I learned something interesting today. People who lose weight and try to keep it off have stronger hunger hormones than other people. Their bodies don’t get used to the smaller body and are trying to get back to the weight that seemed “normal” by making the person feel hungry. That’s part of why it is so difficult to maintain weight loss.
The reason this fact is interesting to me is I lost seventy to eighty pounds and have been able to keep most of it off about sixty to seventy of it. I would love to say it is because I have great will power or because there’s something wonderful about me, but that’s not the truth. The reason I have been able to keep the weight off is because there’s something wrong with me. First, I have OCD. I tend to develop compulsive behavior easily, especially when I am stressed out. If I started doing something daily, then it is difficult to stop that behavior. I have been tracking my food almost every day for over ten years now. I would have a very difficult time not tracking my food. It isn’t because I have great strength of will. I just have compulsive behavior and can’t help it. Second, my mother didn’t teach me to tell when I was hungry and when I was full. Instead, she taught me to have an unhealthy relationship with food. She taught me to eat food to feel good and then, she taught me to overeat to get as much of the good feeling as I could get like an addict does so that he can get a high. I even remember eating so much as a child that I vomited from overeating. The result of not really being able to know when I am hungry and when I am full helps me to deal with the hunger hormones. I might feel hungrier than most people, but since I don’t really understand that feeling, I can easily ignore it, much better than most people. I have practice at ignoring things like that because of my OCD.
I’m not going to say that I have advantages from my childhood. I don’t. However, I do believe that sometimes we are given help to deal with the challenges that we face in life. Everyone on my mother’s side of the family has weight issues. I am genetically predisposed to have a weight problem, but maybe by totally messing up my relationship with food, my mother helped me to find a way to deal with the hunger hormones that I would face later in life.
When talking about energy, scientists say for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. What if for every positive energy there is an equal but opposite negative energy? For every good action there’s an evil action and vice versa? Our universe might always be balanced; we just don’t know it. The good that I do is evil somewhere else, maybe?
I guess the point is whatever harm was done to me, it’s been done. Maybe I can find ways to move past it, maybe there’s ways that I learned to cope that can even help me to live a better life. I don’t have to hate anyone for the past because at some point, the dualities do transcend and I think that the one duality that starts to transcend before all others is good and evil. There’s good and there’s evil, but that’s for God to decide. For me, if I don’t try to judge, then my heart can be filled with love, forgiveness, and understanding for any and every one of my brothers and sisters in Christ.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
