How To Achieve Your Goal Weight Without Even Trying

All it takes is trauma

Jan M Flynn
5 min readJul 15, 2020
Photo by i yunmai on Unsplash

Frustrated by your inability to get to your happy weight?

You know what weight I mean — that number on the scale that you’re convinced you should be able to maintain, no matter how much your body resists. It may be a number you got from an Ideal Weight Calculator you found on the internet, or it may be the one you reached at some point in high school or two days before your wedding.

If you have actually attained that number in the past, especially if you’ve gotten there more than once, it’s now fixed in your mind as your secret benchmark of worthiness. Double down on that if your romantic interest at the time complimented you on your figure.

Never mind that for almost every day of your adult life, that number remains devilishly elusive, requiring as it does a level of self-denial that would make an ascetic monk weep, along with devoting more time to exercise than you do to your family. Your inability to weigh what you think you should, way down deep inside your flagrant flesh, is a constant whisper in your head, assuring you of your failure and your lack of self-control.

Society has been very clear about what it wants from your body

--

--

Jan M Flynn

Writer & educator. The Startup, Writing Cooperative, P.S. I Love You, The Ascent, more. Award-winning short fiction. Visit me at www.JanMFlynn.net.