Failure

I was telling a friend the other day about my progress (and lack thereof) in losing weight and I came to realization that people have a reactionary response to the word “failure.” Every time I said to him “I failed at this I failed at that” he would respond with “don’t see it as a failure!” One it was annoying because he wouldn’t let me finish my thought (a relatively common occurrence with many people), and two I don’t see it the way he saw it.

I’ve got a very proactive view of failure. Failure isn’t a taboo word to me. It’s a vital part of the process of learning. I’ve failed, A LOT. And I hate failing, because in a way it makes me disappointed that I wasn’t where I needed to be when I thought I was. Like with weight loss. Back in May I had gotten myself down to 211 on the scale. My first major goal of reaching 200 was in sight, but then my dad died and it seemed as if the stress of everything involved was going to overwhelm me. I don’t mean to make an excuse of it, but it effected me a lot more than I let on to most people. A couple weeks ago I weighed in at 230. Over a year of hard work was virtually wasted. It took me way longer to recover from the stress then I ever anticipated. And it’s one of those things I don’t think a lot of people realize, I keep a lot of my more negative emotions to myself regardless if people are willing to listen to me gripe or not.

There’s a phrase in Dune “fear is the mindkiller” I can handle fear. I can’t handle stress, or, at least I don’t have the skill set to deal with stress the way that I can with fear. Stress is my mindkiller because stress is at the root of my difficulties with depression and anxiety. And because of that stress I have failed more times than I can count. I have failed at losing the amount of weight I have wanted to. BUT. The gaps between my successes and my failures have been growing smaller and smaller. Over the past three to four years since I decided that I wanted to lose weight FOR ME and not for anyone else (because I had a wrong assumption that no one would love me if I was fat and I had to lose in order to be loved) I have won more than I have failed. I have won life experience, I have won foundational knowledge of being healthy, I have won past my fear of the gym. These things are important, especially the failures. Failures are a way for you to take a step back and course correct. I, as a person, am not a failure, I may have temporarily failed but I have the rest of my life to learn from those failures and succeed.  So me saying “I have failed,” is not an indication that I think I am a failure. Does that distinction make sense?

Either way this most recent lesson I have learned is that I definitely stress eat so my focus right now is on starting to pay attention to how much I eat at any given time. I’ve got my Fitbit on almost all the time now and I’ve been trying to keep an eye on my caloric intake in conjunction with my caloric outtake.

It’s a process, but a process I’m willing to keep working on.