1464: In One’s Own Skin

Self-indulgent, self-pitying ahead. Feel free to skip on by.

Whoever started (and perpetuated) the rumour that fat people are “jolly” is a cock.

I am feeling decidedly uncomfortable in my own skin today, and, as usual, it’s largely to do with my weight. I’m conscious of the fact that I have put on weight recently, and I know it’s due to my largely sedentary lifestyle coupled with the fact that past exercise programmes I followed have fallen by the wayside.

It’s something of a self-perpetuating problem, though. I get anxious about my weight, which frequently stops me from sleeping well at night, which means I find it difficult to get up in a timely fashion in the morning, which means I get up feeling tired and shitty and having to immediately start work, which means that when I’m finished in the evening all I want to do is just zonk out and relax, which means I feel guilty and anxious about not doing anything about my weight, which means… you get the idea.

It also doesn’t help that if I get upset or depressed, I tend to want to eat something, too. Even knowing how counter-productive it is to want to eat something because I’m depressed about my weight, I still do it. Justifications vary, but I still do it, sometimes when I’m not even really feeling hungry.

I know I should do something about it. The anxiety I feel about my weight at night-time frequently escalates from “you’re fat and disgusting” to “you’re probably going to die if you don’t do something about it.” This is how irrational anxiety works. But, as I say, said anxiety often stops me from sleeping and makes me feel too exhausted in the morning to want to get up and exercise or do anything, really.

I hate it. I hate the feelings it gives me, and I hate the disgust I feel when I see myself in the mirror. I hate worrying when I sit down on a chair and wondering if I’ll break it. I hate feeling physically uncomfortable because of my weight. I hate none of my clothes quite fitting properly, and I hate worrying that people look at me negatively as I walk past them in the street. I hate being afraid to fly in case I’m finally too fat to fit in a seat or to get the seatbelt around myself, and I hate sitting down in a restaurant where the tables and chairs are too close together and I find it difficult to fit in. And I hate not seeing people for a long time and wondering if they’ll judge me harshly for being bigger than I used to be. I see photos of myself from years gone past when I felt like I was fat, and I look skinny in comparison to how I am now, and it makes me sad when I think that’s what other people are probably thinking when they see me, too.

There are two ways out of this, as I see it: one, to accept who I am, to understand that I’m probably always going to be a little bigger and thus be unable to do certain things — something which I’m not altogether comfortable with; or two, to try and do something about it, something which has frustrated and upset me in the past. Both of them are difficult prospects to contemplate, and I’d rather see success with the latter if at all possible. I don’t enjoy being the person I am, but I don’t know if I have the willpower or motivation to be able to combat it effectively.

I’m going to try, though. I’m going to make an effort to get up in the morning and perhaps start the Couch to 5K program again, since I had some success with that in the past when I was in a similar combination of physical and mental disrepair. I mean, I never got slim or anything, but I got to a state where I made it through a 10K race, albeit with walking part of it. That’s something, and I’d at least like to get back to a state where walking up some stairs doesn’t leave me out of breath. Wii Fit U will probably help, too. I’m going to try my best to start all that tomorrow, though I’m making no promises at this juncture.

I have to fight my way through these feelings and dispatch the Shadows that infest my mind, because they’re doing me no good whatsoever and I don’t like the person they make me become. I don’t know if I can do it, but I don’t really have any option other than to try.