I want to build directly on what I shared yesterday.
I talked about my long struggle with weight gain, how for years I tried everything I could think of to lose weight, and how no matter how much effort I applied, the number just kept going up. Then something unexpected happened. When I stopped trying to lose weight altogether, I stopped gaining it.
At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening. It felt counterintuitive. Effort had always worked for me before. If I wanted something badly enough, I pushed. I applied discipline. I followed the plan. And eventually, I got there.
But this was different.
No matter how hard I tried, my body didn’t respond. In fact, it pushed back harder. And now, looking back, almost five years later, I can see something I couldn’t see then.
I wasn’t efforting from care.
I was efforting from rejection.
I was trying to lose weight because I didn’t like my body. Because I thought it was a problem to solve. Because I wanted to escape the discomfort I felt living inside it. All of my effort was aimed at getting away from myself, not toward myself.
And in doing that, I missed something fundamental.
I had forgotten how to love myself. Period.
Not love myself once the weight was gone. Not love myself if I proved I could change. Love myself as I was. Without conditions.
Every plan, every reset, every new attempt was doomed because it was built on the same foundation, the belief that my body needed fixing before it deserved care. Effort framed that way was never going to work. It could only create more resistance.
When I stopped trying, when I stopped treating my body like an enemy, something softened. The constant push eased. The shame spiral lost momentum. And without trying to change anything at all, the weight gain stopped.
I want to be very clear here. This is not a success story.
I still want to lose weight. I still want to feel healthier and more comfortable in my body. That desire hasn’t gone anywhere. And I also know that if I want change to happen, it has to come from love. Love for my body. Love for myself.
The truth is, I’m not fully there yet.
I’m still in the in-between. I can see the conditions that matter now, but I’m still learning how to live from them. I know effort alone isn’t the answer, but I’m still figuring out what effort looks like when it’s rooted in care instead of rejection.
What has changed is this, I can finally see the resistance clearly.
The resistance wasn’t laziness.
It wasn’t lack of discipline.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want change badly enough.
The resistance was asking me to stop trying to solve something with tools that couldn’t work in the state I was in. It was asking me to build a different relationship with myself first.
That doesn’t mean I’m done. It just means I’m no longer fighting the wrong battle.
Today’s prompt:
What conditions might need to change before effort can actually help?
I’m not trying to resolve that immediately.
I’m just learning to notice what support might be missing.