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This is from my blog which I will update more often than this...but... it's how I am feeling at the moment.
Will power. Stamina. Energy. Guts. Determination. All of these things are needed when you embark on the journey to lose weight. I have none of them save one that is not listed – desperation. I have never been a small girl. My parents dispute this because in their eyes I will always be 6 and that was the last time that I can remember ever fitting into clothes that were the appropriate size for my age. I have steadily gotten bigger as I have gotten older. I don’t think I have ever really LOST weight – ever. Unless, of course you count bouts with the flu as a weight loss method.
My decision to attempt the impossible (at least to me it is) hasn’t come lightly or quickly. I, like so many people at this time of year look upon it as a challenge which usually crash and burns by the end of the first day of the year. I have decided that my new years for ever more will start on January 5th. I just don’t know if I could endure those depressing first 4 days of the year without chocolate. So I am going to go easy on myself – at least for now. I’m also realistic. How long can I last living on bananas? So far, 2 meals… I’m on my way.
I don’t own a bathroom scale. I threw it out with a bunch of other garbage that I dumped last year. When Mike died there was an urgency to clean things out – remove the old… just start out with virtually nothing. I don’t know why. I am not sure why my instinct was to push it all away. But I kept very few things that were ours and used the excuse of moving out of my home and having no place to store my stuff. I kept the important things, of course. But the bathroom scale? It was outta there. Mike bought that scale when he had his weight loss surgery. It was a surgery that I was totally against him having but he was his own man. He made his own decisions and he was stubborn about this one. I didn’t see surgical methods as a good and natural way to lose weight. And after witnessing what it did to him, I know that I am right. There is a reason why our stomachs are the way they are. There is a reason why we don’t drink from thimble-sized cups and call it a meal. There is a reason why there is more to weight loss than forcibly making your stomach smaller. It’s mental and it’s physical. Both of which he was unprepared for. I grew to hate that bathroom scale of his as I saw him shrink away. Sure, size wise he ended up being what he wanted to be. But he never had the strength and stamina that he promised me the surgery would give him. He never had the willpower to resist sweets. Instead he’d continue to eat them until his small stomach couldn’t take it any more and he’d end up sick in the bathroom – sometimes requiring me to come home from the middle of the day at work to attend to his problem. I saw his struggle day in and day out and I vowed that I would never go to the lengths that he did to lose weight. I’d be fat but I’d be happy. He was no longer fat and he was certainly NOT happy. That scale was a reminder of all that so I threw it out with out a second thought. But now here I am. I know that, for myself I need to do this. I asked Mike once if he’d help me. I asked him if he’d be my work out and diet partner and help me keep on track. It would mean we’d have to limit our sweets in the house and that he’d have to be there to help keep me motivated. And I’ll never forget what he said. He told me that he didn’t know how he could help me. He said that this would be something I’d have to do by myself. He just didn’t have it in him. Words cannot express how disappointed and hurt I was. It was even more obvious then that his weight loss surgery was just a means to an end. He had the small body that he wanted but the person I had married was gone. His mind was someplace else.
To remember these moments is hard. I have mourned his death so deeply. I miss him desperately. But the reality is that the decisions he made in the last couple years of his life hurt not only himself but his family too. It’s hard to get past the anger but I am working on it. To do that I have decided that I need to work on myself. I need to be comfortable in the skin that I am in, no matter what size it is. I don’t expect to be a size 2. Nor do I want to be. I’d be happy just feeling good again and if I can do that in a size 14, that’s A-OK by me. So wish me luck. And if you can spare a moment, cheer me on. I am not exactly sure how I will accomplish this but figured if I put it in writing and make it public, then there is no turning back. So here I am, World. Phat girl on the loose. Watch out.
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