DRAGONWYST

2 September 2010

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of going clothes shopping. For the first time that I can remember in my adult life, I had to buy clothes a size smaller instead of the same or larger. While this is certainly something to celebrate, I find it has disturbed a rather perverse part of my sub-conscience. I awoke a fear that, because I had bought clothes of a smaller size, my downward tend would cease and I’d find myself putting all the weight back on. It’s not a logical fear at all. It’s pure superstition. I thought that it would be easy to knock that little voice on the head and tell it to get real. However, that has not been the case. That little inner voice has been nagging at me all week, relentlessly. It hasn’t helped that this is one of those weeks where my weight is staying stubbornly at 95.2kg as my body recovers from the flu and the subsequent coughing. Every time I look at myself I see the fat that has yet to go. And the inner voice nags and harps telling me I’m stuck, I won’t get further, that I’m not working hard enough. The reality is I can’t work harder while the tail-end of the flu is still around because I’d risk giving myself myocarditis. I have still walked at a gentler pace and done the Evolution exercises, but I am not pushing myself into a sweat while I am still coughing and not quite right.

That same little voice taunts and jeers pointing out that people can’t even see the difference yet because there’s still so far to go. And it’s true that not everyone would notice. Not everyone is hung up about how fat or thin other people are either. Others do notice and comment, and just as I am accepting and enjoying the accolade with a grin on my face, that nasty inner voice tells me not to be happy because there’s still so much work to be done.

This little inner voice of derision is my arch enemy. This defeatist, put-downer inhabiting my head is destined to discover that my inner warrior self is armed and dangerous. What I have achieved thus far is more than I have ever done in my life and it’s a quarter of the journey won. It’s just a matter of time and the inner defeatist voice will be wailing and howling in dismay as I go out and buy size 16 or 14 clothes because the size 18s I have just got are looking too baggy and silly on me. It’s just a matter of time…