By Lynn Haraldson-Bering
The “s” word is forecast for tomorrow. I can hardly say the word out loud, let alone write it, so for now I’ll just call it the “white stuff.”
My 45-year-old self relates to the white stuff far different than my 10-year-old self. Used to be I couldn’t wait to wake up and see it littered across the lawn all wet and sticky – perfect for a few s-balls to pelt my brother with on the way to school. It meant I could finally wear my new snow boots and mittens. The first white stuff rang in the season of frequent school cancellations, the holidays, ice skating and sledding. Seeing the white stuff for the first time was like seeing an old friend. It was as much a toy as the ones under the tree on Christmas and as comforting as my thumb and blanket.
Thirty years later, though, I don’t care much about new boots (no matter how cute they are) and I can never find mittens warm enough to stop the Raynaud’s from turning my fingers ghost white and numb. It’s the scraping and the driving with white knuckles and the cold that the white stuff brings that is my reality (moving is not an option right now) and so I approach it with trepidation and a little dread.
When I compare this to maintenance vs. weight loss, the feeling is sometimes the same. Just as the white stuff “rewarded” me with fun and excitement, weight loss rewarded me with new numbers on the scale. I often got on the scale with the same kind of anticipation of waking and seeing the white stuff on the ground. Now when I get on the scale, I just pray the numbers are close to what they were the week or day before. I loved losing weight. Admitting that now makes me wonder if all the times I’d lost weight before and gained it all back wasn’t some kind of internal self-reward system at work. Maintaining a weight loss meant a loss of those rewards.
While I’ve embraced maintenance for what it is – a complete change of behavior from my “lose-gain-lose-gain” era – eating right and exercising sometimes takes on the same “have to” feelings as scraping the car after a heavy s-fall or wearing gloves while shopping in the produce and freezer sections of the grocery store. I don’t always want to do what it takes to maintain my weight. I sometimes want to eat without thinking, work or shop or do anything other than exercise, and cast off my gloves and feel normal again. In other words, live in a constant state of “if only,” fighting against what is real.
And so, I’m committed to balancing this dichotomy, both with the white stuff and maintenance. This will be my second full winter season in maintenance and it’s time I stopped bitching and figured out how to be content in maintenance and to accept the white stuff, because neither one, either by my own volition or an act of god, aren’t going away.
Writing about this issue helps. Remembering how much I loved the white stuff melts my 45-year-old heart a little. So how can I appreciate it this winter and approach it from a more positive mindset rather than a negative? I can start with how it looks. The white stuff is beautiful sometimes. It can project calm when it’s falling in big flakes, quietly and without wind. It smells good, all fresh and new. Claire will soon love to play in it and I can experience it from a child’s perspective again. That’s good, too, I guess.
And maintenance? It can look beautiful when I look in the mirror at my flawed but reduced-weight body. I am strong and healthy, despite my physical limitations. Eating right can project calm in my sometimes hectic life. When things happen that are beyond my control, I still control what food I put in my mouth. That keeps me centered. I can hold Claire and chase Claire around the house in ways I couldn’t have at 300 pounds. That is the greatest reward.
So this dichotomy – the love/hate relationship with white stuff and the love/hate relationship with maintenance – will take thoughtful diligence. In the end, I want to be happy and at peace. Fighting it only creates suffering and I don’t want to suffer.
I’d rather admire my Christmas cacti that are in full bloom. Beautiful, aren’t they?
So let is snow (yes I said it), let is snow, let is snow. Let me maintain, maintain, maintain. I don’t have to always like it – that’s part of my agreement to face the duality – but I have to deal with how I feel. If I don’t, I will gain weight, I will always hate snow (notice I’m not committing to never hating snow), and I would forever live in the mind-state of “if only things were different.”
