What Do You Deserve?

I have recently experienced a huge set-back. I say recently, but in reality it’s been happening for over six months. In September of 2018 I hit a milestone – I lost 80 pounds! I’ve never lost that much weight before!

I looked at the number on the scale, hardly able to believe what it meant. Losing 80 pounds was more than halfway to my goal. My clothes were much looser and I was in need of buying smaller clothes, so it really shouldn’t have surprised me to see the number going down.

And in reality, I don’t know that it was the number itself that surprised me – it was my reaction to that number that surprised me. I remember feeling disbelief, then fear, then disappointment. It struck me that I should be over-the-moon happy with my weight being down, but I wasn’t. I got a little angry at myself, “Micah! Look at what you’ve accomplished! Why aren’t you happy about this?! Isn’t this what you’ve wanted your whole life? Well, it’s finally happening!! Why aren’t you happy or excited?”

First, my disbelief. The fact that I “couldn’t believe” I had lost 80 pounds means that I didn’t really believe that I would. How else do you explain being “surprised” by weightloss when weightloss IS THE GOAL?! Deep down, I never really believed that I could be successful at losing weight because I had tried SO MANY times before. Suddenly, this time was different. Something about this process had worked and I wasn’t ready for it. I was seeing it, but I wasn’t believing it. In that moment, I realized that something within me was out of alignment with my goals and how I saw myself (more on this below).

Second, my fear. This is convoluted, even to me. I was afraid of so many things. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that weightloss. I was afraid that if I didn’t maintain that level of weightloss that people would make fun of me or worse, look at me with that crushing pity or disappointment in their eyes. Suddenly I felt “pressure” to HAVE to keep the weight off and I was afraid that I couldn’t do it – I mean, I wasn’t even able to believe I had done it in the first place, so how could I maintain it? I was afraid that it would make some people feel bad about themselves. (I know, I said this was convoluted… which is just a fancy way of saying my thought process is SO F’d up!!) I was afraid that, rather than be happy for me, it might make others who are also trying to lose weight, feel bad that they haven’t lost weight or haven’t lost as much weight. I was afraid that if I shared my progress, people would think I was showing off or trying to be something I’m not (what does that even mean?! I have no idea!!).

Part of the fear was not purely my own though. I recall telling someone that I had lost 80 pounds, but still have “more to go” and their response was, “but is that realistic?” The moment they said it, my soul was crushed. Basically they were saying, “hey, you’ve lost this weight, maybe you should just be happy with that and stop trying to lose more. That way you won’t set yourself up for disappointment when you don’t lose any more weight.” I know the comment was well-meaning – they just wanted me to be happy, but it confirmed to me that other people don’t believe in me; don’t believe that I could lose any more weight and that I ought to just be happy with what I had achieved, or be happy at being slightly less fat than when I started, or just “accept” myself the way I am and stop trying to improve myself. Suddenly, I had confirmation that I should be afraid of not being able to lose more weight, because others didn’t believe I could either. Which is probably what contributed to…

Third, my disappointment. My original goal was to lose 140 pounds. Losing 80 pounds, as I said, is over halfway, but because it wasn’t 140 pounds, I hadn’t “met my goal.” Why be happy about losing 80 pounds, when I still have 60 more pounds to go? Losing 80 pounds was great, but it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t be happy about losing 80 pounds because I told myself (unknowingly), that I wouldn’t be happy until I reached 140 pounds lost. It’s all or nothing and I won’t be happy until ALL the weight is gone.  The problem with saying, “I’ll be happy when…” is that you’re also saying, “I CAN’T be happy until…” Here I was, 80 pounds lost, AND I STILL WASN’T HAPPY. I was disappointed that I had ONLY lost 80 pounds and not 140. 

Somehow, of all of the three feelings mentioned above, it was feeling disappointment that was most eye opening. The fact that I had achieved something I had never before achieved – and still wasn’t happy about it, made me realize just how bad my mindset has been. Even as I have gone through the grueling process of trying to change my outlook on life, I still had this deep, deep belief that I could only be happy in one way – at my ideal weight.

But since I had “failed” to reach that weight, I gave in to my disbelief, my fear, and my disappointment. It’s interesting – I didn’t stop going to the gym and I didn’t stop trying to eat clean, in fact, I went through a nutrition certification course so that I could coach others on optimal eating habits. But what did change, was that I stopped really believing that I could do this – that I could maintain 80 pounds lost, that I could lose an additional 60 pounds, that I could actually achieve my goal weight. What has been the result? Well, here I am 6-7 months later and I’ve regained 40 of the 80 pounds lost!!

This is devastating to me.

I feel so disappointed in myself. I feel like a fraud for wanting to help other people eat well and lose weight, when I can’t even seem to do that for myself!

I’ve been asking myself for weeks/months, “what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get my act together? Why do I keep messing up, failing, and hurting myself – mentally and nutritionally?”

It finally dawned on me one day with alarming clarity: I just don’t deserve it.

