How weight loss boosts your energy
Losing weight is good for you in many ways beyond physical health. It can energise you into sorting out other aspects of your life
For far too long I have lived with clutter. I’m a dreadful hoarder. As a close friend once said of me, “You’re so sentimental if you enjoyed a sweet you’d save the wrapper.” Embarrassingly true - in a recent clearout I did indeed find sweet wrappers!
Why some of us hoard while others toss every piece of clutter away and live blissfully minimalist lives is a subject way beyond the bounds of these newsletters. But I do wonder if us weight battlers have a problem letting go? Food for thought perhaps. For sure I hate throwing food away even if it’s gone off. That’s not just the guilt of knowing far too many people in this world don’t get enough to eat. It’s the thought, I might need that one day!
Weight loss though is very energising. It can spur you on to take more exercise because you simply feel more energetic. It can also help you to feel much more motivated to tackle those drawers bulging with sweet wrappers, ten-year-old receipts and yellowing pay slips. I find tidying up very easy when all you have to do is shove it in a drawer. Till the drawers groan and bulge and you simply cannot fit anything else into them.
Changing your life
For want of something to do when the weather was too hot to even step outside I finally tackled my bedroom chest of drawers which hasn’t been used to store clothes in for must be getting on for ten years. I’m ashamed to admit this but because I had a big clear out this week and the drawers are now blissfully tidy and well organised I feel better able to ‘fess up to it. I only realised after I’d completed this marathon task that the weight loss might be why I felt able to do it. I am changing my life and that spills over from being physically much healthier to improving my mental health too. It’s like a spring clean of the mind as well as the body.
And I think it’s important to see losing weight in this life-changing way. Part of the reason so many dieters - most dieters in fact - put all the weight back on is that change is scary. You do become a different person when you’re thinner. It feels to me as if you’re joining in with the rest of society instead of standing outside it. Being the right weight for your height, age and sex feels incredibly liberating, quite literally like sloughing off a skin. And some dieters simply aren’t prepared for the massive changes this brings. Nor sometimes are their families or partners who may feel threatened by the change. What counsellors call, from the film of that name, the “Educating Rita” syndrome - when a partner is fearful of you changing.
Fear of change
This fear of change can come from outside - friends who like you to be overweight even if they don’t say so or even realise it, family and partners - or it can come from inside. From you. I’m convinced one of the ways to lose weight and keep it off is to accept you’re going to be a different person. And some people may not like the new you; may prefer you as you were: “You’re no fun anymore!” Of course you too might not like the new you! Who am I now?
If you can get past that you may find it easier to keep the weight off long term. Anyone can lose weight. The true battle is keeping it off. And to do that you have to accept you’ll be different. Embrace the difference. Love the new you and you’ll find others are more likely to accept new you too. If not, that’s their problem not yours!
Losing weight gives you a truly powerful feeling: if I can do this, I can do anything! I didn’t set out to change my life and become more organised, more efficient, less clinging to all kinds of rubbish I should’ve thrown out long ago. But it’s happened! And it could happen to you too if you manage to stick with the programme and keep it going.
More next month.
I think you're right but unfortunately it can go the other way too. I put on weight in my late 40s and became chubby for the first time. At 57 I had a wake-up call from my GP so went on the 5:2 and lost a significant amount of weight, though was still 'curvaceous'. At that time I felt trapped in a job where I was unhappy. Finally I managed to make the break and get another job. In the interim holiday between jobs I lost more weight, simply from being happy and finally changing my life, I think. So I turned up in the new job as a slender person and my new colleagues only knew me as that. I felt great! Unfortunately, just three years later, I was made redundant by a nefarious young male manager. That was 2 years ago and since then I've found myself putting on weight again. I did get another job, but not one I like as much as the one I was ejected from. So I keep yo-yoing and when I'm on the weight-gain yoyo, I find myself thinking that being slender and feeling good about my image was pointless and came to nothing. When I'm on the weight-loss yoyo, I like wearing a variety of clothes and presenting myself to the world as a dynamic and stylish person.
I haven't solved this problem!
Losing weight does give me the feeling I can do anything. I seem to yo yo. I am not sure why. I don't think it's because I am afraid. I am that person who simply must eat less than others which leads to hunger & it always win.