One last thing
Saturday afternoon (again). Forgot to mention one really fabulous thing: my dad was really blown away by how good I looked. He was, literally, without words upon his first glimpse of me. (Now, you'd have to know my dad to appreciate the next part, but that's OK.) After we'd been sitting together for, oh, about two quarters, he said, "so, have you lost weight?" I sort of laughed and said, "a little, yes." He said something to the effect of, "it looks like a lot more than a little," and I stopped to calculate how much I've really lost, all told. You know what the number I came up with was? Just over 45 pounds since March and just under 40 since June 6. My dad hadn't seen me since the end of August, so that would explain his rather extreme reaction, but I think we might be getting into the fun part of the journy, the part where everyone and their brother is going to start noticing how I look.
Now, last time we played this little game, this was the part of it when I really went over to the Dark Side, focusing solely on how I looked as a barometer of how I was doing. That is so not going to happen again this time because, and here's the thing, I'm never going to be thin enough or pretty enough for me and that doesn't matter anyway. What's important, what has to be at the core of every step I take from here on out, is building a healthy, robust, filled-to-the-brim-with-activity-and-challenge-and-all-of-the-stuff-that-makes-Life-worth-living life. I know that I'm succeeding not because I'm wearing clothes that are two sizes smaller than the ones I started in or because of the pounds and inches lost, but because I'm not sitting at home on the couch every night eating breathtakingly huge portions of food, as quickly as possible, living for those all-too-brief moments of numbness and wishing I could disappear. I'm out there. I'm at my classes. I'm walking for an hour. I'm doing aerobics for 30 to 60 minutes. I'm going to the drycleaners with my suits (and I'm wearing those suits). I take care choosing what I'm going to wear everyday. I make sure I'm wearing at least lipstick and some mascara every day. This, for me, is what success looks like. (Of course, having my daddy tell me that I look amazing isn't a bad thing, either!)
Now, last time we played this little game, this was the part of it when I really went over to the Dark Side, focusing solely on how I looked as a barometer of how I was doing. That is so not going to happen again this time because, and here's the thing, I'm never going to be thin enough or pretty enough for me and that doesn't matter anyway. What's important, what has to be at the core of every step I take from here on out, is building a healthy, robust, filled-to-the-brim-with-activity-and-challenge-and-all-of-the-stuff-that-makes-Life-worth-living life. I know that I'm succeeding not because I'm wearing clothes that are two sizes smaller than the ones I started in or because of the pounds and inches lost, but because I'm not sitting at home on the couch every night eating breathtakingly huge portions of food, as quickly as possible, living for those all-too-brief moments of numbness and wishing I could disappear. I'm out there. I'm at my classes. I'm walking for an hour. I'm doing aerobics for 30 to 60 minutes. I'm going to the drycleaners with my suits (and I'm wearing those suits). I take care choosing what I'm going to wear everyday. I make sure I'm wearing at least lipstick and some mascara every day. This, for me, is what success looks like. (Of course, having my daddy tell me that I look amazing isn't a bad thing, either!)
Comments