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Saturday 23 April 2011

relapse and choice

Those who know me know that I have just had one of the worst relapses ever. It came off the back of a problem at work and resulted in me very nearly requiring a hospital admission (you know, *not* the voluntary kind). Once I managed to pick myself up and resume eating, however, I decided to add some more tools to my recovery tool-kit. I read a book last week called A Girl Called Tim by June Alexander – I read a review here a little while ago, and since June’s a fellow Melbournian I thought I would have a lookie.

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*Really* interesting read. At first I was worried – she makes constant reference to weights, something I know I find triggering. But to be truthful it didn’t affect me the way I expected. So relentless was her obsession with her weight – she hung so much on the numbers (her happiness, her success, literally everything hung on achieving a particular weight) that it had the opposite effect on me. I could actually see the futility in her constant weighing and obsessing. Me! Seeing logic? Hallelujah! 

So thank you June for a terrific, honest, frightening and cautionary story.

But thank you more because by sharing your story you have provided me with the motivation to make a choice I never thought I could. I have not weighed myself since last Friday. At all.

That’s 8 days

And I was a get-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-weigh-myself kinda gal. Yes I find it terrifying – I described it to my gp the other day as ‘worrying that there was something terribly wrong with me but not being able to check’. But I’m hoping that by simply not weighing myself day after day after day it will become more habit and less forced.

Not sure I really trust myself long-term though, I think I might have to chuck out the scales completely, just to be on the safe side!

2 comments:

spiritedladyliving said...

That's one of the true keys to recovery is to quit weighing yourself! Woohoo for you!

Mum on the Run said...

Congratulations on giving the scales the cold shoulder.

I find this interesting as I consider myself 'recovered' (whatever that means anyway??!), yet I weigh myself daily or twice daily.
I am in no way as affected by the number that stares back these days, but am weighing in constantly, nonetheless.
Hmmm.
:-)