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If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be and why?

My immediate response to this question was my weight. Now I'm sure the question meant to get at something more like my fear of confrontation (which, hey, could be worked on too), but this was just my gut reaction so I'm going with it.

No matter what I tell other people, I hate the way I look and I think that myself being fat is a huge problem. Some of that is purely aesthetic reasons. I don't think I look good and I think that means others think the same. This bleeds into my (attempted) dating life as it affects my confidence and also, to be perfeclty frank, my options (though maybe I wouldn't want to date someone who would judge so harshly on looks anyways (but at the same time I want the person I date to find me beautiful)).

I also see my weight as a failure on my part. I gained weight mostly because of stress and depression in my life. Food is a comfort for me and I turned to it pretty heavily as my life got more and more stressful. You can read more about that in a previous post of mine. I won't belabor the point, but since about 2016 stress has been building and building in my life with a sharp downturn last year. Food is something I can control and can bring me reliable pleasure. These are probably some of the biggest reasons that I turned to it so frequently. My lack of change around this is something I see as a failure. I know what I need to do to lose weight: eat healthier and exercise more, but I can't bring myself to do these things.

Eating healthier would mean that I have to give up one of the most reliable sources of happiness in my life. Now I realize that that sounds sad, but food is something I look forward to each day and it helps frame my day. If I couldn't look forward to my meals and snacks, then each day seems much more daunting.

Working out more is a complex issue for me. Working out tends to bring more awareness to my body which, given my body image issues, is a negative experience for me. I have cried or almost cried during and after many workouts and, when I don't do those things, I'm often compartmentalizing to prevent myself from doing those things. I also don't feel the rush that people describe from working out. In short, working out makes me feel bad. This means that working out is an overall negative experience for me. So I don't see how I can encourage myself to work out when I simply don't enjoy it at best and am upset by it at worst.

I've eaten better (or at least less) and worked out more in the past and have lost weight. However, I never could sustain these changes and then gained all of the weight back and more. So this knowledge combined with my issues around food and working out make me feel stuck in my current body that I hate (maybe not hate, but certainly don't love). Feeling stuck to me is such a helpless feeling which then ties right back into my depression.

I don't think being thin would magically make me not depressed, don't get me wrong, but it would help me feel less stuck and it would somewhat quiet my body image issues which have gotten louder (for lack of better phrasing) as I've gained weight. So while not a magical fix, I do think losing weight would help with my mood and my overall outlook on life.

Now maybe I should say that instead I'd change myself to loving a healthier lifestyle, but, again, my gut reaction was simply to go with my weight and so I wanted to do an honest post about it. Now why this was my gut reaction is something I need to reflect on more. Perhaps because I--like I think many people--dream of magic wands that can fix things and think how much easier life would be if such magic wands existed.

I hope people don't mind these personal interludes. I like them because it allows me to try a different kind of writing and its something I sometimes share with my therapist if I'm being really honest. We've both found it helpful.

What would you change about yourself and why?

(Prompt provided by Amelia Sacco)

"2006_10_13" by Dennis Sylvester Hurd
 

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