No Longer Feeling Trapped at All

Ok. Well. This is not the post I set out to write when I started typing, but it’s obviously the one that needed to be written. I guess that’s my disclaimer. Oh, additional disclaimer: no matter what I tried, every title for this blog sounded extremely lame, so I went with this one so I can get on with the rest of my evening.

About 5 ½ years ago I wrote an entry titled Trapped in the Body of a Fat Girl. I’ve shared that entry on social media a couple of times over the years, the most recent being this past Friday. I remember writing it and the truth of the words. I felt trapped inside a body that I could not love or appreciate or do anything to change so that I could feel those positive ways about it. I wanted to believe that I was really a thinner person inside that bigger body, but I was not. Everything I wrote that day was true – I was always hungry (even if it was mental hunger), always thinking about my next meal, frustrated and angry that other people could seemingly eat whatever they wanted and maintain a healthy weight, and often binge eating in secret. Oh the secret eating!! I didn’t want anyone to see me, to know that I couldn’t control myself. I hated what I was doing to myself, but I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t find a reason to care enough about myself to stop what I was doing, but the food consoled me. Nowhere to go and nothing to do? Well, there are Oreos in the pantry so why not eat some. And by “some” I mean 9 or 10, on top of whatever else I had eaten.

I’m not currently a skinny girl – I have co-worker who often sees me coming down the hall and says, “Here comes Twiggy!” which makes me feel slightly proud, but also very odd and uncomfortable at the same time – and I never will be. I’ve simply experienced a much-needed weight loss and I’ll be completely honest and say that the thought of gaining any of that weight back terrifies me. I don’t ever have to lose another pound or ounce, but if I gain it back, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t go back. Now that I’ve proved to myself I could do it, I can’t go back. I just can’t.

I’ve re-read the old post several times in the past few days because I needed to evaluate how I felt about it now and whether or not it still applied to who I’ve become in the past year. I hate to phrase it that way – “who I’ve become” – like it’s some massive change, but then I stop and think, well, it has been. Not only has my body changed, but my brain has too. For the first time in my 44 years on this planet, I like my body. It’s not perfect and it’s not flat in places I’d like it to be flat or trimmer in places that I’d like to have a little less fat (I’ve always had hips…big hips…), but I can look at myself now and like what I see. Strangers may look at me and see someone who is still overweight (I’m 5’ 7” and 177lbs, which falls into the “overweight” category in everything I’ve seen), still struggling to be healthy, but they don’t know me and don’t know that a year ago I was 218lbs. They don’t know how hard I’ve worked to get to where I am now. They don’t know me and they just don’t know. All of that also reminds me not to judge anyone else because I have no way of knowing what their journey is either. Oh perspective. I’ve gotcha now, buddy.

I had a lot more thoughts on that old post yesterday when I was really putting some effort into dissecting each sentence and paragraph (gimme a break, I had time on my hands and needed a project!), but today I’m tossing all that out the window. Here’s what I know, a year into this new journey:

·         I am no longer a secret eater. If I want cookies, I have cookies and it wasn’t that many months ago that I know I ate 14 Oreos at one sitting (I clearly have Oreo issues). But I was honest about it at my workout the next day and didn’t beat myself up about it. I may still eat more sweets than I should as they are a huge vice of mine, but I don’t hide the behavior. I’m honest about it and try to balance my calorie intake or get more exercise in to burn the calories. Not only do I not secretly eat, but the people who most often see me eating, my co-workers, think I’m a healthy eater. Guess I’m pulling that one off reasonably well if I’ve got them all believing.

·         I enjoy exercise and now seek it out. I’m often shocked about that. I already know what I’m doing tomorrow to get in some exercise. That baffles me. Planning in advance to willingly exercise? Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis? Craziness.

·         My body functions better now that I’ve lost weight. My digestive issues, once a constant plague in my life, are nearly non-existent since I started treating my body better. My arthritis is 100% better than it used to be and I can walk for miles at a stretch or spend 2 hours doing Zumba and come home without any negative repercussions or pain. I can’t tell you what a blessing that is!

·         I eat when I’m hungry and sometimes I eat A LOT. Not every day, not all the time, but if I’m craving something like I was tonight, I will have it. Otherwise my brain won’t leave me alone until it gets what it wants. Tonight it was guacamole on toast and I have no idea why I like that so much, but I do, so I had it and now I’m satisfied. Denying myself never has worked well so I’ve stopped.

The other day I was driving to work and thinking about, well, something. I have no idea what it was now, but I usually pray when I’m driving to work. Unless, of course, I’m singing along really loudly to 80s songs on my iTunes, cause sometimes you have to do that. Anyway, I was stopped at a traffic light and asked God to help me shed the protective cocoon I’ve kept around myself for so many years. I read a book once about a woman who had lost a good bit of weight and acknowledged to herself that she’d used that weight as a way to hide. I always related to that because I’ve always known on some level that my weight was a way to hide – from other people, from the world, from myself. But I’m tired of doing that and refuse to keep hiding. It’s not nearly as much fun as not hiding. I’m also tired of trying to figure out my feelings about my weight and my body and blah blah blah. Right now I am in a damned good place and I just want to enjoy that! My body is not perfect, but I finally like it and appreciate it. This is HUGE and I grasp the magnitude.

I can’t claim I’ll never have another blog entry about my weight or about weight loss, but I do want to find a way to make it a less important part of my life. Four months ago, right after my 44^th birthday, I declared it to be the “Year of Yes” and I have not taken nearly enough advantage of that so far. It’s long past time to find more things to say yes to than reasons to say no. Except ritual sacrifice. You have to draw the line somewhere you know.