Myth #21 Change is possible for others, but impossible for me
Change is hard.
Change is one of the few constants in life though, along with death and taxes. It is perpetual and the rate of change seems to be getting faster as time goes by.
There’s two main types of change. Passive change, and active change. Change that happens to you – being made redundant, natural disasters, being broken up with – or active change, change that you instigate for yourself.
Orchestrating any change and trying to develop ourselves into the ‘best versions’ of ourselves is a constant preoccupation in our world. And it’s as exciting as it is exhausting.
I have this seductive thought every time I start a new chapter of my life that this will spur me on to positive change, this time I will finally be able to ‘get my shit together’, be organised, lose weight, finally start exercising consistently, make more time for writing, manage my money better, manage time better. I’ll make all these amazing new discoveries about myself, and finally become the very best version of myself now that I’ve changed jobs, changed cities, changed countries.
Probably because I believe these thoughts, they do, to a certain extent, become true. A new beginning is a great chance to get out of a rut, to carefully, consciously reconstruct one’s life, and consider the habits that one would like to build into it.
In 2019, largely due to having more physically active jobs, joining a gym, not having a car, and or a social life, I did actually lose a bit of weight. This was mostly due to starting my nannying job. That really challenged a lot of my stuff around food. I didn’t realise humans could functionally survive on so little food, and still be happy and healthy – they collectively ate basically nothing! I kept getting gently chastised for feeding them too much and giving them too many treats. That was my normal. I didn’t see the problem. Treats are delicious! Why would you want fewer treats? They’re active kids, they’ll just run it off anyway.
But this was a couple who had just turned 40, and they were slimmer, fitter and in better form than most 20 year olds. Perhaps I could learn something from them?
During my time with them, I did actually lose a little weight, but mainly I got better at limiting portions, at throwing food out, at having only weekly treats, going without alcohol, and saw that those things did actually make quite a difference.
Being sick for nearly two months straight (Dec 2019 and Jan 2020) and so eating very little, eating very carefully, and not having any alcohol (except for hot whiskeys) did also make quite a bit of difference.
In the first year living in Ireland, I had lost about 10kg, and I was back down to my ‘wedding weight’.
All that went out the window with lockdowns in 2020. It took me a very long time to identify it, but wowee, the boredom eating. It felt like legit hunger.
There was nothing else to do except bike and bake.
I reached my heaviest ever, and all the slimming victory of 2019 and early 2020 disappeared. I am all for ‘you don’t have to be skinny to be sexy’, but I was on the cusp of turning 34, knowing that gaining and losing 10-15kg a year wasn’t sustainable.
My arms could barely hold myself up when I was doing yoga, my feet would ache from walking for any length of time, and doing up my shoes required holding my breath and all kinds of contorting. I was making considerations about footwear similar to my grandmother – and do not even speak to me about heels.
I felt disgusting, heavy, hopeless, unfit, perpetually hungry, but I didn’t really believe there was any way to change it without taking drastic action -starving myself, or becoming a tiler, or something like that, where I was moving all day.
The times in my life where I’d lost loads of weight before usually involved so much exercise that I ceased to be hungry, and I would then lose weight from not eating, and also from loads of movement. Who had time for a career change? Or hours every day of exercise? Surely there must be a better way.
I stayed with a teacher friend in Auckland after MIQ in January. She and I used to work late and then go and get dumplings at a place just around the corner from school in the heart of Auckland’s Chinatown. In the 3.5 years since I saw her last at my wedding, she had transformed herself completely. She had lost half a person’s worth of weight, and looked younger, fresher, more energetic and healthy.
35kg released, kept off, and a whole new lease on life.
She’d changed. Permanently. Was it really possible?
She explained how she’d found this different way of eating that basically cleansed you from the inside out, and any qualms or queries I had she dismissed them as being contrary to her experience.
‘I couldn’t possibly teach and survive on such little food and no coffee!’
‘I did. You can too.’
‘I just get so hungry!’ I protested.
‘Yea, I used to, but you get used to it.’ She rebutted.
‘How would you have enough energy to do anything?’ I asked.
‘I have more energy now from eating less. Your body is expending less energy digesting and storing food you don’t need, and I don’t have to carry around as much.’
‘I have basically no will power.’
‘Lauren, you are hardly the kind of person to shrink from a challenge.’
After days of seeing this in action, seeing how happy and energetic she was, and having all my concerns answered, I began to wonder if change really was possible. I figured if she could do it, then so could I.
So I signed up the next week, roped Mum in as well, and oh my golly me, what a journey we have been on in the last 9 months.
It has been so challenging examining my story about myself, and about my relationship with food.
All these things that I thought were so irrevocably true about myself – that I was doomed to be bigger than most forever, that I couldn’t overcome my insatiable appetite, that it was not possible for me to lose weight, the best I could do was not put anymore on – all of these concrete beliefs that were once true are proving movable, and there’s a whole lot of other things become true.
My will to look after my body is stronger than my appetite.
I am in control of my body.
I am capable of making consistent good choices.
I am able to find things that serve me and release things that don’t.
These are in the process of becoming true. And my inner critic has an awful lot to say about it, but I just keep on trucking, and proving it wrong.
The problem with trying to change yourself by changing your circumstances is that you still come along, with all your same thoughts, beliefs, values, feelings, and expectations.
Sometimes you have to look deep into the dark closet of bullshit your brain has in storage, and let shine the light on what you’ve taken as gospel.
Challenge the story you have about yourself, your body, your weight. The things you thought were true, but aren’t. The things that simply do not serve you.
Change begins in the mind first.
Challenging a single thought.
With a bit of work, thoughts are remarkably easy to change.
Your thoughts create your feelings; your feelings create your actions; your actions create your habits; your habits create your life.
Further reading:
Free 5 day course in how to change your body image
The thought ladder from Unf*ck your Brain
More on the thought ladder
(Not-free) Unf*ck your body image course