I've Been Weigh Down

I've broken the thirty pound mark for weight loss since my reboot of my cognizance of the fact that I need to do something about myself. When I stepped on the scale at the doctor's office this past Autumn, I was the heaviest I had ever been. Like, the number that I never thought would be on the scale. Like, the pivotal number that I yell at people on television about when they're six-hundred pounds in a pre-gastric bypass video and they're crying about being enabled and helpless as someone bathes them. When I read the scale, I was literally shocked. I knew I had gained weight in the last year, and I knew that I had soothed with food after a pretty shit year, but that number is literally burned into my brain as the place where I knew that if I didn't do something that I would be six-hundred pounds crying about my helplessness and my enablers. So, November 2 was the pivotal moment that I got it together and started really thinking about how I wanted to spend the next ten/thirty/sixty years.

I read a lot of self-help rhetoric about being gentle with yourself and being kind to yourself, and I get it...you need to love yourself. Sometimes, though, you've got to get real with yourself. I remember telling myself something like, "Listen Bitch, you is fat and if you want to be diabetic with no fucking foot...you can keep at what you're doing, but if you want to live and be mobile, you better try something else." I hurt my feelings. I hurt my feelings in the face of a turn-around in the movement of acceptance of plus-size people. If you watch television or partake in social media at all, it is no news that with the surge of plus-size models like Tess Holliday and the recent win of plus-size designer Ashley Nell Tipton on Project Runway have set in motion a complete movement that says that plus-size people are capable, healthy, smart, energetic, and deserve everything that the world has to offer. Well, the best mission statement of it does. But when I read the comments of those regular joes that follow celebrities like Tess, the idea is a little different. Men and women complain about the size of airline seats, the onslaught of the diet industry, the constant thrill ride of excitement that it is to be thin in comparison to being fat. Here's the deal: No one owes you anything, yo...and if you think every thin person is having the time of their lives, then my message isn't going to break that illusion. It is another blog post that discusses the societal implications of fatness in modern times. It is a blog post that I have made before and I am sure that I will make again.

Back to me.

I have fallen off of the wagon before, like many fat people do. Last summer, I had lost thirty pounds and weighed the least that I had weighed in years. I was in the smallest size that I had been in years and was looking forward to slowly getting to the point where I could shop in a straight-sized clothing department...where wearing baggy clothes with a lifestyle choice rather than a camouflage accessory. Then, my marriage went to hell, I moved back home, ate through several pounds of candy and gained all of the loss back and then some. Ugh. It's no excuse, but man....food tastes good y'all. I keep saying to myself that this time is different, that this time I'm going to stick to it and I'm going to keep myself from falling into my old ways and making excuses for why my long-term health isn't important. But, the truth is is that this time may not be different, and a life change can come at any moment that could derail me again. So, how do I manage the change? How do I commit and stick there? Those are the questions that I ask myself everyday when I step on the treadmill or I log my calories. I keep thinking that my autonomy is so important to me, and that as I get older, the long-term effects of being overweight will come around to the point of invalidity and dependence. That, for me, is a death sentence. That thought has gotten me to losing thirty-one pounds as of today.