Peggie Larsen

Yesterday was Christmas. John, Tayler and I took the dogs to LaFramboise Island for a Christmas Day walk. The temp was beautiful, around 45 degrees. We timed it right. By the time we left, the parking lot was almost full. We walked for about an hour and 15 minutes – 3.65 miles. The dogs did great. Once we let Jack off the leash he was much happier. He is a hunting dog through and through. Nora did well considering she is afraid of everyone. 

The coat I wore was one I have had for a while. Pretty much a down liner jacket. It served its intended purpose. Perfect layers for the day. 

Once we got back home I was taking off the jacket and pulled a dime out of one pocket and a receipt out of the other. The receipt was from December 15, 2019. Two things were purchased. I have to laugh at this because it shows how much I have improved my food relationship. And it also shows what I have been doing for the last year. Diet Pepsi and donuts. There. My life has consisted of Diet Pepsi and donuts over the last year. Seriously, though, I eat nutritious foods most of the time and throw in the donuts and cookies once in a while. I also coach people to help them find their big picture life. Changing my mindset has improved my coaching so much. 

I used to have that all or nothing attitude and I used to be a food snob. Boy, have I changed. Now, I know I can eat donuts and fit them into my day and I am not ruining any progress I have made. I know that if I eat a donut I didn’t wreck my eating for the day and then go off the rails the rest of the day or even weeks after. I learned that I don’t have to restrict these foods, because come on, we all know they taste absolutely amazing. I have learned that I can eat this stuff and still maintain my over 40 pound weight loss. I don’t have to be ashamed if I eat this. I don’t have to feel like a big failure if I eat this. 

I can be me. I can enjoy the foods I want. I don’t have to feel guilty for eating things I love. But, the thing is, it took me a long time to get to this point. It takes time to change. Change isn’t easy, but it’s definitely worth it. I work on myself every single day.

I used to talk crap to myself if I ate things like donuts or cookies or chips or pizza. I felt like I had to be all in all the time. I used to restrict, restrict, restrict, and then of course that can only go on for so long until the binge happened. I never actually binged according to the definition of a true binge. That was in my eating disorder days. Now, it would have been eating all of those foods that I had been restricting. I just wanted more and more and more of them. See, that’s the thing, as soon I told myself I couldn’t have a certain food or types of food, all I thought about was those foods and how much I wanted them. So, when I learned to build those foods into my plan, that pressure came off. It made it a lot easier to control what I was eating. I didn’t lose any progress I had made and I was happy with my food choices and with living my life. The food is never going away. It is always going to be around. 

So, what helped me change? I got a coach. Yes, coaches use coaches too. That lasted about a year or slightly longer. The accountability part is huge. I learned how to track macros. I had never really tracked anything previously. I remember in junior high tracking calories because of gymnastics. Which, by the way, is where my disordered eating began. But, other than that, I always thought just eating clean would do it for me. So not true. Because I definitely overate clean foods too and ended up needing a big life change. I learned to believe in myself. I empowered myself. I looked for the good in myself. I left the self doubt behind and tackled my health head on. Instead of wishing and hoping and saying what if, I jumped right in and saw the big picture. The best picture and the best I could become. I set myself up to do better and to be better.

Easy? No

Worth It? Yes

Shortcuts? No

Long Game? Yes

We always have choices. 

How are you? Such a simple ask. The auto response. Fine. Always said in haste. Always said automatically. But are you really fine? Think about it. Stop going through the motions. Start really thinking. 

What if you aren’t fine? We’ve all had a rough year. I closed the doors to my brick and mortar. I lost over half of my income. Is that fine? Maybe not, but it was a choice I had to make. 

Did you have some hard choices to make this year? Think about being fine. What does that look like? My emotions and feelings have been mixed. Anxious one minute. Relaxed the next. Gaining weight one day. Losing weight another day. Eating all the food one day. Eating none of the food another day. The navigation has been hard. It’s different. It’s hard to know what is happening. It’s hard not to look to the future and be anxious about it. 

Giving thanks and having gratitude helps. Thanks for the hard. Thanks for the lessons. Thanks for the outlook. Thanks for the time. Thanks for the clarity and thanks for the fuzzy. 

Everything matters and nothing matters. It all matters or none of it matters. Right? Weird how that works. So many things we want not to matter, matter. And so many things that do matter to us, shouldn’t. We focus on things we can’t control. We don’t take the time to work on ourselves where we are. We are constantly looking down the street. We are constantly looking for help. We are wishing and hoping and what if-ing. But what if we looked at where we are with compassion and love? What if we loved ourselves for where we are and what we are right now?

