White trash disease

I need to work on my brain. I am having odd reactions to being cheered on. I didn’t expect this. I have been incredibly outgoing my entire life. I love chatting with all people all the time. It’s one of those qualities that I must radiate out. My friends and I have long chronicled the phenomena of just how often I am stopped on the street by strangers to chat. I had to stop wearing baseball hats for a while because when I wear them, at least 1 stranger per day felt the need to stop me and comment on the team represented on my hat. The point being that I love attention, and apparently everyone can tell. Hell, at the gym I have to pull my hat down over my eyes and put on an angry face in order to be able to get through my work out without stopping to chat.. as soon as I see an opening to chat, I take it. I have to come across as totally unapproachable. Although, as angry and standoffish as I look, that would all be hollow to people if they knew I was listening to Cindi Lauper and Elton John. I feel like I am always one accidental outburst of “ROCKET MAN!!!!” away from blowing my cover.

This being said, I have found that I am having an unpredictable response to positive attention… the positive attention is making me wildly uncomfortable. It’s almost as if I have developed an attachment to feeling unhappy with myself. My own perception of my physical health is obviously unhealthy and leading me to process peoples kind words in a negative manner... it’s not OK to be uncomfortable with people supporting me. I have built such a negative connotation around my health, that when people congratulate me on progress or try to cheer me on, my instinct is to feel they are patronizing me or lying.

I tend to live inside my own head. My own perceptions not only become my reality, but they project outward so blatantly obvious… I wear my insecurities on my sleeve so much… that I think I am unwittingly creating other peoples realities as well. This is not exclusive to me. I think most overweight people do this. No one is judging us, I feel WE are judging ourselves and then projecting our own self images onto other people. I wonder how many of our failed efforts to lose weight and get in shape were doomed by our perceptions of ourselves? Failure being a self fulfilling prophecy. My low self-esteem about my physical condition… my own feelings of  being unattractive… became so ingrained in my own mind, that I almost have made it part of my identity.

I need to get more in touch with the idea that my physical condition is not part of my identity. This also has been extremely relevant during my training sessions. Something happened that reminded me I have “white trash disease”. White trash disease is the act of meeting any perceived slight, or challenge with the reaction of “you think you are better than me”. This is helping me overcome the hindrance that comes from my own self-deprecation. But is this really a healthy alternative? Yesterday my trainers response to me cutting a set 3 reps short of goal was “good job… you got everything you could out of that set”… I instantly wanted to spit in his dumb fucking face. “You think that’s all I can do? You think you’re better than me!!!”.. and I instantly sat down and picked the weights back up and forced myself to do 5 more reps. The funny thing is, as I look back on the interaction, I feel he was genuinely happy with what I had done. My instinct was to think he was lying to me.. judging  me. While I used this feeling as a tool… it’s not ok. Had I been alone, I would have stopped my set whenever I felt I had done enough and never would push myself. I don’t expect enough from myself, because I have built in the idea that I don’t deserve to be in shape. I have turned the idea that I can get in shape into some insurmountable peak that I will never climb. I wonder if subconsciously I am afraid to lose weight? Maybe I get in my own way, because I associate so much of my identity with being overweight? 

Someone once told me "You seem scared to test yourself because you are so sure you'll fail, but I always wonder why you don't try more things, because I know you'd be successful at anything...". I wonder how many people reading  this have felt this way. How many overweight people struggle to regain their health because being unhealthy becomes part of our identity. How many people struggle because success is not their expectation. 

This is a big part of why I have decided not to weigh myself right now. The number becomes a living breathing thing. I feel it’s all I think about. I see that number shade everything I do. Instead, I am using non scale measurements of progress. Is my endurance better? Are my clothes fitting better? Am I doing the things I need to in order to be healthy (eating right and working out)? Do I have more energy? I have so far to go in terms of weight loss, that the number doesn’t hold a lot of significance today. I need to lose 657lbs, if I lose 3 lbs this week I only need to lose 654lbs, how does this help me. It just feels so daunting. (the real number of pounds I need to lose is probably closer to 60-65lbs, but I round up to the nearest 657^th place.. for accuracy).

I don’t think its healthy to allow my neurosis and self-esteem issues to be a tool. I need to overcome my mental blocks. I also need to remember not to allow my weight to have so much power in my life. I need to remember to paint, and make spicy pickles, and learn to sew jammies, or whatever I need to do allow myself to be a more well-rounded person. My weight issues need to be something to overcome, and no longer be something I associate with my character…. Or who I am as a person.