Diane

Today is my final D-Day.  I’ve had it with being fat, obese.  I don’t want to see another doctor write on my chart in red letters “MORBIDLY OBESE”.   I’m done soul searching for the reason I’m hindering myself from being healthy.  I really don’t care anymore why.  20 years of trying to answer that question as only left me heavier than ever.  Well, not quite, I have kept off 25 pounds from my heaviest.  I have theories, ideas, insights as to why I’ve allowed this fat to hang around and multiply.  It doesn’t matter.  Action is what is needed now, not more introspection.

Perhaps someday down the road I will need to revisit the why of it all, but for now, I am focusing on the how of getting rid of it.  Exercise, healthy foods and a change of attitude.  I will not make anymore rationalizations for not getting up in the morning to exercise with my husband.  Do I want to get up at 5 a.m.?  Uh, NOOO!  But I will.  I need to for me, I need to for him, we need to for us and we need to for the kids. 

Fifteen years ago I weighted 200 pounds.  I left in late August, 1993 for a village outside of Warsaw, Poland to teach for a year.  When I returned to the US in July of  1994, I weighed 150.  Aside from 2 or 3 times, I didn’t purposely exercise.  It was a part of daily life - walk to the train station: 1/2 mile each way; get off train and walk to Old Town: at least a mile each way; to get food: 1/4 - 1/2 mile each way.   Getting food was generally a daily thing as we only had a small fridge that 5 people were sharing.  As the days grew longer, I would go for long walks in the forest, most often alone.  My diet was bread, cheese, tomatoes, apples, candy covered peanuts, pastries, ice cream and Pizza Hut.  I ate when I was hungry.  I drank 3-4 litres of water a day.   Some days I barely ate.  Other days it seemed like all I did was eat.   I was up at 5 every morning and thought nothing of getting up then.

Somedays I would like nothing more than to go back to those days when exercise wasn’t an issue and my diet was just food.  But life is different now.  I have a family - husband, kids, dog.  And I’m not 21 anymore!  Exercise is something I must make time for.  Food must be planned and prepared.  I have finally accepted that if I want to be content with the reflection in the mirror, I must work at it.  I do not live a lifestyle that allows the weight to just drop off as it did that year and I haven’t for a very long time now. 

So, today is the beginning of the end.  The end of my obesity, the end of my procrastination, then end of being inactive while I try to figure out the irrelevant WHY, the end of token efforts, the end of being unhealthy, the end of blogging about starting over.

Whether the effort will show for myself and the Diamonds this week, I do not know.  What I do know is that it will in the long run, just as so many others have and are proving.