My Many Faces

I’m going to take a page from Destiny Childs play book, wasn’t it them who sang the lyrics “If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again…” or maybe I’m leaning more towards Queen in their hit song “Another one bites the dust!” Either way, it’s a choice. I can try again with full intention to succeed or I can just let this be my story.

I’m in this strange place right now, I imagine this is the place that you think about when you see shows like ‘My 600 Pound Life’ and wonder to yourself, How did that happen to them? At what point did they get so heavy they stopped fighting? I think I am there. Where the scale is defeating me, and I’m losing that will to overcome it. I always wondered what that place looked like, and at what weight it happens. I may be wrong, this just might be my experience, but it is when the number reaches a point it has never reached before. A number you never imagined seeing. For me that number is 230 pounds.

Over the past ten years I’ve had two beautiful children, and despite my weight I lead a pretty active lifestyle. In that span of ten years I have watched the scale go from 130 to 140, then 150, 160, 170, 180, 190, 200, 210, 220, and now 230. I have probably lost and gained back a total of 100 pounds in that ten years as well. My face is a good barometer of my weight, and as I was flipping through photos I noticed the yo-yoing of my weight over time. To give you an example I made a collage of my six year old daughter Charlee’s life. I am not quite sure why when things were going well I didn’t stay the course, or what exactly caused the weight to reapply itself. I wish I could put my finger on it and say…this is the culprit, but that would take a lot courage because…
The culprit is ME. How do you to come to grips with the knowledge that you are sabotaging your own health and happiness? More importantly how do you fix it? If it came in a self help book or a diet I would have already read/tried it. The craziness in all of this is I have the remedy, I have seen it work, but the cold hard truth of it all is that I must not truly want it that bad. I don’t have a legit medical excuse, nor do I have a legit emotional crutch to lean on. No, it is absolutely that I am to lazy to do it.

That is a hard pill to swallow. And I imagine for my husband, kids, and family it is the ultimate slap in the face. I have watched enough episodes of ‘Intervention’ to know that you kind of hate the person who is so selfish in their addiction that they choose it over their family. Is my addiction to food not the very same? I guess in today’s mixed up world what I am saying is blasphemy, or worse ‘fat shaming’. For me it’s just honesty. And I am hopeful that if I am just that, honest, I can finally overcome this.

If you’re wondering what 230 pounds feels like I can tell you…heavy. Not just physically either, the emotional heaviness is far worse. My ‘fat’ clothes no longer fit me, and what I can squeeze into looks so dreadful my desire to be social in any spectrum is nil. I don’t really want to go do things I used to enjoy. It is so bad I actually turned down a snowmobiling excursion because my snow pants no longer fit. I make jokes about myself so that I can beat others to the punch, although I doubt anyone would ever say anything I imagine they are all thinking it.

I almost didn’t update this blog. I feel like a broken record and people are bound to get tired of this same song and dance, but I also know I’m not doing this for anyone’s praise or approval. I refuse to let this be the end to my weight loss journey, failure. No, I want this to be a success story. Not just one about losing weight, but gaining perspective along the way. I had big plans for a fresh start January 1, 2016 but I just wasn’t ready to pull myself out of that chasm of depression, the one that left an outline of my 230 pound self indented on the couch. When you look at the road ahead you realize that you have to lose 30 pounds to get to where you started at a year ago. And it is in that line of thinking you slowly but surely give up. It’s to much, it’s to hard. You know what is worse? Doing nothing about it.

So instead of waiting for the first of the year, or for a Monday…I’m going to capitalize on the strength I’ve mustered in this moment and declare right here and now, Joy Sullivan is going to try again, and then repeat it tomorrow...and the next day..till I actually find success.