The balance of caring...

I have realized something recently.  I don't care about my nutrition.  Not at all.  Or at least, not very much.

I used to care too much.  I focused on the wrong things, and became obsessed.  This resulted in weight loss, yes, but also in letting the rest of my life roles slip by the wayside.  

I became a very successful weight loser.  I lost 76 pounds in 2009-2011, and kept most of it off until Mom died in 2012.

Now I'm more than 20 pounds heavier than my original start weight.

And that concerns me.  I don't like weighing this much.  Not because it's a bad weight to be;  I'm sure that many are comfortable and healthy at this size.  But I'm not.

I gained a lot of weight by overeating and eating my emotions.  Like I said in my last post, this emotional overeating was helpful to me at the time, but it's not  helpful to me anymore.  I'm ready to lose the grief weight, for real now.

How do I know that I'm ready?  It's just a feeling that I have deep inside, telling me that it's okay to stop.  There are stages to grief.  No, not the classic cliche ones, but stages that are different for everyone.  Mine so far have been shock, anger/depression combo, numbness (where comfort eating happened), mixtures of all stages all at once (more comfort eating), and creating a new normal (where I'm trying to be right now).  

My comfort eating stage is over.

But the problem is now I am having a problem balancing the amount that I care about food.

I don't ever want to care too much about how much or what I eat.  

I would love to not consciously care at all.  I long to be one of the "normal" folks, who just naturally eats whatever her body needs, and maintains a weight that is healthy for her.

But, I'm just NOT that woman yet. Given my ED and dieting history, I may never be that woman. I have to learn how to consciously care again.  Because right now, as I'm trying to break the overeating habit that I developed during that particular stage of grief, I need to relearn portions, and I need to relearn healthy eating in general.

So I need to care a little bit.  

I don't ever want to go back to caring too much (a la my EDNOS behaviors), but I can't stay here in Camp Overeater forever, either (unless I want to continue gaining weight and becoming more and more uncomfortable in my own skin).  

The balance is hard to find.  But find it I shall.

It  has been suggested to me by friends on My Fitness Pal that a good starting point is to make a list of reasons that I want to lose weight.  So, I am going to begin by coming up with a list of reasons that I want to get back down to my pre-grief weight.  

It will be a judgement free list, some reasons being artificial (my ass looked better in jeans back then) and some will be spiritual (I'd like to be the size that I was when Mom last knew me) and others will be about health and fitness (I'd like to run faster and further, and I'd like to not develop diabetes ever please).  There are no wrong answers here, EXCEPT no self-deprecating ones (like "because I'm so super fat and ugly and don't deserve to eat kit-kat bars"- which by the way is total bullshit- everyone deserves to eat kit-kat bars).

If it doesn't end up being too personal, I will post my list here when I finish it.  

I hope that all of us can find our happy balances soon.  Thanks for reading.