That Fairytale

I follow a weight loss blog called Escape From Obesity. In her blog, Lyn has a lot of good things to say. And she is brutally honest, all the time. She doesn't avoid the blog when things aren't going the best, she puts it all out there. That has to be hard. But because she is willing to do that, it helps other people know that they're not "the only one" who's ever felt that way, or had that experience. She's given me a lot to think about.

So the other day this was the opening paragraph to a post she wrote, and I liked it. So I thought I'd post it here...(thanks, Lyn).

Sometimes I wish my "weight loss journey" was confined to a neat little box of my life... a specific nine months or year or a year and a half with a distinct beginning and ending marked by "before" and "after" pictures. But it's not like that. Oh, I started out *intending* it to be that way. That's what the media portrays, right? You "start", you lose the weight, you celebrate! You go on your way la-la-la to your perfect non-fat life. I don't know too many people who really have it like that, though. You don't see a whole lot of follow-up for the next three or five or ten years after people get to their goal. Maybe it's mostly a sham anyway. Most people I know, and most people I've followed online, struggle and regain. But we don't want to shine the spotlight on THAT. That's not the shiny gold star we want to see at the end. We want the pretty fairy tale.


It really is nice to know I'm not alone. =) I get going, doing a great job for a really long time, and I can tend to get cocky in my thinking, thinking I will always have it under total control for the rest of my life--never stumble, never backtrack. And then soon enough I stumble. I backtrack. So much for the fairytale in the pretty package, right?

But you know what? It's okay. The down times are ugly. It's all part of the process I guess. It's too late for me to turn back now. I will never be able to subscribe to the "fat and happy" mentality. The past couple of months that I have just had to focus on everything else, that I have spent eating whatever, whenever, wherever--I was not happy. I was a lot happier when I was on HCG eating 500 calories a day. I was a lot happier when I was on an almost 3-week long juice fast. I felt amazing. Fat and happy? I guess the past two months can serve as a reminder to me that there's nothing happy about it. Not at all. I can't even wear most of my own clothes. I wear stretchy pants and Jared's shirts most days. Not happy at all.

I am still doing pretty good though. My eating was pretty in check over the weekend. Today I got up and did another day of Jillian's 30 Day Shred, and then when my husband put on his running shoes to go out on a run after the video, I popped in my Gilad aerobics and did that. And it felt good. It's not close to what I was doing before, but it's a lot better than what I've been doing lately. And I didn't really even get out of breath--which is amazing, considering the fact that Gilad's workouts are killer! So that's that.

Before I go to bed tonight I'll get my new $29 DVD player hooked up to the tv in the garage, so it'll be all ready for me in case I decide to do some step aerobics in the morning.

This morning, pre-workout, I was at 212.7. Pretty depressing. But I'm glad it's not the 216.8 and climbing that it was last week.