One millennial’s weight loss path to therapy

Last week I finally had my first visit to a therapist in decades.  I have said I’d start therapy for years, I’ve had intake appointments, I’ve even shown up for a visit or two in the past, but I’ve never committed.  On a particularly bleak September evening my insurance company called to tell me about an “awesome new service” I was eligible for.  I never answer these calls and I certainly don’t stay on the line for them once the peppy sales woman starts her schpiel, but for some reason, elbow deep in a tear-filled binge I decided to take the call.

I was born in 1985. The year the breakfast club was released, the year that brought us Kate Bush’s hit single “Running up that hill” the first time. And it was approximately 12 years before I fell victim to the newest, latest and greatest time waster. The internet. AOL instant messenger to be exact. There is a special breed of millennials who spent their nights chatting with strangers and besties on aol instant messenger (a/s/l?) that migrated to MySpace only to move on to Facebook when you had to have a college email address to join that eventually spent hours scrolling instagram who now find their comfort in 10-60 second clips on TikTok. For many of us, it’s been our access to communication, socialization and information for 25 years.

As a child the older women in my life cycled through grapefruit, cabbage soup, slim fast and weight watchers diets. Undoubtedly things they’d learned on Oprah and Sally Jesse Raphael or from the neighbors sister when she visited from somewhere far more metropolis.

During the height of “fitstagram” and the weight loss blogger explosion, every other account told us to cut carbs and increase fat or cut out fat and increase complex carbs. To intermittent fast or to eat more often. Many of these accounts and experts with credentials, all with opposing views. Things really haven’t changed, whether it’s your aunties trading cabbage recipes or your cousins and friends on the newest trend, we are all on the conveyor.

We cycle between body positivity and healthy at any size to the only true self love is taking care of your body.  One side tells you life is short, eat the cake and the other side says if you loved yourself you’d pass on the cake.

There is no single answer. This isn’t 1992 when you’re grandma bought a set of encyclopedias from a man named Eugene with a bad toupee and you found one answer to your questions. We can’t scope out the library catalog and find a few options.  There are millions of google results to every question you’ll ever think of.

So what do we do? What’s the right answer? I like to think we’ve had the answer from the experts that truly matter since 1992. The queens of En Vogue once said “free your mind, the rest will follow”.

So I’m not going to low carb, I’m not going to intermittent fast, I’m not going to weigh my kale…I’m going to put my time and my effort and all of my energy into figuring out what is going on in this beautiful brain that can’t start a diet without it becoming my entire identity. The part that can’t sustain that level of devotion and gradually loses every shred of healthy living. The part that tells me I deserve the cookie and the part that tells me I don’t.  No amount of googling diets and lifestyle changes is going to fix what’s going on in this brain.

I’ve been on the conveyor for 37 years, only I’ve never reached a destination, I get shot back to the beginning like a package with a defect and re-routed time and time again. There are a million different ways to package things but it’s time to fix the conveyor.

“So why now?” Rachel, the therapist I have a really good feeling about asked me.  I told her the universe intervened and that this time I had to listen. That for some reason I answered my phone that day and for some reason I didn’t quickly express my disinterest and disconnect and that for some reason the community care screener who offered me six free counseling sessions didn’t make me feel bad about needing them and for some reason I followed through on the call so maybe now is the only time.  We spent an hour talking and as it turns out you can’t just hire someone to fix the conveyor, but there are people who will bring you the tools and encourage you to complete the job and for once, I think I’d like to finish something.