When this thought came to the surface, I realized how much it felt like “me.” This is my identity; this is who I am – a man who is undeserving of anything good in his life. I don’t know why I haven’t realized it until now. How could I not have seen it until now? But now that I do, I look back over my life and I realize that it has been there the whole time. This belief has been with me for as long as I can remember, influencing every moment of my life, every choice I’ve made, every circumstance I have found myself in. Maybe I couldn’t see it because it was so good a hiding or masquerading as something else – such as being a victim, not measuring up, being afraid, etc. Being undeserving has been a part of all of those things, like an undercurrent that can’t be seen, but influences everything above it.

I have ruined diets, binged, and given up on myself over and over again, because I didn’t believe that I deserved anything better. If I did feel like I deserved something, it was that I deserved punishment, pain, and suffering. No wonder being miserable “feels right,” it’s all I’ve felt I’ve deserved. I deserve to be fat, ugly and lonely because I don’t deserve to be healthy, attractive or in a relationship. I don’t deserve to lose more weight, because that would make me happy and I don’t deserve to be happy!

Being undeserving can – and has – cut through every facet of my life. I think this is why I felt “disbelief” at having lost 80 pounds, as I mentioned above; as well as why I felt fear about losing weight – because I had achieved something I didn’t “deserve.”

For as long as I can remember I’ve had this really weird belief system that goes something like this: If I deserved to have something in my life, then I would have it; if I don’t have something in my life, it’s because I don’t deserve it. A couple of examples of this are: If I was deserving of having a good body, then I would have one (and not have to work for it?); but since I don’t have a good body, I don’t deserve it. Or, on the negative side: Since I was molested as a child, I must have deserved it, because if I didn’t deserve it, it wouldn’t have happened…

It’s as if the condition of having or not having something in my life is somehow “irrefutable proof” of this Deserving rule. Honestly, I have no idea where, when or how this rule developed, but I obviously felt it was so reliable that it just became a part of me.

Which leads me to my next question: now what?

Now that I see what I’ve been doing consciously or unconsciously my whole life, what do I do about it now? How do I just flip the switch and say, “ohp, gosh, you know what? wait…, wait, wait… I guess I was wrong this whole time; I really am deserving of having good things and being successful…!”

Like, I can’t do this. I can’t just wake up tomorrow and suddenly believe that I’m deserving of all good things – it’s far too incongruous with my experience. How do I lie to myself and tell myself that I suddenly deserve all the things I’ve told myself my whole life I DON’T deserve?

On the other hand I have this little “mindset coach” in the back of my head asking, “why does being deserving even have to factor into the equation? Why does everything have to be related to whether or not you deserve it? What if you took ‘being deserving’ out of the equation, period?”

Those are good questions, but I don’t know what that would look like. I don’t know how to answer those questions. Perhaps, instead of looking like “what do you deserve?” it might look like “what are you willing to work for?” Because if it’s no longer a matter of what you deserve, then it must become a matter of what do you really want and are you willing to DO what it takes to achieve it?

I don’t know. I’m really at a loss here. Has anyone else gone through this? What advice would you give me?

Have you ever asked yourself that question? Or have you ever wondered...

What do you deserve?

Thou shalt be unhappy...

I feel like I have to prove to the world that I’m worthless. It’s like, that’s how I see myself and nobody else seems to agree; no one else seems to be buying into that idea. Which I really don’t get, because for about seven years, I was made fun of everyday. I’m not exaggerating. I was literally made fun of every single day from, like, 4^th grade until I was a junior in High School. Life was hell. Every day I woke up with a knot in my stomach wondering “where it was going to come from today,” or “who’s going to be making fun of me today?” or “how many people are going to laugh when I break another chair again…?” The message of all the insults, ridicule and bullying was loud and clear – “Micah, you don’t fit in here; you don’t fit in anywhere. You’re fat and disgusting and no one wants anything to do with you. We’d all be better off if we didn’t have to look at you.” And I accepted that. They were right. I WAS fat and disgusting. I knew that. I could see it myself when I looked in the mirror. I agreed with them.

Then, little by little, during my junior year of high school, there were less and less insults. Fewer and fewer people seemed to be interested in teasing me. Maybe they were just bored with it. Or maybe they were “growing up.” The strange thing is, while the insults stopped, the message that I wasn’t acceptable didn’t. Okay, so people were no longer making fun of me outright, but there seemed to be a whole new method of reminding me that I wasn’t worth much. It was typified in conversations that I overheard from girls, mostly. They frequently talked about boys they liked and it was always the thin, athletic, good-looking guys they were fawning over. Okay, message received – girls aren’t into fat guys, got it. Being avoided and excluded can be just as isolating and hurtful as being pointed at and laughed at.

I’m pretty sure part of me is writing this so people will feel sorry for me, which has been my “go to” coping mechanism for quite some time. It’s why/how I became addicted to self-pity. It felt great to say, “See? I’m the victim. I was innocent and the ‘world’ did this to me – so everyone should feel sorry for me and even admire me for what I’ve been through,” as if my suffering has been a nobly endured self-sacrifice. What a load of crap! Basically it was me saying, I was hurt, therefore, I’m not responsible for anything that happens in my life.

