Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

Here’s indeed the name that suits her the best, because it’s really that - a capricious, entitled, selfish brat who’s only interested in getting what she wants and doesn’t think about the consequences. The consequences of her acts unfortunately being me gaining on weight, slowly, insidiously. In a way, I’m pretty sure that we all have our inner brat; she’s just more or less active depending on the people.

My inner brat is an entitlement bitch who thinks in terms of “I deserve to…!”. My inner brat doesn’t like not snacking at will at 11 pm, restricting her calories or making sure to not eat two slices of pie instead of one for dessert. My inner brat doesn’t care about green beans and cauliflower. My inner brat just wants to gobble down pizza, cheeseburgers, chocolate, sugar-added iced-tea and bretzels all day long, and doesn’t accept the fact that these aren’t good foods.

When my serious self manages to keep the inner brat at bay, things are going right; when the brat surfaces again and starts screaming bloody murder because she wants to eat cake, then the problems arise. She’s strong, this brat, stronger than I, when it’s on a moment when I’m weakened - and so many little things can add up to make me weak. A cold and rainy weather, feeling sore from my latest workout, being in a bad mood, being tired, having had a stressful day… anything can trigger her to wake up, but several of these circumstances gathered are even worse.

My inner brat kept quiet for about the past three months, which was the time I took to lose, quietly and painlessly, half of the pounds I want to shed off. Then all of a sudden, when my scales popped up the happy number and I was thinking “half the way done!”, the brat woke up and decided: “Now I deserve a break, I deserve a reward for all these weeks of efforts, and this reward will be eating what I want!” Thus spoke the brat, and thus began the almost constant fight, for I as well wanted to breathe a little, while still knowing that giving in to intense cravings would be a major mistake.

She has vicious tactics, this brat. It’s all about eating just one more slice of bread, because “it won’t harm”, and slowly the one slice becomes two, then three. It’s about telling me that I can “allow myself” dark chocolate with coffee after lunch, except that this will quickly turn into a daily habit. Fortunately, she hasn’t been able to take down my ability to exercise and actually like it, so I can say that sports have saved me - not from myself, not from my entitled inner bitch, but at least from gaining weight again. This isn’t related to food, and probably the reason why it hasn’t been affected by her tantrums.

To tell the truth, I am not sure yet of what tactics to use to force the brat to shut up. I can see several roads ahead of me. One where I let the brat do what she wants, until the day I wake up again, realize that I’ve piled on pounds again too, and find my determination back. One where I battle her constantly in a downward spiral of added frustrations, until I snap for good, give in, and start to binge until I explode. One where I confront her, understand why I act like this, why I allow the brat to sabotage my efforts, and manage to resist in a positive way that won’t leave me weakened. The third road is, honestly, the one I should and want to tread on. The other two frighten me, threaten me, discourage me, make me feel like a useless git unable to carry on a decision; moreover, they will inevitably lead me to weight increase. Again and again.

I don’t know yet how this third road will unwind before me, how exactly I’ll be able to be victorious. There’s however one thing I’m sure of. Five years ago, when I managed to seriously lose weight, I had let the brat speak again, for a long, long time, and this is what had caused me to fail and gradually fall back into my bad habits. This time, I don’t want this to happen, my eyes are wide open, and I am not blinding myself anymore.

I know who my enemy is - myself. And I know where she is. Here, deep inside of me, with the food issues I haven’t managed to solve yet.

- Kery