Digging Deep

As you all know, I've really struggled with losing weight.  It seems that I stay the same or gain.  Or I lose some, and then gain it back.  All while "trying" with my healthy eating and exercise.  I've noticed that this seems to have been a pattern with me, both now and in the past.  I've always started a "diet," did it half-ass expecting results, and then stopped.  Because, well...what's the point?  I'm not getting results, I WANT junk food - other people get to eat junk food and not gain a pound, so why can't I?

So I've been trying to dig deep to find the real issues.  Why haven't I been able to focus?  Why haven't I been able to lose the weight?  I'm not scared.  I know that is an issue for many.  I never had anything traumatizing happen to me, like a lot of the folks on Biggest Loser (seriously, it seems like we learn about something traumatizing that the contestants have gone through in their lives every week).  I had a plain old vanilla childhood.  I had a great family.  But...

Maybe too great?  I'm not an only child, but I might as well have been one.  My brother is 11 years older than me, and by the time I was 7 or 8, he moved out and went off to college.  Shortly after that, he got married and had a baby.  We all know that the "baby" of the family typically gets most of the attention.  Sorry, first-borns, but that's a fact.  And that also means that the baby gets spoiled.  I've always been handed things.  Don't hate - it's not like I asked for it.  It just happened.  Yes, I did well in school, but I think I even half-assed that.  College was a rude awakening.  I did have to try a little harder, but I managed to skate by.

I think the fact that I managed to skate by so many things in life, plus the fact that my parents gave me everything, is the reason why I'm not losing weight.  I've never really had to work hard to get what I wanted.  I just got what I wanted, and that's that.  I didn't have an allowance.  If I wanted something, I asked for it, and I got it.  Money or a job was never an issue for me.  I didn't have to get my first job until my senior year in high school, and I didn't even have to apply for the job.  My dad had worked there in years past, and managed to get me an "in."  I didn't have to work when I was in college.  My parents paid for everything.  If I was running low on money, they'd send it over.  Visits to my Grandpa's house always meant an extra $700 or $800 in my pocket.  Yes, he gives me that much every time I visit him.  I'm the favorite, always have been.  I don't ask for it.  He just gives it to me.  And everyone assumes that that's why I visit my Grandpa (I think that's what sucks the most - I don't visit him as much as I'd like, because I feel guilty.  So wrong.).

So how do I change?  How do I beat this cycle of expecting things to just fall in my lap?  This has not only been an issue with weight loss.  This has been an issue in almost every facet of my life.  Even work.  I've lost 2 jobs because of it (embarrassing factoid about Heather).  I half-assed my work, and well....some places just won't tolerate that.  I'm scared of losing another job.  I'm living paycheck to paycheck.  If I lose another job, I'm basically out of a place to live.  I don't have enough money saved to pay even half of a month's worth of rent.  I've often wondered why I couldn't get that raise, or that promotion.  Probably because I didn't do my work 100%.  I've always felt that people were against me because they wouldn't give me the promotion I thought I deserved.  I thought I would just get it without having to prove myself?  I was really disappointed when a process was taken away from me at my current job - it was the only process that I actually had to use my brain for (my boring job is another post in itself).  But the truth is that I didn't take it seriously enough, and didn't do a good enough job at it, so they had to give it to someone else.  Fail.

At times, I hate that I was so spoiled.  I wish my parents would have forced me to do more.  To work hard for things that I want, rather than just give them to me.  I don't blame them.  I know they were just trying to be loving parents, and I love them for it.  But I think that's what has been the destruction of me and my weight loss, and other things.

Again....how do I change this?  I don't know what to do to break the cycle.  I've never had to work hard, so how do I teach myself, at 27 years old, to work hard?

(To Be Continued)....