Choosing what to do with fear

On May 6th a number on the scale jolted me out of my lethargy and comfort eating. If I caught covid, I’d end up in the ICU. It took another three weeks to decide on a way of eating I could live with, and on May 28 I made the shift. Today: 50 pounds lost, 9 BMI points down, 27 inches gone (though to be honest I didn’t have the guts to take measurements until mid-June when I’d lost 15 pounds). I still have another 50 to lose.

I’m sharing this to emphasize a simple truth: what you want is possible. And the crazy thing is: fear lives on both ends of that equation. Fear is what propels you and fear is what prevents you from achieving what you want.

I was afraid I’d get sick and die. But I was also afraid that if I tried and failed, my inability to care for myself — by changing my way of eating — would be proof I was inadequate, weak, lazy. In short, a loser.

I hate using that word because of the current political climate, but that’s the fear that drives us. None of us want to be losers. But in striving to win, we lose ourselves every single day in the questionable pursuit of short-term happiness, i.e. the alleviation of pain by means of distraction, mollification, or anesthetization.

I didn’t want to hurt or feel anxiety about the future, so what made me feel better? Toast in the morning with marmalade, just the way my…