Your Comments: Neither here not there

Things have been rather stressful in my family of late. If anyone is the calm, it's me. And considering that last week, I worked a 22 hour day, then two 14 hour days beforehand, to consider me the calmest is quite incredible.

My Dad in particular has had a rough time. One of his close friends has had to have his leg amputated after battling with diabetes for a considerable amount of time. This, a very short amount of time after his wife was in a car accident that left her paralysed from the waist down and on the left hand side of her body.

My Mum and Dad have been talking about how it seems like awful luck that they've both been affected so severely. However, the bloke ate a very poor diet, didn't do any cardiovascular activity, as well as smoked and drank heavily. His wife wasn't wearing a seatbelt when she crashed. If she had been, she wouldn't have been affected anywhere near as badly as she was.

So I've got some conflict of emotion here. I feel bad for them that they're hurt and having to go through so much trauma and upheaval... though part of me is going 'Well... what did they expect?'

My Mum never copes well in Spring. With the change in the seasons, she's always sneezing, exhausted, swollen and a bit delusional. This year, her reaction is so bad that she's spend the last 5 days in bed. She's only gotten out of bed for bathroom visits. (As in, she hasn't even gotten out for food. We have to go and put food beside her and shake her till she's awake and irritable to get her to eat.)

My brother is sitting exams at the moment, and I don't think I've ever seen him behave so responsibly. Up early in the morning, nutritious breakfast, then at his desk. I swear, I do not recognise the fellow.

So in amongst all of this, I feel like I have the least on my plate. Even with having to work a 22 hour day.

But the conflict of emotions... that's harder to deal with the tiredness. It was easier to have sympathy for everyone when I was dieting, since we were all in the struggling boat. Now that I'm practising intuitive eating and health at ever size, the day to day struggle is not there. There are longer, deeper struggles which have defined my behaviour for years, but as time goes on, I've managed to isolate the reasons behind those behaviours, and then, free myself from them. Being relieved from those damaging behaviours has lifted more weight off me than any number of kilos or pounds. That sort of weight loss has empowered me enough to chug on through tough times without anywhere near as much stress and anxiety as I used to experience.

Yet in doing so, I wonder how relatable I am to people. Misery loves company, but I've been the happiest that I've been in years. Even heading into late November and my most loathed time of the year - I'm in a much more stable and happier place. I want to impart what I've learnt from the intuitive eating and health at every size approach, though I've found that I've stopped myself from commenting on people's blogs since when people write about their struggles, they want sympathy and assurance that the restraints they've placed on themselves are tight enough, or need to be tightened.

I left a comment on someone's blog a while ago. She was in a bit of a funk and had stood on the scales for the first time in a while, and the number was much higher than what she expected. The tone of her post suggested that she was devastated. When I tried to sympathise, like the other commenters, tell her that now the scale had told her what she needed to know, she could work towards a healthier self. Immediately after, she wrote a post that pointed out my comment explicitly, and how I was wrong, and the focus should be on feeling good, not on a number on the scale.

Shortly thereafter, I left a comment on someone else's blog. She was frustrated with the lack of weight loss of late, and was thinking about a diet that was approximately 500 calories per day. The only thing that was stopping her was that when she'd tried diets with that low a calorie intake, whenever she did exercise, she got viciously hungry, so this time around, she wouldn't exercise. I suggested that a diet that low in calories while exercising is not enough, and her body was trying to tell her that by being so hungry. I recommended that she experiment with her calories, find a number that suited her body whilst getting the cardiovascular health benefits of exercise. She responded by telling me that I had no appreciation for how hard it was for someone to lose weight, and that my preaching and pouring cold water on her attempts wasn't helping.

I was all like, "Bloody hell. When I try to sympathise like a traditional dieter, I get told off for not focusing on health and fitness. When I try to focus on health and fitness, I sound like I have no sympathy."

I was talking to Kada about while I'm happy in my own personal sense; as far as blogging goes, I wonder if I'm too far from the dieting scene to sympathise with dieting struggles - yet not enough of an activist to be considered part of the fat acceptance movement. This small conflict in the dieting-vs-fatAcceptance mindset has trickled over into other parts of my life. In the past I would've been wholeheartedly and unwaiveringly sympathetic for my Dad's friend and his wife. Intuitive eating has changed much more than my eating, and in times like this, I wonder whether the change has been worthwhile. I've said in this very post that I'm happier than I've ever been. How can I be happy while other people are paralysed, having their leg amputated, and struggling from day to day with their weight loss efforts - resorting to anything out of desperation; dangerously low calorie diets, constantly punishing themselves with brutal exercise that they do not enjoy. How can I not be affected by the struggles of everyone else?

I know that I am in a different boat to many of you now. Though while we may be heading in different directions, it'd be nice to hear that we still have something in common, and that on some level, our paths still intersect.

Have any of you found yourself in a similar place? It may not be related to dieting, but another area of your life - have you ever found yourself growing, but as a result, isolating yourself from certain communities? Have you had knowledge that you've wanted to impart to others, that they've shunned due to you seemingly being unsympathetic?

Let me know in the comments.