Gusher: Always Fat?

I have been fat all my life. It sucks.

Aside from the not wanting to walk anywhere, the general feelings of tiredness, the fear that anytime something hurts it's diabetes or heart disease, or any other obesity-related illness... being fat just sucks the life, and the self-esteem, right out of you.

From the time I was very young, my mom told me I was fat. Well, I knew this... but it hurt to have it acknowledged by someone else. Being fat is not a problem that you can closet like say, I don't know... a drinking problem, or a coke habit (not to say that these problems don't manifest themselves into everyday life, but wiping up your nose after you toot is considerably easier than trying to hide too-wide hips and lumpy back fat). That awareness from when I was very young - I am fat, and everybody knows it - really messed with me. I had little to no confidence with boys, I dressed myself (and continue to dress myself) in plain, lifeless clothing that hopefully keeps people from noticing me. Nobody likes to hide from the world like that, especially because of something that is so hard to change.

We work on crash diets, we kill ourselves at the gym, we go balls to the wall for short spurts of time, and then something happens that just makes us fail every time. We don't see results quick enough... we receive another affirmation of our fatness... something not even connected to our diet makes us fall off the wagon entirely...

While I agree that obesity is a danger to one's health, fat people get treated differently from smokers, from risk-takers, from people who drive recklessly... all of these things can be dangerous, and yet it's fat people who get kicked around in society, portrayed as wobbly torsos on the evening news and dorky asexual sidekicks in Hollywood movies.

This blog is not about how wrong society may be (and is). One of the mantras from Alcoholic Anonymous is to ask for the strength to accept the things that one cannot change. Well, I can't change society, but I can change myself. I can change the way I look, I can change the way I react. I can choose to do something healthy for myself. I can choose to not allow societal pressures and "bad days" to blow my diet. I can choose to not beat myself up over small failures and to keep pushing, even if I gain a pound one week when I had expected to lose two.

I'm on a mission to take it off. At 240 pounds, I am the fattest I have ever been in my entire life, and I feel it. I'm winded after walking up to the third floor of my apartment building. My clothes are tighter, and it doesn't feel good. I want it to change. So, for the first time in my life, I am taking charge. I am not expecting to do anything dramatic at first... I am hoping to ease myself into subtle lifestyle changes. I am trusting someone else to tell me what to eat. I am tracking my meals and my weight. After a month, I'm hoping to have lost ten to fifteen pounds, and will gradually work my way into an exercise regimen (both so that it doesn't feel like a drastic change, and to try to avoid injury). I hope to lose a full 100 pounds, and for the first time in my life, I'm not giving myself a time limit. It's not so I can look good at the beach, or fit into a dress for a wedding... it's so that I feel good about myself.

So, from this blog, should you choose to read it, expect trial and error. Expect pontification. Expect acceptance, and failure, and sometimes it should be funny... hopefully...

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