My Asshole Anxiety

Anxiety is riding with me today.  It's riding through the sunshiney beautiful weather, through the antique stores up the street from my house, and as I watch one of my favorite movies.  It's specific and focused.  While I do sometimes feel free-floating anxiety, usually my anxious monster likes to attach to one or two things and just chew on them until they're bloody.  Today's topic - weight loss.

My anxiety was searching for mirrors in antique stores and then gazing into their magic depths.  My anxiety was tugging at my jeans and checking my hip-bones.  My anxiety was pinching me.  Yep. PINCHING!  Asshole Anxiety.

Here's the skinny (ha!).  I gained about 20 pounds over the course of 2 years.  Part of that weight was gained back after I lost too much when my Asshole ride-along Anxiety told me that my body was inflamed and I should do a vegan autoimmune protocol (Vegan AIP).  My Anxiety is NOT a doctor (and no, I didn't consult with one because my Anxiety hates them and think she knows better anyway), but she is convincing.  I lasted on the protocol for about 2 months, and then Anxiety decided that I'd gotten too thin, put on the breaks and started eating Oreo cookies and whole bags of popcorn to prove to herself that we didn't have cancer. CRAZY Asshole Anxiety.

On top of eating LOTS of food again after eating next to nothing, I'd also dropped my physical activity quotient way down and have been easing my way into The Change for the past couple years.  My body changed.  I gained the weight back, then gained more weight, and that weight shifted, and I wasn't as strong as I'd been.

Have I mentioned that I have a really pretty historic tale that is titled, The Toilet Years: Eating Disorder in the Rocky Mountains and Beyond?

I tried to talk myself into being comfortable at the heavier weight.  Anxiety hated it, but I tried.  I took courses on body acceptance and intuitive eating.  I told myself nice things in the mirror, I bought myself clothes that felt better on my slightly rounder body, and I tried to dance and move around some because Body enjoys it.  The one thing that I couldn't figure out though was how to eat, and Asshole Anxiety jumped all over that.  "We're out of CONTROL! We're NEVER going to be ok around food! We're going to die!"  Anxiety.  She's a drama queen.

One day, in the heat of THAT, an advertisement for Noom popped up on my Instagram feed.  I'd seen Noom before; I knew what it was - basically, and I'd tossed it aside critically because "I'm not a person that diets."  I am a person who starves herself on beets and acorn squash for two months in the name of health, but I don't diet.  On that particular day though, I was feeling pretty desperate, and Noom told me that I could learn how to eat in a sustainable, healthy way.  I just had to take a little test.

I don't want to use this post to talk about my Noom experience.  Maybe I'll do that elsewhere.  For the purposes of this little bit of writing, suffice to say, I lost the weight I wanted to lose.  I hit my goal weight this week - about a week after the projected date that posted at the beginning of the program.  It's been painless.  I've learned some things.  I feel like I have more insight into my eating patterns and also a better idea of how to feed my body healthily without starving or feeling deprived.  And my anxiety about food and weight and body has been really really low.

Until now.

I'm losing it a little bit.

My Asshole Anxiety is all up in arms.  

"What if you lose more weight?  You know that's not a good idea, but what if you can't stop?"

"Hey, now that you've lost it, what if you gain it right back?"

Both questions running over the top of each other all day long.  Obsession.

And checking.  Mirrors.  Pinching.  Pulling clothes.  Stripping to check again.  Over and Over and Over again.

I feel for people who have Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  Free-floating, near constant anxiety sucks, and I'm glad that I don't deal with that most of the time.  At the same time though, my Asshole Anxiety has some nifty obsessive compulsive traits that are really tiring.  If I have to strip down to my panties and bra one more time today "just to check" I might scream. 

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