Loyalty

On my honor, I will try, to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people every day, especially those at home.
- the Brownie pledge of yesteryear

Forty years later I still remember that pledge, even though I probably never said it more than 50 times as a child. But I was loyal, loyal to a fault in most everything I did.
It can be hard for me to give up traditions. Not that the traditions themselves were all good, it’s just very hard for me to stop doing them. That’s a likely reason why it’s so hard for me to give up overeating.
I stuck by friends who didn’t want me as friends, people who didn’t want me around, stayed in situations I should have left long before.
Even recently I stayed with an exercise class that I stopped enjoying for more than a year. I kept signing up again and again for each new session. You’d think I’d whack myself with a cluebat eventually. Finally I got enough gumption to tell myself that it’s ok to quit. I know now that a prudent decision to end my relationship with a program or a person or a possession is a good thing.

I’m highly loyal to the newspaper funnies. It nearly broke my heart to hear that Calvin and Hobbes was ending. It took a very long time before I could accept that it was a change for the good, as Bill Watterson showed in his last strip.  

Now this year, For Better or For Worse is ending, then restarting, and even Doonesbury is taking 3 months off. Jon Stewart has been on vacation for so many days now I’m in Daily Show withdrawal.

Now I know that these things exist in my life for growth and pleasure, and that everything changes, and the sooner you recognize the change coming, the easier it is to accept. I mean, for goodness’ sake, we’re talking about ink on paper here! How upset should a normal person get about these things? OK, I guess normal has never been a good label for me.

My eating patterns are one thing I see now as in transition. The change is frustrating, and I often think, “Why can’t I just eat and eat and eat without having to think about moderation?”
But the answer is clear – if I want the state of normal weight, I have to change something, and that something includes how much I eat. It just frustrates me to keep experimenting, yet never finding the change. It feels like I was at the bottom of a well, and even though I’ve climbed, it seems I almost no further than before.
Sigh.

I know I have to find the baseline level of eating that I can both sustain naturally and lost weight. I just can’t seem to find it. Grrr.