Each week we bravely remove our shoes and glasses and step up on the scale and sometimes the numbers go up and sometimes the numbers go down. But we find that over the course of the year we approach a weight that lets us do more of the things we enjoy. As Plato said, “Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” So, we set sensible goals with our health specialists, and take small steps.
How do we do this? Some of us write down everything we eat or count our steps. Others allow only healthy foods to come through their doors and make sure they put on their walking shoes and take a hike each day. We can usually tell what we did or didn’t do to either gain or lose weight. Too many cookies? Too much tv time?
Yet those numbers go up from time to time because we choose something we consider more valuable than our weight. We know that eating sensibly and getting exercise is the way to have a healthy body. But we also know that self-denial is not usually the answer to a happy life. So how do we negotiate this conundrum?
We choose a happy life over a heathy body from time to time. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, are all occasions when we indulge our love of food. Birthday parties for people we love usually include a triumph of iced, sugary cake. Family gatherings may involve eating culturally important but rich foods. In my family it was Mum’s perogies with onions and sour cream. As Sophia Loren said, “Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti.” Of course, if you’re under your doctor’s orders to abstain, then explain your decision to the cook or just nibble. There are other ways to deal with this, as I’ve outlined in other articles. Eating together bonds people. So don’t feel guilty. You don’t have to be a “picture of perfection.” Jane Austen said, "Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked."
Thankfully, TOPS doesn’t promote the asceticism of a monastery to reach perfection. If it did, you can be certain I would not be a member. We’re all human, and as Salvador Dali said about us humans, “Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.”
To live a happy life some things are more precious than your weight. We need fulfilling social connections, as the pandemic has made very clear, and since sharing meals is part of bonding, we need to give up the guilt and spoil ourselves from time to time. That’s really the sensible thing to do. And remember to love yourself. As Mother Theresa said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” And that goes for yourself, too.
Join us at TOPS. We are a very non-judgmental group of people. We’d love to see you at our meetings. We meet every Wednesday morning at the Community Centre, from 9:00 to 10:00. We wear masks and social distance. We’re a low-cost, enjoyable, international self-help program that welcomes everyone.
Submitted by Amber Harvey