In November of 2003, around the time of my birthday, after months of success on Weight Watchers, I went to Kohl’s to try on a pair of Levi’s, the size I wore in high school.  If you’ve ever been fat or simply ever been much bigger than you think you ought to be, you will understand that although I had lost a lot of weight and people were constantly saying how good I looked, which always made me think, “well why didn’t you tell me how shitty I was looking before I got so far off track?”  but I digress…I had a goal, not for a number of pounds to weigh, but to be able to get back into my favorite jeans from high school.  I still felt too big, but I knew that it was my brain fucking with me and that I was in fact thin…so I got the jeans, one pair into the dressing room, and they slipped right on and buttoned right up and I burst into tears.  This intense emotion of accomplishment and wonder and joy just poured out of me, rather uncontrollably.  A few minutes went by and I heard a knock on the dressing room door and an old lady asked, “honey are you okay?” and I said, oh yes, that I had just put on jeans that were the size I wore when I was a teenager and I was  just so happy…and that was that.

I still have the jeans.  They are in the bottom of my closet.  Along with 10 other pairs of jeans of various washes, style, and leg cuts.  I have not even tried to get them on as I am quite sure they will not even go beyond my knees.   In the winter of 2006 they still fit, but I can’t say for sure when I stopped “caring” and went to the dark side… I do not FEEL like me, myself, or I.  I feel like some frumpy version of a girl I used to know.  I do not like feeling this way, at all.  Yet, I stopped going to kickboxing class at the end of September and other than taking walks now and then, have deliberately chosen to NOT really exercise, at all, for months.  I also have a sweet tooth that does not seem to ever take a day off and I have some stress in my life right now that chocolate in particular, or junk food in general, seems to alleviate, if only for the moments that said food is in my mouth…it is not a good place to be, feeling like this about one’s self.

The odd thing is that despite how awful I feel I look and how awful I feel about it, I am presently in the happiest and most loving relationship of my life.  A person who thinks I am beautiful on the outside and the inside, and I feel guilty…that this person who is so kind to me and so loving to me and shows me so much affection, DESERVES to have me at MY best.  I feel like I have an obligation, not only to myself to get healthy and to be fit, but to this person with whom I now share my days.  I have done this before, I know what I have to do, it is just the daunting task at hand of HAVING to change, a lot, about how I think about food and my behavior.  It is a strange thing to want to be different…to like one’s self in many ways and to let the one way one doesn’t, have so much value to one’s feelings of worth.  What a mouthful…but I don’t know how else to EXPLAIN how I feel.  Any reader who understands any of this will agree with me when I write, I have to start and take one day at a time.  There is no magic to it, there is no trick, there is no easy way, it just has to be deliberate change in choices and decision-making, every single day, and because I have done this before, I know I can do it…but will I?  Thanks for listening.  Here’s to a better me in 2013, and dear reader, if you are in my same boat, here’s to a better you too…