But then who’s to blame for all this hurt? Who’s to blame for everything going wrong? Paradoxically - Me. It has to be my fault, because I’m the only one that I can truly punish. I can’t punish my parents. I can’t punish my friends. I can’t punish Heavenly Father. But me? “Me” I can punish. “Me” I can blame. After all, I never would have been made fun of if I had been thin. I would have been one of the guys the girls wanted to be with if I had been athletic and attractive. So it WAS my fault. I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t measure up and I had no one to blame for that but me. “Oh, but you have such a great personality,” people have said. Uh… yeah, sure, whatever. Too bad a good personality wasn’t enough to be acceptable, otherwise why would I have been teased so mercilessly? Clearly, appearances are much more important than people are willing to admit.

So… I learned to be a worthless victim, which helped me to survive, but it also made me miserable. It also led me to establish a pattern of reacting to everything in life with a negative mindset. Life is a series of obstacles that are too hard for me. My focus is always on what I can’t do or why I can’t do it – i.e., making excuses (to stay safe). You see, I learned in church that if something was right, then Heavenly Father would help you by lifting the burden and making it light, i.e., making it easy. So if something in my life was too hard, it meant I was doing something wrong, because I wasn’t receiving help. Or, for whatever reason, I wasn’t deserving of help. And the “I’m worthless…” cycle continued. Made all the more painful at the thought that I have a loving Father in Heaven who doesn’t think I’m worth enough to help.

Of course, nobody likes a wet blanket, so I learned pretty quick to “have the appearance” that everything is okay and not to let anyone know that I’m really suffering. So I became a pretty good liar, for the most part. Fast forward to today when I’ve played my part so well that I’ve completely snowed everyone into thinking that I’m confident and capable.  So much so that people actually treat me that way and it’s just weird. People actually treat me like I’m capable and are even complementary at times. What?!? When did this happen? Don’t we still live in a world where I’m the fat loser that everyone hates and is disgusted by? How is it that the same world that beat me down as a little kid, grew up and now treats me with respect? And what, I’m supposed to just change all that overnight? No way! They hurt me. They can’t just change their minds and say, “oh, so now we think you are pretty awesome and we want you to believe in yourself.” What?!? Excuse me?!? You can’t just change your mind like that. If you’re gonna hate me, then hate me and keep hating me, but don’t hate me for a little bit, then decide that you want to change your mind and start treating me like I’m someone deserving of respect. It’s like the worst joke you can play on someone – make them believe they are one thing, then once they have fully embraced that, make a complete reversal and tell them they’re something else.

There are so many hard things about being in this situation, but one of, if not, THE hardest thing to deal with is what’s going on inside of me. There’s that guy inside of me asking, “okay, so the world is giving you mixed signals – but what do YOU want to believe? Who do YOU want to be?” And right now, I don’t know. I’m struggling to know how to answer those questions. I’ve relied on outside opinions to tell me who I am for so long that I’ve lost the ability to choose that for myself. Or maybe it’s in there somewhere, but just atrophied from lack of use.

I’ve believed for so long that I was meant to be unhappy, as if it were an unspoken commandment meant only for people like me – “…but thou? Thou shalt be unhappy.” “Men are that they might have joy… unless you’re fat, then all bets are off!”

The other thing that’s hard is that I played the victim in order to avoid responsibility, when in reality, I am the only one who can be responsible for me, including being responsible for what I believe. Talk about a cruel irony! Being fat wasn’t/isn’t the problem. Being made fun of wasn’t the problem. Being told I was “worthless” wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I chose to believe it. It was MY choice. No one forced me to internalize that belief. When someone made fun of me, I could just as easily have said, “you’re wrong.” But I didn’t. I was/am far too sensitive. I want people to be happy and I’m willing to “be wrong” if it means making someone else happy to be right. But discounting myself has a cost and I’ve been paying that price my whole life.

I was so busy looking for someone else to tell me that I was okay, that I never learned how to tell myself that I’m okay. And no, Heavenly Father doesn’t help by making things easy, but He does help. And He isn’t up there, sitting His throne, waiting for me to mess up so that he can either punish me or intervene, He’s right here with me, encouraging me and doing all He can, in spite of the limitations I put on Him, to help me. Men ARE that they might have joy, but they also have to have bad days. I don’t think that scripture meant that we should only be feeling joy and if we don’t, then we’re doing something wrong. I think it just means that joy is a worthwhile endeavor – that it’s okay to live in such a way that produces joy. This world was created to hold all the good AND the bad and it was a part of the plan to experience both. Things aren’t hard for me because I’m worthless and undeserving, things are hard because I’m human and mortal. Things aren’t hard because I made some horrible mistake by being born fallible; they are hard because that’s just how it was designed. Just because something is hard, doesn’t mean I’ve done something wrong. And besides, from the very beginning, help was there – promised even.

And there’s no denying that I’ve been helped. There’s no denying that I’m still here. After all the crap I’ve been through and all the times I contemplated being done with this world and my miserable existence, I’m still here. (And trust me when I say that the teasing was a walk in the park compared to some other things I’ve been through, it’s just that the other things are far too personal to share at this point!) I’m learning, I’m changing, I'm messing up sometimes and getting things right sometimes, I have good days and bad days, and so on and so forth, and isn't that what this life is really all about?