First Blog/First Revelation

So here I am starting a blog about losing weight. Actually, it's more about my revelations found in the process of losing weight. Maybe that's the same thing...oh well. I had an interesting predicament last night and know it's significant. I'd like to make it a turning point rather than just a moment, so I decided to start a blog and add to it regularly as things like this come up. Who knows, maybe I'll turn it into a book someday.

I've never thought about it in these terms before, but I've needed to lose "some" amount of weight for as long as I can remember. Over the years the amount I've needed to lose has increased, but I don't remember a time when I wasn't considered fat, heavy, whatever you want to call it. Obese came later, but I was never "thin". Certainly when I was in grade school and high school the amount I was overweight was considerably less - probably topped out at about 20-30 pounds or so - but I don't remember ever thinking I was a "good/normal" weight. And don't get me wrong - it wasn't just me having a bad self image. I'm not one of those girls who considers every 1/2 a pound to be something worth monitoring and laboring over. I was made to feel different-in-a-bad-way from my earliest memories. I can specifically remember being told regularly to suck in my stomach, at times being told "you don't need that" in regards to food...stuff like that. And it was only me - not my "normal" brother or my "tiny" sister. My older sister had a completely different build than I did and she was always petite. The smallest sizes made were what she would have to find. I, on the other hand, had to find the large sizes. I even remember looking in the "husky" section to find pants that would fit my frame. There was nothing petite about me. Honestly, looking back at pictures, I see that I was a little bigger than average, but nothing worth making a big deal about. I certainly "felt" like I was fatter than pictures show that I was. Too bad, really. How much of what we think of ourselves becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy?

OK, I'll probably expound on that more in the future, but for now I want to write what happened last night.

I was up late and was getting really hungry. I've been doing a cleansing diet (Isagenix) and wasn't supposed to be eating anything more for the day, but I started bargaining with myself because I was really hungry! So there I am, the only one still awake in the house, I'm on the computer, feeling really hungry and I start thinking through all the possible things in the kitchen I could eat. That's when I come across some emails from a recent retreat I'd been to. The emails were posting some pictures of the retreat and the ones that included me were... surprising. I don't live in complete denial of how heavy I am, but there's got to be at least some partial denial because I didn't expect to see what I saw. I can say it was partly the angle the picture was taken from, or it was the outfit I was wearing (black would have been more slimming), but there is only one excuse for what I saw: I'm really fat! In fact, my first thoughts were "why didn't someone stop me?". As if "people" should have kept me from eating. Considering that I hated it when mom would say "you don't need that"...would I have listened? Some kind of intervention might sound good, but I can't imagine it would have worked. OK, so here I am being shocked over the pictures, but I still need to get to the point where I had my revelation... I'm sitting there looking at pictures of me and being horrified, and at the same time I'm bargaining with myself about what I'm considering eating because my stomach is growling. It took a few minutes, but I finally looked at the two thoughts and decided that they needed to not be separate - I needed to see that one was/would be affecting the other. I'm desperately wishing I was a smaller size, but I'm also still wishing I had something to eat! I'm not stupid. I "know" that my eating affects my size, but sometimes I guess I really put it out of my mind. You know, like when it's convenient. Like when I want to eat something that is only going to add to my waistline (or thighs or butt or arms...pick a body part). So what I had to do was force myself to make the choice: live in the moment and feed my hungry stomach, OR keep the goal in mind and say "no" to food so that being a smaller size could become reality. It was a really hard thing to do! My mind didn't want to accept that it really was one or the other - that it couldn't be both! I finally decided to just go to bed. I didn't even trust myself to prepare a lunch for my daughter's school the next day. I didn't even trust myself to turn on the light in the kitchen! I just walked in the dark right past the items I had bargained about earlier and went to bed, putting them out of my mind.

So, what I guess I learned through all this is how I really need to remember the goal and know how much each of my actions affects whether or not I ever achieve that goal. Sounds simple enough, but my revelation showed how double minded I can be. The scripture "a double minded man is unstable in all his ways" comes to mind. Unstable doesn't sound obese, but that's how it's worked out for me. I'm very good at putting things off until later (yes, I know it's called procrastination), and I think that's part of this double minded thing, too. If I even begin to realize that my eating a particular thing is going to jeopardize my goal of losing weight, my "I'll deal with that later" thing kicks in and relieves me of the current dilemma. How screwed up is that?! Well, realizing the problem is the first step, right? My prayer now is that God would show me when I'm doing this and that He give me the strength to make the connection - then make the right decision. I'm assuming that God is the one to show me this in the first place, so I'll end this first blog appropriately with: THANK YOU, GOD, FOR GIVING ME THIS FIRST OF MANY VICTORIES IN MY BATTLE OVER MY BULGE(S)!