10 Years of Depression

I was talking to a good mate about my weight recently and he surprised me by asking, straight out, how many years I had suffered from depression. His take on it was, “U are too hyper to be naturally overweight…so it’s pain …. to my thinking at least…people telling U that U were worthless, so U lost lost respect in yerself…cause yer mentality is waaaayyy hyper”. The more I thought about what he said…the more I realised he may have a point. Most of my weight gain has happened over the last 10 years as I have gone in and out of bad and abusive relationships.

As always, a faithful mentor, in about 5 min he had literally liberated me, helping me to see my weight gain in a whole new light. For so long, I had been so self loathing and beating myself up for my lack of self control, and blamed myself for being a pig. On face value…that was all true…I am not trying to make excuses for the decisions that I did have control over (ie what and how much I should eat), that had a direct affect on my weight gain… but his observations lead me to dig a bit deeper and I now realise that there were other contributing factors, outside of my control, that also lead to my demise. It was a lethal cocktail, of depression, self loathing combined with the medical condition of hypothyroidism…with these ‘in play’ I really stood no chance.

But knowledge is power and now, knowing what I do, I have this opportunity to turn my life/weight around. There is no use, wallowing in self pity…that will take me nowhere. It is of up-most importance for me to do the ‘mind work’ as well as the ‘body work’ to understand my emotional triggers so that I can turn things around and never again feel the ‘need’ to resort to old bad habits despite WHAT may be going on in my life at any given time. If I don’t do the ‘mind work’ now 5 years from now I will most likely be back in the same position i was 2 years ago…as depressing as that is…