SLD Crash & Burn

My last entry in 2007 was on Day 53 of doing SLD, October 1st, after I had lost eight pounds by basically doing NOTHING but the Shangrila Diet “plan”. Which averages out to about a pound a week of weight loss without changing my actual eating habits one damn bit. How impressive is THAT? And yet, Day 53 was The End of that experiment, the last day I wrote in this blog that year and the last day I consciously followed the plan. It was over a year gone before I decided to try this again.

Results were not the problem. No, I was the problem.

I want to stress that fact because a lot of people who might read this blog will think that maybe SLD is just another fad, that it doesn’t work, that somehow I got tired of doing it or it stopped working. NONE OF THAT IS TRUE.

What DID happen was that in late August through mid-September, I started crumbling emotionally and psychologically. This was sparked by a number of separate things that my therapist knows in unwelcome detail, I’m sure, but that I won’t hash on about here. Suffice to say, I was a wreck (you can see that in the posts I made here during that last part of September, cryptically referring to an ‘emotional breakdown’). After that I started drinking heavily, dropped out of grad school, and pretty much dropped out of life. My husband helped hold me together, and I kept working like a productive member of society, but on almost every other level I was not functioning at all. Losing weight was not even on my radar.

It all reached a crisis where I knew it was a matter of getting my brain fixed up right or something very bad would happen, so I started therapy a few months ago. It has made a huge change in my life. Before, I knew I was mental but had no idea why or how to fix it. Now I know what is wrong, how I got to be this way, and the steps I need to take to put all the puzzle pieces of my life together. This won’t be a short job, that’s for sure.

One result of trying to get better is me realizing that I am not only miserable because I am fat, but because I am UNHEALTHY. I think this is a good change in perspective; this is MY LIFE, not just a pants size. So this time I’m going at it from a more holistic viewpoint, with an eye towards changing eating and exercise habits as well as committing to SLD as an important part of my daily life. Like brushing teeth, or drinking water. It is going to take practice and conscious effort, not something I’ve got a hot track record for.

It is worth it though. I want to be HEALTHY, I want to be in shape to go hiking and dance for hours and pursue my dreams. SLD isn’t the answer to that, but it is an important tool. I hope that my blog will reflect that attitude.