Conflict in Crazytown

It's been about a month since my decision to stop trying to lose weight. It's been a challenge. After a lifetime of stepping on the scale each morning hoping for a lower number, although I haven't been trying to lose weight anymore, I've still felt a ripple of disappointment each day I stepped on and it wasn't lower. Still, I continued to target a minimum of 2000 calories and watched the scale cautiously, the numbers would pop up, then down, then up, then down. I had chosen a weight to represent my 'red line': the number at which I had to take action to keep from galloping back up to 255 lbs.

A week or so into the food, I red lined. My rational self suggested that this was because I'd eaten dinner late the night before. But I wasn't taking any chances. I cut to < 1200 calories. I returned to life as a hungry miserable grump. Good times. The next day, I was back in the safe zone on the scale, and with a new maximum: 1800. And I continued to feel that disappointment of maintaining - even though that was my goal. Conflict.

Then I red lined again. This time, I told myself we were going to continue on and wait and see what the scale said the next day before we took action. I was still on a post-race high. I was trying to honour the advice of my nutritionist. But I argued with myself all day over whether it was the right decision. Crazytown. Yes. I'm talking about myself as though there's more than one of me. Maybe there is. Me, the athlete wannabe. Me, the scale obsessed food Nazi. Conflict.

I managed to stay away from my red line in the week or so that followed but still felt very discontented with my body. It just wasn't right. Wasn't good. Too soft. Too squooshy. Not what I had envisioned. I had decided to focus on performance goals and reducing body fat but the absence of objective, immediate feedback was weighing heavy - that and the unhappiness with what I saw in the mirror. So that's how I found myself standing in front of my husband, grumbling about my body and voicing the thought that had been rolling around upstairs "maybe I should lose another 10 lbs".

Him: What do you weigh right now?
Me: 131
Him: So go to 120

Let me just offer a piece of advice to folks out there... When your partner stands before you after a 124 lb weight loss and says perhaps they should lose another 10, suggesting 11...? No. Maybe they do need to lose 11. Maybe they need to lose 111. But you're not the person to be suggesting that.

In all fairness to my husband, we have debriefed this little episode and he claims I misunderstood. That he meant "so go to 120" as a question. Not a directive. Or a request. Im willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but of course, now that there's doubt, I'm up to my neuroses in conflict. Trying to decide if its better to be a smart-eating, hard-training, flabby athlete or a hungry, weak, half-assed training skinny chick. You'd think by the adjectives I chose there, I'd have made up my mind for the former. But no. Conflict. Crazytown. Population: 1.