Temptation

I find the diet season hard. I watch as brilliant, intelligent, loving people fall prey to the “change your body and you’ll change your life” (Hircshmann and Munter) idea. This year, it will be different. This diet will work. This time, I won’t gain the weight back. And, the best one of all: I’m doing it for my health so this time I will succeed.

Sigh.

If I’m honest, I’m tempted. I’m tempted to fall back into that idea that yes, there is some way I will not have a fat body. Yes, I too will be thin. Yes, I can be accepted on sight. Yes, I must lose weight to be healthy.

Except, I can’t. Thirty years of dieting left me with a binge eating disorder and the heaviest I had ever been. I KNOW that dieting will only make me crazy, not thinner. I don’t need to fail yet again to find out that this time will not be different. And, I cannot fall into the body hate that comes with the dieting lifestyle ever again. I will never go back to that insanity.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. As I watch my friends in their insanity, I’m tempted to join in; I'm tempted to believe the lie. It is so very attractive. However, today I know that it won’t work. The sleeper has awakened to reality and can no longer live in the dream. Dieting fails. The temptation to try it once again is a temptation to insanity.