true and, possibly, never have been. Those who speak without ever thinking of the impact what they say may be having on others. Some people are just plain pessimistic and they like to spread their pessimism around. Then there are the mean manipulators. I am sure you are getting the picture and some names and faces are appearing in your head.

Part of what we need to live well is to minimize the damage other people can do to us. Some of us come from families that are so intertwined that the act of separating our needs and wants from the other family members is extremely difficult. Others of us have been raised to be more independent and less focused on pleasing the people around us. Many of us are somewhere in-between. We have moments of complete independence and the ability to meet our own needs, coupled with times of dependence that can convince we are not in control of our own stuff at all.

I am keeping a journal about my weight loss adventures. I think it helps. It keeps me on task with clear focus. (Most of the time!) I have made suggestions below for others who might find my journal exercises valuable to them.

If you decide to journal and do these exercises, think about the people you are in regular contact with, but also think about those you see on the holidays and at special family or friend events.

Make a list of helpers:

People you know will support you and be available to you. This is likely not to be a very long list. Write down those you can really count on, not those you wish you could count on

Make a list of hindrances:

Those people who, for whatever reason, are not likely to support you and may even try to stop your progress. This list is likely to be longer than the helpers list.

Review your helpers list:

What kind of support can you count on each person there for? Really think about this and write it down. For example, my husband and I are great sources of emotional support for each other. But get us in a good restaurant and we will silently give each other permission to eat anything we want. If you where dining at their house, who would provide healthy foods? If you were having a bad day, who would listen to you for hours and bolster you up?

Review your hindrances list:

Beside each name write how each of these people is likely to stop or impede your progress in some way. We all know someone who is guaranteed to hurt our feelings at a family event.

There was a time when I was truly too afraid to walk into a gym. I was afraid of gym class when I was a teenager. In my high school gym, the girls were forced to wear bizarre white jumpsuits suits made of stiff fabric that had elastic at the waist, ballooned out around the thighs and then grabbed the top of the knee again with more elastic. They were silly and they caused me great personal concern. They were hard to get off and on, uncomfortable to wear and made everyone look fatter than they actually were. I did not need to look fatter than I actually was.

The gym class itself was a fear of mine too, for several reasons. First, Gym class was where they weighed us. There we stood in an alphabetical straight line. Our names would be called and we would step on the scale, one at a time. The nurse found our weight and then CALLED IT OUT to the gym teacher. So, in my head each and every member of my class would hear it. I was mortified. My last name at the time started with an “S” and I stood near the end of the line waiting for my shame and embarrassment to hit me with full force because I was clearly the fattest in the class.

I also feared gym class because I viewed my self as “Fat” not a “Jock”. I did not think, even for a second that I was the least bit athletic. I did not believe that I had any ability at all to be athletic. I thought that I hated exercise. I considered the cheerleaders to be a luckier, healthier, better, prettier, breed of teenager than I was. I identified myself as fat and less-than all of them.

Then there were the “choose-your-team” adventures that occurred on a regular basis. Looking back it seems to me that cheerleader-types were always picked by the gym teacher to lead two teams to play whatever game we were playing. Those of us who were not leading either of the teams sat on the gym floor cross-legged and full of panic, waiting to see if we would be the last one to be picked.

All of this fear and panic stayed with me for years. It took me a long, long time to get myself into the gym that I was paying for as an adult. My fantasy was that my local YMCA was filled with well-clothed, emaciated woman with giant boobs and hunky men with bulging muscles and all would be considering me the weakest, laziest thing that ever walked through the door.

 Then one day I did walk through that door and found out two truly amazing things that have contributed to me changing my beliefs about myself, the gym and the people in it forever:

1. The gyms are NOT filled with well-clothed, emaciated woman with giant boobs and hunky men with bulging muscles. People, real people filled the gym. Tall, short, thin, fatter, some even fatter than me, people trying to be healthier, trying to connect, trying to take care of themselves, trying to feel better. The gym was filled with people just like me.

2. I am a bit of athlete. Once I get into it. Once the first few minutes pass, I start to enjoy moving my body. I start to feel better. Oh my, I thought that I would never write this, I LIKE EXERCISE. Who would have ever thought……?

Gina’s Weigh

It was a Monday in the early evening, eleven days ago. My fifteen year old daughter, Emily, had arrived home from school just two hours before and had gone into her room to take a quick nap.  I was sitting in my home office. I had just finished getting dinner organized and had decided to go back to my desk to work a bit more on my dissertation, while I waited for my husband to get home from work.

I am working hard on finishing my Ph. D. and that day had been a tough one. A librarian I had counted on to help me with some research had let me down that morning. I was frustrated and very stressed out. In fact, I had been stressed out for quite some time. Since I began the final steps toward finishing my doctorate, life has been difficult. My health has been compromised and now I am afraid that more really crappy things will happen to my body and my brain.

In the last year and a half I have developed nocturnal seizures. I have had my gall bladder removed. I passed out and had a head-on collision. My doctors found a lump in my head. Then not yet ten days ago as I write, I had a stroke. Nearly all of this catastrophe may be firmly rooted in the reality that for nearly all of my life, I have been fat.

I am now on a continual journey toward health and fitness. I am going to do the best I can to give up being fat. I am not sure that I can do it, but I am going to do my best to try. I am going to try to believe that I can. I am going to write as I go. You see I know a tremendous about how to take weight off. I am probably an expert. I have been doing it a long time, years and years. I even became a 250 pound personal trainer. Yet I have never let myself finish the job.

It is my hope to finish the job now. That is, how as I define the word job. Not how the magazines, the movies, the television and/or fashion define it. I am tired of failing myself and putting myself last. I am tired of the torment, the feelings of failure.

I know I am not alone. There are so many of you out there in our world who feel the way I do, both physically and emotionally. I hope some of you who find this site and come along with me. Perhaps we can help to guide and support each other as we each go

Our Weigh

Can we talk? If you are reading this, please introduce yourself…………..