Failure to Launch

Feeling a bit blue today.  Losing weight is 99% mental; an introvert by nature, I find that I am lost in thought far more since I started this path than I ever have been.  Pondering how I got here, the long road I have to travel to be healthy...My weight has always held me back from being the person I want to be: I LOVE dance, but have always been too fat to make my movements look like more than a gyrating bowl of jello...I am very outgoing, but often appear to be a flake because I'm worried about what others will think so I sometimes cancel at the last minute out of embarassment and fear (I especially hate seeing people who I knew years ago for fear that they'll say....DAMN look how big she got!).

I feel alone, depressed, vulnerable...suffocating inside this shell that looks nothing like the person I am inside!  This should be enough motivation to have me running four hours a day, but the harder I work, the more I look ahead at the LONG path I have ahead.  200 pounds feels like it will take a lifetime to lose, but I know that if I don't start now I will never get there.  There are so many insecurities that I keep inside and I feel like this process is bringing them all to the forefront (probably for the best so that I won't be in a thin body with a fat girl's mentality)...I suppose instead of focusing on the negative, I should ponder and attract to myself the positive. 

My life will be completely changed when I lose weight:

1.  I'll be able to fit in stadium seats without feeling stuffed in!
2.  I'll be able to fit into plane seats without the armrest pinching into my thighs (or needing a seatbelt extender)
3.  I won't be afraid to go anywhere or do anything
4.  I'll be able to buy what I like because it's cute, not because it fits!!!
5.  I'll be able to dance freely without being self-conscious about what I look like to others.  (I will also be taking dance lessons to learn contemporary dance once I lose weight)
6.  I will be much more active...I want to compete in a cycling race and join a softball team.
7.  I'll be more self confident and not just pretending to be confident for the benefit of others
8.  Hopefully I won't shed as many tears or feel so alone...unless you've been this size, it's hard to understand even a fraction of the daily struggle.  Once I lose weight, it will be my mission to show others that they, too, can be free!
9.  I will be able to have children...actually, this should be the first item on the list!  I have always wanted to be a mother, but refused to have a child at this size...not only is it probably impossible...it's extremely dangerous for both mother and baby...I need to lose weight so that I can be the wonderful mother that I know I will be.
10.  "I wish I could" will be removed from my vocabulary!!!  Once I lose weight, there is nothing that will be able to hold me back from living the life that I want to live.

My thirties MUST be better than my childhood and my twenties...my weight has been the reason why I can't do things my entire life...I REFUSE to be that person for another decade in my life!

Super-Sized Secrets

I was online reading weight loss success stories yesterday and there was a woman speaking about how she hid her obsession with foods for years. That got me thinking about all of the trips for a double cheeseburger and fries on the way home, being sure to throw away all of the fast food wrappers before someone got into my car. All the times I ordered food and pretended like I was ordering for myself AND someone else (you know, looking at a fake list of what "they" want) so that I wouldn't seem like a fat pig for ordering so much. Shrouded in secrecy, my gut kept getting bigger. I don't know what I was afraid of...maybe my partner would see how much I REALLY ate and leave me??? Maybe the drive-thru cashier would recognize me from the rest of my trips that week and talk about me after I left???


Thinking back, I really don't know what any of that was about.  I don't even care for fast food at all, I'd much rather have something delicious and healthy that I prepared myself...it was just always convenient, but never tasted good (yet I craved it and obsessed about when I could have another juicy, greasy, cheesy, burger). Amazing what we do when we aren't conscious and present with our thinking!

For me, one of the major things that will determine whether or not I'm successful at losing weight this time will be ridding myself of all of the years worth of secrets.  Opening my closets and letting the skeletons fall where they may.  This will require me to be vulnerable, which is scary but well worth it.  When I'm vulnerable, I realize that there are people who have felt (and still feel) the exact way that I do...people who can relate and want to support me.  When I'm vulnerable, I open myself up to the healing process.  Secrets got me to my current size...the truth will set me free.