Take Two: The ""Rocky Road" That Made Me What I Am Today

I originally posted this almost a year ago.  Not only did I not lose any weight since then, in all honesty, I gained some.  Though I had high hopes at the time of succeeding, I did not have the coping skills in place to deal with the stress of the last year.  I faced my husband's job change, financial challenges, visiting multiple specialists for my youngest child's health issues, the resurgence of another child's OCD as well as new sensory/anxiety issues, leaving my church home of 10+ years, and most importantly....some serious health problems of my own.  All of this led me first to the darkness of hopelessness, and only recently back into the arms of the Only Hope.  I now feel I am in a good place to actually succeed, in spite of the stressors I still face, because I have allowed myself to accept the uncondional love of my Savior rather than wondering how He (or anyone else) could love me:  a perfectionist who has failed miserably to succeed in such an important area and as a result has come to view all other successes as irrelevant.  You will notice a weight loss ticker at the top of my blog now.  It represents my strongest motivator....the potential for being publicly embarrassed.  And so now, my journey really begins, and I welcome you to join me as I share both my humiliating failures and moments of triumph.  I hold onto the hope that "It is never too late to be what you might have been."


Coping mechanisms:  we all have them.  There are the really destructive ones like alcohol and drugs.  There are the positive ones like prayer and exercise.  And there is mine.....ice cream.

My weight and my mental state are interconnected, and always have been.  I was not a chubby child.  I was of average weight.  And I was happy.  Actually, it might be more accurate to say this:   I was happy, and therefore I was of average weight.  In fifth grade I started going to a new school.  It's not something I would recommend at that age.  I left behind my friends and my comfort zone, and entered a classroom full of kids who had all known each other since preschool (literally...it was a one-stoplight town).  Now if you are a confident kid with an outgoing personality, or perhaps a kid with a lot of money to buy friends off with, you might do well in such a situation.  I was neither.  And I wore corduroy overalls with a bear on the pocket.  I didn't stand a chance.

I made it through 5th and 6th grade with one friend, one kid who bullied me, and the rest who were indifferent to me.  By middle school, I didn't have the best self-image, and understandably so.  I wore thick owl glasses, had a really bad perm, and was extremely shy.  The one thing I could control, however, was my schoolwork.  I delighted in getting the best grade on every paper and in every class.  It was something that made me stand out among the rest.  Unfortunately, when all of your teachers grade on a curve, it doesn't gain you any friends.  And my weight began to creep up.  I wasn't fat by any means, but I felt like it. which led me to want to eat to feel better.  And so the cycle began.


The summer before I started high school, I was determined to make a fresh start, so I began to exercise and eat less.  I ditched the owl glasses and got contacts.  I grew out my perm.  I lost weight.  I began feeling more confident about myself, and that confidence led me to make lots of friends and break out of my shell.  Unfortunately, I was so afraid of going back to where I had been that I began to exercise more, and eat less.....and less.  I reached a point where I was pretty much on a liquid diet.  Being a first-born, type-A, perfectionist kind of person, I could have so easily fallen into the trap of anorexia.  I really don't remember what pulled me out of that....just that I started eating again.  Maybe I scared myself out of it. 


I maintained my trim figure until the birth of my first child.  The pregnancy weight didn't come off easily.  I was dealing with a colicky baby and a lack of sleep, and both kept me from being as active as I could have been.  By the time Kylie finished her four month crying spree, I had gotten used to the few extra pounds.  Then Kara came along.  I developed some health issues right after her birth that affected my already crummy metabolism, and not in a positive way. 


I trace the beginning of my upwardly spiraling weight, however, to the next year....the year that both Kara's behaviour and my stress level became unmanagable.  The amount of mental energy it took to make it from morning until evening was overwhelming.  I would wake up to an angry child, deal with her irrational anger all day, and then hate myself for being angry with a child who couldn't help herself.  It would have been easier to bear if there was a moment or two of affection reciprocated during the day, but it never came.  And even evening brought no relief.  An angry 4 year old would show up outside the door at all hours of the night, unable to communicate what was wrong, and unable to be comforted.  Just stand there and refuse to be touched. 


Now, as a Christian, I knew I could call on God to help me.  I prayed.  All day long.  I knew that it might be God's choice that Kara would never be healed.  And so I relied instead on the promise of God, that "when you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame will not consume you."  There was just one little problem.  No matter how much or how fervently I prayed, I didn't feel God with me.  I was overwhelmed by the rivers and consumed by the flames.  I became bitter.  Wasn't it enough that God allowed my daughter and our lives to be affected by this disease?  Was it too much to ask that He at least answer my prayers for strength, and patience, and joy in the midst of it?  I wasn't able to find it on my own, and I didn't feel like I was receiving it from the One I had always counted on to give me peace in the middle of the storm.  And so I turned to food.  Or, more specifically, a bowl of ice cream every night.  And I don't mean the 1/2 cup recommended serving.  That bowl of ice cream was the one thing I could look forward to each day...my reward for surviving....my moment of happiness in the sea of frustration.

Now let me make this clear.  My husband also indulged in the ice cream habit, but his metabolism is such that he can eat a gallon of ice cream and lose a pound, whereas I can eat a spoonful of ice cream and gain 5 pounds.  I kid you not.  So it's entirely unfair, but realistic, that after about a year of this, my waistline expanded and Roger still looked as good as he did in high school.  About this time, Kara was healed, and my stress level improved, but the habit of finding happiness or reward in food stuck.  Because now, I felt ugly and fat, and that made me reach for food to feel better.  Food had become the one thing that never let me down.  It was always available, and it always cheered me up......for about 5 minutes.  And then I felt fat again.  And then I cheered myself up again.  And then I felt fatter.  And then.....well, you get the picture.  Between that cycle, and my laundry list of health issues that kept me from maintaining an active lifestyle, the person I wanted to be got swallowed up by the person I never wanted to become.


And here we are all these years later.  I turned 40 last December.  Instead of celebrating "Forty and Fit" I found myself grieving "Forty and Fat."  I'm tired of looking in the mirror every morning and hating what I see. I'm tired of starting over and starting over again.  I'm tired of being unhappy and how that affects my family.  I'm tired of shopping for clothes in the plus size section (also known as fashion hell).  I'm tired of not being in any family pictures.  And so here I am.....blogging about the most difficult thing a perfectionist like myself could put to paper:  my complete and total failure at something.  Why am I doing it?  Well, I would really like to go on "The Biggest Loser" and just get it all done with at once, but it will be a cold day in Hades before I let anyone see me in an exercise bra and a pair of bike shorts with my gut hanging over the front being carted off in an ambulance when I collapse in the first 5 minutes of working out.  Now, if I could get you all to sign an affidavit promising not to watch....I might be willing to sign on and share my winnings with you. 


What I am going to do is put all of my excuses aside, regardless of their validity, and lose some weight.  Despite how much of it there is to lose and how completely overwhelming it seems.  And I'm putting it out there for all to see so that perhaps the humiliation factor of knowing that people are watching me will be the thing that finally works.  That, and the fact that we are headed to Disneyland in the spring, and it would be nice to sing along with "It's a Small World After All" without being smirked at by my fellow passengers.