Help, I've Fallen And....I'm Pretty Sure I Can Get Up

I have no idea how I came to be in this deep, dark place. My life had been so blessed and I had been seemingly so in control. Now I have drifted into a place that is so murky, so without hope and I feel little control over this demon living within. Yes, I have fallen face first into a bag of Trader Joe’s Kettle Corn and I am clawing my way out.

How did this happen to me? It started so innocently, with a few handfuls of the sweetly salty morsels to accompany a bit of Dr. Phil. Lost in the drama unfolding on television, several more fistfuls are driven into my salivating mouth. Come commercial time, the bag is now 80% gone. I ponder finding a Chip Clip to seal the bag, but who wants the remnants of this disaster? Plus, shame falls around me and I sincerely want all evidence of this completely out of control moment to vanish. Shaking the final bit of delectable dust into my mouth, the bag is quickly crumpled into it’s smallest possible form and shoved deep into the kitchen garbage can.

No control. That is the only way to describe it. This was a ground breaking moment for me and I knew that without control in this corner of my life, I was certain to lose it in other areas as well. Next thing you know the kids will have no clean clothes, the cable will be shut off, the dog will never make it to the groomers and poor Scott will suffer having a fridge barren of Budweiser.
I have been thin all my life. I was the kind of girl that you hated, the one that could eat with abandon and exercise was a foreign term. Yes with these habits, and at 5’7”, I was around 110 through my late teens, 115 in my twenties and 125 in my thirties. I was usually a size 6 or 8, but had occasional size 4 moments when life was particularly hectic. The most I ever weighed was 165 when I was nine months pregnant and retaining gallons of water due to preeclampsia. I still remember the horror of looking at that number in the doctor’s office. The fact that the weight gain was due to a serious medical condition took back seat to concern over that much-too-large number.

Once I hit forty my body changed in ways I never could have imagined, with weight gain being just one component of the roller coaster ride (my very patient husband can fill you in on some of the other peri-menopausal joys). Each year I would pack on five or six mystery pounds, thus forcing me to buy a new wardrobe every season. It was befuddling to me, as I knew that none of my habits had changed. It was just this damn body I was stuck in, one that no longer felt like my own.

I vowed that the Kettle Corn incident would be the last out of control moment of my life. Not only was I increasingly not happy with how I looked, I was not pleased with the way I felt about myself as a person. Grown women should not hand over their power to a bag of snack foods…or chocolate…or cheesecake. Further, what sort of example am I setting for my children?

So this was my break through moment. Yes, it happened very (very!) recently, thus my journey has just begun. The first step of my path was realizing that what I had done historically was not working for me and what I needed was to change direction in my life. I didn’t yet know if that meant Weight Watchers or aerobics or even taping my mouth shut. But, a change was in order and I have now committed myself to a lifestyle change. Won’t you join me, even as a spectator, on this voyage?