The Oyster

I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine a few days ago regarding my blog, my journey, and this person's battle with her weight.  I remember feeling exactly as she does, now, and my heart went out to her. When I started this journey, I set a goal to lose 61 pounds, and my head started spinning with how impossible that number sounded.  Sixty-one pounds??  That's more than my 6 year-old weighs! A whole other human!  I remember thinking, then, that I'll never be able to do it.  I'll never lose that much weight, but I would give it my best and consider it a job well done if I lose 20 pounds and call it a day.  Yeah, it was like that.

I almost psyched myself out of the game when I looked at the path before me.  My opponents were huge- fear, change, hard work, "deprivation", time constraints, and the biggest of all, that number.  61, 61, 61...and actually, according to the medical profession, the number SHOULD have been 100 pounds.  I needed to lose 100 pounds to fit into the normal weight category for my height.  I cried.  Multiple times, actually.  I am grateful that I was able to recognize that just because that was were I was, then, didn't mean I had to be or feel like that for the rest of my life. I gained weight; so what, big deal.  The big question was, what was I going to do about it?

I needed to give myself a smaller goal- something that was attainable.  So, I broke it down into 10 pound increments.  When people got wind of my weight loss journey, they'd ask me, "How much are you trying to lose?" I'd say, "Ten pounds."  The stunned look on their faces was actually quite comical, because it was obvious by looking at me that I needed to lose more than that, but that's all I could manage at the time. That's all I could face.  I couldn't look down that long path and see the finish line.  But, I could see the 10 pound corner. So that's where I headed.  After I lost the first ten pounds, I set my goal to lose another 10, then another 10...then my goal was to bust out of the 200's and into the 190's.  Then into the 180's...and so on.

I apologize profusely if I've made my journey look or sound easy.  What people may not realize is that it has taken me 2 years to do it. What I FAILED to realize is that I have been on this journey for 2 years. I dropped about 30 pounds in six months, took a six month break from the gym, gained eleven pounds over the holidays that year, started up again in January 2010, lost another 26 pounds, took another six month hiatus, gained a few pounds, and now I'm staring down the last four pounds before I reach my initial goal weight.

I really didn't expect to have the outpouring of folks who contacted me to share their struggles with me and express how much my telling my story has helped them.  I am truly humbled and honored.  So when I started my journey again in 2010, I created this blog to try to answer everyone's questions about how I'm doing it.  What started out as a shedding of a few pounds, though, quickly turned into a mission of self-discovery/recovery.  What made me overeat? What was going on beneath the surface that was manifesting itself in weight gain and/or preventing me from losing weight?

I liken myself to an oyster.  When a grain of sand makes its way into my shell, it has been my habit to spit it as far as I can (as quickly as I can) to prevent irritation in the here and now.  That's just how I'm programmed. What I found myself doing more often than not is bailing on whatever is making me uncomfortable and going back to what I know because, even if it wasn't serving me well, it was less frightening than pushing through the discomfort in hopes of finding my rainbow. But, I realized that in the past, I have robbed myself of opportunities to learn or grow when I do that. 

So I began to look at what makes me feel uncomfortable as a grain of sand in my shell.  Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of the unknown, standing at the starting line of what appears to be an impossible road-- instead of spewing these things from my shell, I allow myself to sit on them and work through the discomfort one day at a time.  This gives me time to find clarity, pray, and confront what triggers are propelling me into a reactive state (giving up) instead of proactive (pushing through). 

What would happen if you were able to stop beating yourself up for a series of decisions that brought you to where you are now and accepted that THIS is the starting line?  Because each day is just that, my friends.  Looking back over days gone by and saying, "shoulda, coulda, woulda, or how-did-I" won't move you toward your goal.  Yes, it's important to recognize where you went wrong so you don't make the same mistakes again, but ruminating on those past failures and holding that as an absolute will only hold you hostage.  You have the power every morning when you wake up to begin again.  To me, that's why God made sunrises so beautiful;  each morning begins with opportunity.

As for me and the grain of sand?  We're still cohabitants.  And, I have the trust and faith that when all is said and done, there will be a beautiful pearl to admire and remind me that good things can happen when I allow them to.