Challenge Accepted

I've had many different types of relapses in my life. There's the Sleeping-with-the-ex-boyfriend relapse: "Oh God, Maggie, I couldn't help it, I slipped and fell on his dick". Then of course, there's the Another-Friday-night-at-the-bar-with-your-friends relapse: "Oh God, Warren, I mean it this time, I am NEVER drinking again after tonight!" There's the actual, Medically-confirmed-LEGITIMATELY-not-my-fault relapse: "Oh God, Mom, my left side is killing me, I'll go see Dr. Bernstein before work because my MS is acting up." And then there is, what for me, has been worse than all of these relapses put together. The diet relapse. New Year's Day is my favorite holiday. Every December, for as long as I can remember, I've spent hours compiling a long list of resolutions I truly mean to keep in the following year. Some have actually come to fruition. Most have not. Resolution-wise, December 2012 was no different than any other December of my adult life except for one thing. I'd finally read something by Geneen Roth. Any well-read female who has attempted to conquer bad body image issues has at least heard of Geneen Roth. She is an expert in that field and at the forefront of the anti-dieting movement. And at the end of last year, with my body image at a particularly puzzling low, I decided to take Oprah's advice and read Roth's Women, Food, and God. As usual, Oprah was right. The book really did open my eyes to a lot of my behavior regarding food. It helped me to see that what I put in my mouth has a lot less to do with hunger than it does with what's going on in my world. Eating a family sized bag of chips, then weighing myself, cursing the number on the scale and vowing to start Weight Watchers "tomorrow" is a lot less productive than trying to figure out WHY I ate the entire bag of chips in the first place. See, I've realized that it's a lot easier for me to say I hate my abs than it is to say, "Sometimes I hate being a stay at home mom." It's a lot easier to lament the fact that my latest diet isn't working than it is to admit that my relationship may not be working and that I'm scared shitless. But I don't want to run from my issues anymore. So for 2013 I have a very different resolution in mind. For 365 days I will not step on a scale. I will not join a commercial diet program or spend one red cent in any attempt to change my body. This is not saying I will now eat with reckless abandon and skip my workouts; nothing could be further from the truth. I love to workout and for the most part, my diet's a pretty healthy one. But there are days when I binge on end and in an effort to figure out why, I HAVE to avoid the scale. I have to focus on what's going on inside of me, and not use my weight as a scapegoat. This is going to be hard but I'm going to try my best to be honest with myself, and with my readers, each and every step of the way.