It is midnight. I desperately want to be asleep, yet here I am typing away in the darkness of my room. I have some music playing softly, just loud enough for me to enjoy but not so loud as to wake a sleeping husband. I realize that I should be asleep. Every member of my household is snoozing, which makes the fact that I am awake that much more of a crime. Sleep will have to wait, tonight…I have some business to attend.

Let me catch you up…

The battle begins. I was around the age of 9 when I first engaged in a battle that would soon turn into a war that I would be fighting into my adult years. This war has had many victories; this war has had many losses. It was not a war I ever wanted. I can distinctly remember being that little 9 year old girl; I remember one day when she looked in the mirror and she saw that her clothes did not fit exactly the way she thought they should. It was in that moment when she met her enemy – fat.

Life in the trenches. I have never in my life been skinny. Never. While I was not grossly overweight, I did carry an extra pound or two as a child. Although I was an extremely active child, I remember starting a “workout plan” to help shed the unwanted pudge away. Never enough. No matter how much “extra exercise” I would get, I still would look in the mirror and see a portly little girl. It frustrated me; it brought about a severe contempt for my body. This, friends, would be a mindset that would continue to grow and fester as the years went by. Teenage years would come and bring about even more disdain for the body I was in constant battle with. Life as an adult would not be safe from this war, this is where the heat of the battle was felt.

Weapons of war. Diets. All forms of diets, pills, and shakes have been used in my arsenal throughout the years. Charts, food diaries, and daily meal plans have all had their time on the front lines. There was even a short moment in time when I would discreetly visit the bathroom after every meal to gag myself to the point of imminent hurling. None of it worked. Yeah, sure, I would lose some weight momentarily. Inevitably, I would still come to the point where every time I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I saw it. That one thing I wanted more than anything to be rid of, continued to haunt and tease…as if it was all just a fun little game.

Battle Scars. I grieve for the little girl who, at such a young age, held such contempt for her body. I ache for that teenager who thought her worth would increase with a body that looked “right”. I want to hold the young lady who compared her body to every woman’s body and judged it by “worse or better” than her own. And to the woman who has brought these insecurities into her marriage and scoffed at a husband who “loves every part of her perfect body”…I want to sit and cry with her.

Moment of Victory. At my heaviest weight, I remember looking through some old pictures and thinking, wow, I wish I could look like that again. It started to happen. The reprieve from a long and wearisome war was beginning to take place. I almost laughed. I looked at those pictures and I could distinctly remember how much I disliked the way I looked then. How crazy, I thought. I could not stop looking at the pictures. It was no matter that in those pictures I may have still been bigger than some or smaller than others…it was that I saw someone that I didn’t feel revulsion for when I looked at her. It was the beginning of me changing my mindset about me.

The Road Since. Well, after my little ah-ha moment…one that I had prayed for and yearned for, I decided to join Weight Watchers. I joined because I wanted to be a healthier me and not because I hated me. There is a huge difference.

The weight began to shed. I lost over thirty pounds doing Weight Watchers. It felt so good to lose weight, but it felt even better to find a security in myself I had not known before. I wasn’t losing weight so I could find acceptance, I wasn’t losing weight to find my happiness, I wasn’t even losing weight so I could “look good” in that swimsuit; I was losing weight to be healthier and I was doing it for me.  

Now, friends. I am tired. I still have more to say, but sleep is not far away. I have never done a “to be continued” post before…but, there is a first time for everything, right? 

So – 

To Be Continued…