A Thousand Trees and One Great Big Rock

I'm a slow learner when it comes to self-discovery.

I'm still learning things about myself based on CBT sessions dealing with chronic anxiety that took place and ended several years ago. This is also happening with me as I learn about problem eating patterns and causes that I began discover in Craving Change, a group workshop series of classes that ended many months ago. In that class I began to be aware of things ingrained in me that made me eat the way I do.

The more discoveries I make about myself on this front (not solutions, just discoveries), the more daunting a problem it seems. There appears to be no end to the reasons why I eat in ways that compromise my health. Some problems originated in childhood, more than likely. Others seem to be because of general personality traits I have like impulsiveness and risk-taking tendencies. There's many emotional reasons, it seems, and many habits built up over a lifetime. The reasons, although not clearly or fully understood by me yet, are nonetheless intimidatingly numerous.

Reading Dr. Sharma's blog on obesity and scanning the various studies that appear in newspapers and on the Internet, one might sometimes be led to believe that the fight against obesity is hopeless. I don't have the solution for myself or for others. There is no secret diet, and the body works against itself to gain back weight.

My own struggle is navigating a forest of countless and varied personal issues that have caused me to be severely overweight. I can't even see the other side of the forest, but I resolve to cut down one 'tree' at a time until I can make it through to the other side, one day, one far off day in this lifetime.

But there is one thing I am certain of. There is one thing I can control. There is one thing that I can be a master of and that is foolproof. It's exercise. Getting fit is a no-fail endeavour. You do the work, you cannot fail. You do the learning, you will have the knowledge--the secret--to overcoming the problem of obesity. It works for me; it works for everyone and there are no questions, no uncertainty about this.

I'm unsure about a lot of things in my struggle to tame my disease but exercise and fitness is the rock that I can always rely on. Exercise is well understood by science and even by me. I have total confidence in exercise and my relationship with it. It's a relationship that comes naturally to anyone who gives it a chance.

Obesity is a long way off from being fully-understood or cured. But that's okay. I have exercise. Exercise is the road I walk on, the path I return to while I walk through the forest of eating issues and chop down one at a time. One day it will lead me to daylight.