The Blame Game

It’s Not My Fault
I am fed up with dieting because I never manage to lose weight. I tried every diet under the sun and nothing happens, well maybe a few pounds to start with and then I hit the problem of nothing coming off.

"Why is this?" I keep asking myself. "I have the right mental attitude, because I know that by signing up for this diet book it will work, won’t it?"

It’s time for me to go and meet a friend, maybe she can help because she is thin. She knows I am on a diet and she does try hard to motivate me to keep at it. But she doesn’t understand, you see I am not fat, I am only 100lbs overweight, and there are so many people who are much heavier than I am. Perhaps the statistics are wrong, perhaps my ideal weight is a lot higher than the charts. Whatever I know what I am like and that means I know best.

"You're not ordering that are you?" my friend asks me.
"Well, yes I am. What you don't understand is today I am feeling depressed. I am depressed because of what I ate yesterday and this will make me feel better. "
"You overate yesterday, so today you eat even more?" she says unbelieving.
"How are you ever going to lose weight, if you keep on like this?" she asks.
"Don't start please, because you don't understand what is happening." I say to her.
"Then help me understand, tell me about it, because until you do how am I going to be able to help you, as I promised" she replied.

"Well, take yesterday for a start. The kids were playing up, my husband was no help and I was left feeling like I couldn’t cope. We took the kids out for a burger. I was really good though, I only had a coke, burger and large fries. Then in the evening, because I was so tired my husband ordered a pizza in, and before I knew it I had eaten a whole one. And because I was feeling so bad about it, I then ate a gallon of ice cream. I felt so sick afterwards, but none of it was my fault."

She looks amazed at me and says, "How do you work that out? You were the one who ate it, so how was it not your fault?"

"Oh! That is easy to work out. You see if the kids had behaved themselves, then I wouldn’t have been so stressed and had to go out for dinner. If my husband had helped around the house then I wouldn’t have been so tired and could have cooked a proper meal. It was his fault about the pizza because he ordered it in. Well OK he didn’t force me to eat it all, but he did put it in front of me. I know he hates ice cream but I bought it for an emergency. What if someone had called around for dinner, I had to have something to offer them. Well can you only eat a scoop of ice cream? It was so delicious I had to eat it all."
"But you really don't understand my weight is NOT my fault." I say to her.
"I try hard to control my eating but the food in the supermarket is too tempting. The kids have chocolate around the house and I don't want them eating too much so I have to help them out. If the fast food places weren’t there we wouldn’t be tempted to eat there either. And of course, something must have happened in my past to make me gain weight. I don't remember it but it has to be the cause of the problems. Also don' forget I had the children and everybody gains weight after having children. So you see none of it is my fault. Didn’t you know it is bad to take the blame for anything today, it does something to you, I read that somewhere. Get real because today we live in a blameless society, so someone must have caused my problems because it wasn’t me." I reply now to her.
"I can't believe you said all that" my friend said to me. “It is time for you to take control of your life, and stop blaming everybody. Have you ever seen a fat lady in a famine country even when they have however many children?" she asks me.
"Well no, but there again they don't have burgers and pizza to contend with." I say.
"They are blessed if they even get one meal a day, the point is children don't make you fat, but overeating does. Let's make a start, by you coming to the gym with me tomorrow" she asks me.
"Tomorrow, well that is difficult for me, maybe another day." I say to her.
"Oh so you are not committed to losing weight then," she says.
"Of course I am, but my joints and knees hurt too much," I reply.
"That is a called too much weight on them" she says back to me.
"I call that hitting below the belt, what do you know. My weight isn’t the cause of it, who says it is? I never walk, why walk when I can drive. It is because my joints are not used to it, and I haven't the desire to get hot and sweaty, not tomorrow, maybe another day."
"Did I tell you I have started a healthy eating plan now, I signed up on-line and bought the book, but it isn’t working."
"Why isn’t it working" she asks.
"Well can you imagine they have me on 1400 calories a day, how am I meant to eat all of those in one day. The amount of food on the plate is enormous, I need far fewer calories than that, but no-one believes me. Then there is all this water to drink which isn’t practical for me, and exercise, well my legs hurt so I can't do that."
My friend's face has a look of horror on it and she just bursts into laughter.
"It isn’t funny, how would you like to be in my position, I'm not really fat just cuddly and I have a few rolls of fat which I would like to get rid of."
"1400 calories sounds good to me. Did you know you ate 1300 calories for that burger, fries and coke?"
"Never!" I reply.
"Check it out on the internet and you will see how right I am. Just think you could have eaten all day and felt better with just 100 calories more, but no you have to have pizza and ice cream and goodness knows what else."
"But you keep missing the point, it isn’t my fault I keep saying to her, but she wont believe me."
"OK I have heard your reasons, so let me ask you one question What do you expect to happen, now that you have signed up for this new plan?"
"Well, I don' t know really, I suppose I am thinking that here is a good healthy site but I don' t have time to do the right things. I want to lose weight but I don't have the right foods in the house, and time to get moving."
"Let me tell you something" she says "You buy the food for the family, so you are to blame if you have only junk food around, also signing up will not magic the weight off, it is hard work, but you dont want to do the hard work. Did you really think signing up was enough, that you wouldn’t have to do anything, and each week you would weigh less than you did the last time you weighed."
Now she is being really hard on me, because she really doesn’t understand.
"You know what your real problem is, you like being fat."
That's it; she has gone to far this time. "No I don't, I want to lose weight" I scream at her, getting glances from other diners in the restaurant.
"Yes you do" she calmly says back to me, "If you didn’t like being fat then you would get rid of the excuses, take responsibility and do the hard work."
Now I am fuming here, because she really isn’t the friend I thought she should be. "I tried and it didn’t work" I said.
"I'm sorry I didn’t realise that trying meant eating about 3000 + calories a day and taking no exercise and not gaining weight, sorry I misunderstood the whole idea" she says sarcastically. "So it is true, you love to be fat and you want to stay fat" she says once again. Now that I understand that, I can encourage you, so let’s go for that really gooey chocolate cake. I will help you to eat all the wrong foods, and then you can blame me for giving them to you, because as you said, IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT"
Did you go ouch as you read through “It’s not my fault”?
Could you see yourself there in one or all the excuses?
What are your feelings?
Do you want to go and raid the cookie jar or do you want to do something to change even one attitude?
What one area from this story do you realise you need to have your thinking changed.
Can you go and exercise?
Will you be able to walk for just 20 minutes today somewhere?
The Perfect Diet Book isn’t asking you to complete a marathon with one week’s training. It is hard work like a marathon and therefore you will exercise slowly but surely.