can the voice in my head stop telling me to lose weight?
death to weight-loss
Hi guys,
So this week I had a spat of food poisoning. I say, this week like it was not exactly as I am writing this. My body is contorted in a position that it doesn’t ache whenever I move it. But the point of this very real overshare was a strange sort of pang of reality. With my head hunched over the toilet seat, in between vomiting I thought, ‘Maybe I’d lose some weight from all of this?’
Seriously.
No, I wasn’t thinking if it was COVID symptoms. Or if I had stomach flu or something else that was serious. I wasn’t even running down what I had eaten which might have put me in this position. Nah, my dumbass was thinking about my weight again.
This is still something recent and real, so this won’t be one of those newsletters (like in Sex and the City) where I offer up a problem and then solve it in the space of an episode. I don’t know how to solve it because whenever I think it’s over, it pops right back up like that Whack-a-mole game we played at Stadium-On-Main.
My weight problems have started to live alongside me. It’s sometimes my best friend but most times my biggest enemy. It whispers in my ear when I want to post a picture on Instagram (I really hate those distorting Instagram filters so I would rather post nothing at all than to post that), it berates me when I skip exercising that day, and god forbid I eat an extra piece of cake.
The festive season is always the worst time in all of this. Somewhere in my subconscious, I realise how ridiculous this all is. I spend most of my days indoor and I have not seen a human outside of my immediate family and delivery people in ages but this little voice won’t go away.
Where does that leave me? Yes, still in pain. Am I going to tell the voice in my head to shut up? God, I don’t know. I hope so. But I’m not going to lie to you and say that I won’t be haunted by the voice in my head for the rest of my life. But it always helps to be able to call out the negativity in your life, and this is definitely one of mine. Perhaps being aware of it will make me more critical of it, and not blindly listen to the falsehoods it relays to me.
Sorry for starting 2021 on such a low note. I promise I will get back to the crazy lists soon!
other things that are on my mind this week:
Film: Sound of Metal - this stunning tale about a drummer who loses his hearing and then has to try and find out how to cope with life without being able to play his music and to adjust to his new surrounds has a stellar performance by Riz Ahmed and some excellent sound editing. You can watch it on Amazon Prime.
Music: The Potential Break-Up Song Explicit Version - Aly & AJ. This is one of my favourite songs, and I’m not going to lie I used to sing the explicit words even before they released this. But it was such a lovely ode to my younger years that Aly & AJ released this recently.
Podcast: Anna Faris is Unqualified. This is an old favourite of mine, that I have consistently enjoyed over the years. Actress Anna Faris usually interviews and plays games with another celeb before a listener phones in and they state their relationship problem and Anna and her guest attempt to solve it. You can listen to it on Spotify here.
