1066 All Stars

Current weight – 11st 4lbs

* A very disappointing weigh in. Despite eating healthily and continuing to exercise, my weight has increased.

* I have in my mind a series of ‘acceptable’ weights. 11st 3lbs is the maximum as this is the weight I reached many years ago. 11st 2lbs is desirable as it is below my previous best. 11st (or lower) remains the long term target.

* It is again noticeable how being just 2lbs above a desirable weight is spun in my mind not as an inconvenience but as a disaster. It is black and white, catastrophic thinking, two thinking errors that I continue to repeat.

* The weigh in comes towards the end of a period of high anxiety, all self-induced. Having wrapped myself up in a blanket of self-doubt and judgement, I finally feel able to shrug it off but am left with the residual feelings.

Chief amongst them is a sense of shame. Why did I become so anxious? Why am I not better than this? Why have I still not conquered these demons? I do not purport to be an expert and yet I regularly dispense my advice to others as if I have solved my mental health issues when the truth is that they are ever present, awaiting their opportunity to bubble to the surface. I feel like a fraud. Who am I to lecture someone else on how to live their life when I haven’t a clue how to run my own?

* They key of course is not to judge. I have not failed because this was never a test. It is simply life, sometimes the challenges are overcome easily, sometimes they are more testing. I accept that I am a flawed human being, on a journey of continual self-improvement. The route is not pre-ordained and there are many deviations along the way. But the point is to keep going.

* With one anxiety overcome another one looms. Christmas is fast approaching, a time of family, presents, laughter and joy. And yet I dread it. I have a tangible sense of needing to perform, that I am expected to be happy. This creates a pressure that in turn causes me to withdraw, my mood becoming lower whilst the festivities reach higher. I want to enjoy it but the whole sense of occasion generates an overwhelming sense of anxiety.

I do not have a solution and will not pithily attempt to address it in a soundbite. That I want to conquer it is, for now, sufficient.