We are told we should change. We are told we aren’t good enough. We are told we aren’t skinny enough. We are told we aren’t pretty enough. FOR WHO???? It’s a trap. Go to the mirror and look at yourself. Look hard. Tell yourself how you feel. Be kind. Be loving. Be compassionate. It takes a long time to get to I love me, but it’s there. It’s in there. Sometimes it’s deeply rooted and takes a long time to come out. Start unwrapping. Start saying nice things. Start looking for her. Start looking for the person you once knew. The one who is fun and carefree. The one who wants to live and enjoy life. The one who does’t care what other people think. Do this for yourself. Only you can help yourself. Nobody is coming to save you, except you. Take a step. Take action. Little by little those steps will turn into big progress. It may take a year. It may take a month. It may take two years. The time passes regardless. Start loving yourself where you are right now. Start looking into your own eyes with compassion and love. Start seeing you. Start loving you no matter what. 

The dread. The anxiety. The dread. Yes, I said dread again. I hated going there. I didn’t care what it was for. I mean, seriously, why did I have to get weighed when I had a cold. I mean come on. Why is the scale such a mindfuck? Who made me hate it? Why did I hate it? Where does that come from? The fear, the shame, and the overall self-loathing, all because of the number on a piece of equipment.

The dreaded scale. But this time I am talking about the old-fashioned kind. The sliding bar scale. I bet you know which one am talking about. The one that instills even more dread and shame and anger.

It was tall. It was massive. It was intimidating as hell. The top slider covered the pounds 1 through 50. The bottom chunky thing that landed on an increment sounded like it weighed a ton. You damn well knew when you went to the next increment and so did everyone within a 50 foot radius of the waiting room. The scale itself was heavy. Oh, I almost forgot. I was daydreaming the dread. The bottom increments were 0-50-100-150-200 and maybe more. I don’t remember for sure because I was always concerned about that number that was 150. That number meant something. That number meant that the chunky thing dropped to the next increment. The 150 increment. The horror of that increment. 

The way the scale worked was a person stepped on the platform of the scale and waited. The nurse would watch as people stripped off nearly everything they owned. Because lighter. Okay then. I will use myself as the example here. I’m sweating bullets already because we all know the doctor scale and our home scales NEVER match. I mean never. The doctor scale always has to add a little zinger for us and be up by around five pounds. It twists the knife in, just for good measure. As if, we weren’t anxious enough. 

So, I looked at the scale. Okay, deep breaths, here we go. There is another factor I needed to take into account. The human factor. The nurse factor. Her job was to stand there and take a look. A judgey look. She decided what increment to start at. Now, just a little side note, if it was me and because I know so many people have that dreaded scale anxiety, I would definitely go lower than a stupid guesstimate I had for a person. Or maybe way high to make a person feel better. It’ a crap shoot. I bet her job was not fun being the judgey one. But alas, a girl can dream. And alas, hindsight is 20/20. 

Okay then. I stepped on the scale and waited. I waited for the increment. Increment 100. Because obvious. I wouldn’t start at the 50 increment, unless I was a child. I don’t know, I was probably acting like one. She moved the top slider over to the 140 area. Nothing. Another half inch, 145. Nothing. Shit. This sucks. Another half inch, 149. Nothing. The dread started to kick in. The anxiety for sure. The steps of scale grief. Dread – Anxiety – Shame and then Anger. Anger for the push to make a change. Anger because I let myself get this way. Anger because shame, anxiety and dread.  Circle jerk of emotions and feelings. So, she keeps moving the slider, just waiting for the balance to come. The clunk of the 150 increment. Watching my face and my eyes glued to the slider. Feeling the pain of the dreaded piece of equipment that has the power over me. The power of my self worth. The power over how the rest of my day and maybe even my week and month are going to go. That is a lot of power to give to a piece of equipment. 

That was the old me. The new me knows the scale is nothing more than a tool for data. That took a while, not gonna lie. I never weigh the same on any given day, because my body changes all the time. When I track my weight, I look for patterns. As long as the scale is moving in a trend pattern that I want, or staying in a holding pattern, I know it is working. I have taken that power away from a piece of equipment. It no longer decides my worth. It no longer shames me. It no longer makes me angry. Sure, there are days when I can still feel a little bit of dread, because I am human, but I don’t let it define me. The scale path is never linear. There are ups and downs and downs and ups. It’s just the way it is. 

People are told to throw away their scales. I used to be one of those people. Not anymore. I use the scale for data. And, more importantly, I faced the scale fear. I was afraid to know what the scale said. But now, I have faced that fear. How else will you get over a fear unless you face it? I get on the scale every single morning and I track the data it gives me. That’s it. It has taken time to get to that point. The scale is powerless over me. I am the power. I had the power all along. The power to change. The power to love myself. The power to change myself. 

If I go to the doctor now, I just leave everything on. Who cares. The scale will not tell me my self-worth. Period.