I’m having a rough night and I need to talk about it.
#realtalkwiththeFFK

For the past two years, I have slowly gained 30 pounds back from my lowest weight of about 225 pounds. Want to hear the weirdest part? I didn’t know why until tonight.

So yes, two years ago I did start a new job and I thought that was why for a long time. But today, I finally realized what happened that first week of work that created this mess.

Dear reader, it’s weird…

Here we go…
In my office at work, I have two screens: my MacBook Pro laptop screen and my 24″ Apple monitor which is perfect for Photoshop and other design programs. A few weeks in to my new job, I turned off the monitor and I saw myself, my 225 pound self, in the screen. Then a voice that was essentially non-existent in my life, or at least one that had been silent for years, popped into my brain. “Holy crap! You are still fat! You know that, right?” It was like years of suppressed negativity crashed through my mental fortress of positivity. At that moment, I stopped loving myself. From that moment on, I saw a fat version of myself in that screen and any other reflective surface for that matter. I even saw it today and told myself the same thing. It felt like after that day, instead of working harder in the gym (which still wasn’t the right answer), I ate my feelings and essentially lost any amount of self-control I had.

I know this doesn’t make any sense. Please don’t try to explain how the image I see in the screen is a refraction so it’s larger. I knew that then and I know that now. Sadly, none of that matters to the part of my brain that controls my self image. All it sees is a fat Nathan. I think the reality of it is that I hadn’t confronted a lot of the serious body image issues I had dealt with all my life. I guess I kept them in check by losing weight and exercising. Eventually, those successes wore off and my guard was down. This is a lot of the reason why I’ve been silent on the blog for the past few years. I haven’t valued my success myself the way I should.

So now what? Now that I’ve figured out this possible root cause, how do I make this gain just a slight detour in my life? To be honest, I’m not too sure. I do, however, feel like a small proverbial weight has been lifted off my chest. I know it will take time to lose those 105,000 calories, but I’m ready to get back in the right direction.

More importantly though, I’m ready to love myself again.