Delilah’s Mirror Episode 9 The AA Moral Inventory As It Pertains To Weight Loss

I have recently (like, last night) become aware that I have a serious forgiveness problem. I carry grudges forever. It’s something I’ve always done. So my mother paraphrases to me in the midst of a mild emotional conflagration of yours truly, “You will be judged as you have judged others.” And I said to her, “Do you really think I am any less hard on myself than I am on anybody else?”

She stared at me for a minute and said, “No, I guess I don’t. You’ve always been harder on yourself than you are on anybody else.”

So now I’m wondering, of all those grudges I carry, how much of that is a grudge against myself? How much has my semi-perfectionism and black-n-white’ism and my tunnel vision cost me in terms of emotional health? Does my inability to forgive others or myself have something to do with my weight?

At this point, I will say no, because the offenses I have committed against myself and others, and the ones others have committed against me–the ones I carry, anyway–really don’t have any basis or consequence in my weight.

However, who is to say that examining our souls for the purpose of weight loss does not then translate into examining our behavior in other areas of our lives which, when changed, make us better people all around? And isn’t losing weight just one small facet of an attempt to better oneself?

I sometimes hate this time of year, because I really get into all this “cleaning out my life” business for the start of the new year. And then I find all these freaky little things I wish I didn’t see with quite so much clarity.

I felt impressed this year to make a list of the things I was grateful for, and yesterday at church was treated to an entire service dedicated to the concept of gratitude. So, in the interest of taking a moral inventory and sharing what pertains to us here, I would like to say these things:

• I am grateful I have a body so strong it can carry as much weight as it has for as long as it has without serious deleterious and long-lasting effects.
• I am grateful for the people who were put in my path to guide me toward Atkins.
• I am grateful for having met people who can pinpoint problems I would never have seen otherwise, for if one cannot see a problem, one cannot fix it (e.g., adrenal fatigue, proper supplementing, dairy as a culprit, etc.).
• I am grateful for those points of view which open my eyes to a world where being fat is not the end-all and be-all of one’s worth.
• I am grateful for having a family who understands and respects that when I ditch a family get-together, it’s because I’m not feeling strong enough to join them and still stay on my WOE.
• I am grateful to those who let me know that my words are valuable to them, when all I’m really doing is sounding off.
• I am grateful for the information I have found regarding the science and chemistry behind low carb, why/how it works, and that I’m not crazy for eating this way.

There are others, which are more personal and closer to my heart and mostly not articulated yet because they are a little painful and I am slow in my moral inventory taking. But for now, this will do.

I think, for me, the opinion that a moral inventory’s apparent irrelevance to our current problem (i.e., losing weight in all its facets) isn’t about applying each inventory item to weight loss. I think it’s just about becoming a better person all around.