Time to quit all the blaming!!

I don't post here that much but I do lurk and read a lot of posts.  I have learned a lot from reading those posts from recipes, vitamins, protein, head hunger, etc.

I have read some posts lately that have saddened me.  The BLAME GAME.  When are we going to stop blaming everyone for our weight gains, not exercising and bad eating habits?   I have read posts that blame everyone from Mom, Dad, Sister, Spouse, Brother, Friends, Gas Station Attendant, Grocery Store Clerk and so on.

You know who I blame?   ME    Do we all have the perfect family?  NO   Did we all have the perfect upbringing?  NO   Do we have perfect family and friends?  NO  I even found out that this is not a perfect Forum.  Once on here I threatened to deactivate but in this journey I realized I need to stay here because I need to learn and grow.  I won't always agree with my family, friends and people on this forum but I will continue to try as hard as I can to succeed.

If we want to succeed in this journey we need to put the blame where it belongs - Ourselves.  No one forced me to lay on the couch and not exercise.  No one forced me to gain over 100 pounds.  It was all ME!!

Do some of us have problems?  SURE  But I can not (will not) Blame everyone else for my bad choices. 

Thanks for listening  - debbie

I do agree with a lot of what you've shared, I think there is a difference between blaming and accepting that others impact us.

My mom raised me to feed every feeling. I am now working very hard to feed my body for fuel and health and to deal with my emotions in a way other than food.  It is not that I blame my mom. I do not. But I do recognize that she played a huge role in my habits for the first 18 years I lived with her. 

But the only person I am accountable to is me and the only person I can point a finger at for choices I make now is me. But I do need to recognize that if my 18 year old makes me mad and my first response is to go eat something and I stop myself, then I need to address that feeling and not just ignore it. Not blaming my son. Recognizing my own part in the emotion.

Hope that makes sense!

:)

Awesome post! It is true...we all have our own baggage that made us get as big as we have gotten over the year. It can be really hard for people to come to terms with it...but, eventually, you have to realize that whatever you are blaming your weight gain/unhealthy lifestyle on....it is just an excuse now. You are an adult and you make your own choices. YOU choose whether to eat healthy or not, whether to exercise or not...if you do have issues with using food to soothe yourself due to past experiences...you are now an adult that can ask for help in dealing with that....get counselling and move forward with your life...without that baggage!

If you keep letting all those reasons control your life...you are letting those negative things that happened to you at one point in your life, ruin your whole life, not just the time period where these things happened.

Take control of your own life, decisions and future. We can all do this!

   And the can of whoop @#$ is open for business....!  Bravo !

Preach!!  

Let the church say AMEN!!! This is an awesome post! I agree 100% that the blame game should be on us. We are the only ones that can control what we put in our mouths. I needed to read this to keep me motivated! =)

I stopped blaming things on my parents when I turned 25 I am however in therapy to help with the things that make me mad from when I was a child.But I am 46 years old and I am a work in progress.

I must have missed a lot of posts where people were blaming their families, friends and gas station attendants for their problems, including their weight.

I think it is important to take responsibility for ourselves but I also think it's important to acknowledge how the actions of other people affect us, especially the actions of our parents when we're growing up.  With regard to weight, well, as children we eat what our caregivers provide for us.  We cannot earn our own money, shop for our own food, and prepare our own food.  We also don't know what food is health and what food isn't.  We rely on our caregivers to meet our needs, including buying food and preparing it for us.  As we grow older, we start learning more about nutrition, like at school, but most schools don't provide very healthy food, either.  As teenagers, maybe we are able to get an after school job and earn some money, and I guess we could use that money to buy healthy food, and as teenagers we are probably able to prepare food for ourselves, but by then we might already be obese and might have developed very poor eating habits, not of our own choice, but because children learn what they are taught.

So when we become adults, yes, we're responsible for buying and preparing our own food and making our own food choices, but we come to that point carrying baggage, and it's not baggage that we chose to carry.  It's baggage placed on us by our childhood caregivers.  Now, we can decide we don't want to keep carrying that baggage and start taking steps to let some of it go, but most people can't just do that instantly.  It can take time, sometimes lots of time, and hard work.

Even as adults, there are many things in our lives we have control over, but there are some things we don't.  For instance for the past three months, financially things have been really rough for me.  I had to have some costly dental work done, and I didn't choose to have dental problems and they weren't caused by something like me choosing not to brush my teeth.  I guess I could have chosen not to get the dental work done, but having a broken tooth in the front of my mouth not only looked bad, but was causing a lot of pain.  For more than a month, I lived mostly on protein shakes and Greek yogurt and soup.  So I made the choice to get the dental work done but it was very expensive and I live on a very tight budget anyway, and that large expense meant I needed to rely on food from a local food pantry for a few months if I wanted to eat.  I made the choice to eat, so I visited the food pantry.  I did not have control over what food was given out at the food pantry.  Yes, I had control over whether or not I ate it, but when given a choice between eating Poptarts and Frosted Flakes and things like that or not eating at all, I think most people would choose the Poptarts and Frosted Flakes.

I am not blaming the people at the food pantry for the fact that I ate less-then-ideal foods for a while.  Some of the food I got at the food pantry was actually excellent - I got some Greek yogurt, some avocados, some bananas, some cottage cheese (which I don't actually like but chose to eat anyway because I wanted to eat and it was healthy for me), etc.  And I did buy some groceries myself and made healthy choices there, but I was not able to afford to buy enough food to feed myself for a whole month.  Again, I'm not blaming the people at the food pantry for the fact that I ate less-than-ideal foods, but I'm not blaming myself, either.  I made the best choices I could in a difficult situation but the situation was not my fault.

I have a slightly different outlook. 

Blaming anyone (including yourself) is nonproductive and putting focus on the problem, when the focus should be on finding the solution.

It isn't about whose is at FAULT, it is about who is RESPONSIBLE. 

Exactly my take on it.