2011......My Lucky Number, my Lucky Year!

01/05/11

So, here we are, the New Year. 2011……How did we get here? Last time I looked, it was like 1980 something, especially when I am listening to Belinda Carlisle, Heaven is a place on earth…This makes me feel very 80’s. I still feel like the same person as I was back then, but I know I am so different in so many ways….But not necessarily for the better. There are so many ways I want to improve, but I get overwhelmed when I try to think of everything at once and when I try to fix everything at once. Right now, I just need to focus on getting healthy and losing weight. But I have to find a good balance, because sometimes, I end up focusing too much on my weight loss and food and the scale and it get’s so overwhelming that I end up driving myself crazy and not wanting anything to do with it and then want to eat.

So, Since Monday, January 3^rd, I have been “On the wagon.” I have eaten healthy for 2 days, and today, the 3^rd day, and it’s amazing how good to start to feel as soon as you stop eating all the sugar and the other crap that makes you feel lazy and lethargic and just generally unhealthy. As soon as I start to eat how I am right now, I begin to wonder, why do I ever start eating bad. I haven’t even lost any weight yet (It’s only been 2 days) but I feel so much better, so much more energetic and alive. Mentally and emotionally I feel better too, although not 100%, but I won’t until I start to lose some weight. The more weight I lose, the better I will feel mentally. For instance, a friend I haven’t seen since October wants to hang out this weekend and I really don’t want to see her, only because of my weight. I know I have gained a lot since I last saw her and I am embarrassed by what I look like. Maggie told me I have to overcome this and I know that she is right. If I hide, it will just make me want to hide more and more and more and then could make me go back to eating bad. It’s just a vicious cycle, I know.

I have been reading the book Over Eaters Anonymous, the 12 steps and traditions and I have to tell you, I have been able to identify so much with it that I can honestly say, I am a food addict. I have to work really hard to avoid eating the foods that bring me back to my compulsive behavior. I have to try to stay mentally healthy because there are certain situations and feelings I get that make me want to eat, so I think that by spending the last year and half journaling, I have identified most of these “red zone” situations and know how to try to avoid them. It’s a struggle, but I am not giving up. I know I can do this.

I long so much to be thin and fit and to feel good about myself. I want to go horseback riding and feel confident on the horse. I want to rollerblade and I would LOVE to go skiing again, I haven’t been in like 17 or 18 years. There are so many things I want to do, want to be and want to become. Why am I stealing my life away?

So, I read a story recently about a guy who was jailed for over 30 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Recent DNA evidence exonerated him. He was like 20 something when he was put away and now he is in his 50’s. I thought, how sad…..You only get one life and he had to spend his rotting away in jail. I mean, he could have a good 30 or 40 more years of life, but 30 years of his life just wasted away for something he didn’t even do…..An innocent man……Then it hit me! How is that any different than me? I struggled with my weight since I was a kid. I lost a lot of weight in Jr High School and pretty much kept it off. But in my Junior year of High School, I began to put it back on. By Sr. Year, I had myself up to 165 or 170 and I remember during a volleyball game, a kid Moo’d at me while I was serving. I remember feeling so humiliated by that (Our coach made us wear briefs and we were all uncomfortable in them). Well, I began to feel so mortified by my weight, instead of doing something about it, what did I do? I ran away from the problem. I quit the volleyball team and blamed it on back troubles. But I quit……I gave up. I ran away and hid and that was the first time my weight stopped me from living my life, from doing something I loved. That was in 1991 and although I didn’t give up everything to my weight right then and there, little by little each year, I gave something up because I was mentally uncomfortable about doing it. So, let’s say from 1991 to 2011, I have spent all that time not really living life to the fullest and I was a free woman to be able to do so, but I took my freedom for granted. I gave up 20 years of my life to food. Maybe I wasn’t in prison in the sense that we know it, but I was a prisoner to food and it held my life captive.  This man HAD to give up 30 years of his life, but I voluntarily handed my life over to food for 20 years. Isn’t that just as much of a waste of life? To me it is.

Well, 2011 is the year that I am going to exonerate myself. I am going to free myself of being the slave to food that I have been for the last 20 years. Of all the things I have tried to do to lose weight, all the things I have thought about and the stories I have heard, knowing that I was in poor health, nothing has impacted me the way hearing this story of this innocent man jailed for 30 years and making the connection to my life. When I think about it in terms of that, it makes me really want to stop the insanity and work really hard to get this weight off so I can have my life back. 2011 is the year for me…….I just realize, 11 is my favorite number. It was my number on my jersey when I played sports and it’s my lucky number……2011 is going to be my lucky year! I am going to make sure of that! Cheers to 2011!!!!