Admit hard Truths

“I will start tomorrow” has been a complex idea in my life.

At its best, the idea of starting tomorrow held optimism and hope; at its worst, the idea worked as a self-delusion, enabling moments in time to swallow me whole.

Most often, starting tomorrow worked as a self-defeating form of failure, a feeling of brokenness around my weight, a reminder of what I could not get right in this aspect of my life.

Untangling the maze of meanings of “starting tomorrow” provides a complex mental challenge. The truth is that I started on so many tomorrows that the phrase was almost rendered meaningless.

Often, I felt the emptiness of starting tomorrow even as I committed to it. Many of my tomorrows ended almost as soon as they started. The pattern was predictable, whether it lasted one day, one week, one month.

My resolve started strong. Soon, fatigue around tempting foods overpowered my resolve. I careened off course, defeated and overwhelmed by what I could not get right.

I stared at the same problem over and over again. I tried the same solutions and always got the same results. Starting tomorrow happened so many times in my life that I nearly gave up hope. But never entirely.

To succeed, there has to be a starting point – there has to be a tomorrow where that day becomes the day.

Past successes provided tantalizing glimpses of what could be, optimistic peaks at a healthier future. Hope.

I could be successful – if only I could sustain success. This realization changed my life. I had successes and knew how to create them. I could leave these times alone.

I had to figure out my failures. Thinking this way broke down the overwhelming enormity of what I needed to do into smaller pieces. I liked where I was going.

I gave myself a few weeks of reflective space at the end of 2019 to think more about myself, to plan around myself, to lay a foundation in support of myself.

January 2020 was my start date, even though my failures with new year’s resolutions loomed large. Postponing a start date could be a form of self-enablement, a rationalization, an excuse.

But, I needed to set myself up for success. I needed unencumbered personal space to change. I needed the food turbulence of the holidays to be behind me.

I approached myself as an educator and asked myself two questions.

• How would I plan for my successes?

• How would I plan for my failures?

Asking these two questions helped me access a more objective view of myself. One does not need to be an educator to ask and answer these questions, to engage in honest self-reflection.

When I thought about my failures, I faced a new truth — one that was difficult to admit but one that liberated me.

I finally named the unpleasant truth that overshadowed my life:  food addiction controlled my weight, my health, and parts of my life. 

The shadow of food addiction had only fluttered around the peripheries of my consciousness. I knew food addiction was there, but I never let the thought settle. Once I admitted this to myself, I started transforming my future.

To succeed, I needed to think of myself as a food addict. If I did not plan around this truth, any attempt I made at change would evaporate into the shadows of failure, just like all the others. 

I could no longer think in terms of the conventional weight loss advice that permeated society, no matter how much I wanted to. My truths were different.

My actions had to be different. “Cheat meals” did not work for me. Moderation did not work for me. I needed to remove the foods that caused me problems.

My lifetime of failures told me unequivocally that processed foods caused my problems. My most significant successes told me to eat unprocessed whole plants.

Admitting my self-truths around food addiction was the first and most important step in a long, complex process of uncovering my hunger drive. 

Now, I know that my hunger drive works exactly as it should. Nothing is wrong with my body. Nothing is wrong with my willpower. Nothing is wrong with my mind. Nothing is wrong with me.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I know that I was not broken. And, you aren’t either.