[All We Are, One Republic]

Part 2 of 2

As I said in yesterday's post I had a bad eating week.  I can blame it on it being Christmas, or the bummer of not getting to go be with family, or my suspicions that PMS was peaking, but my eating sucked.  The most exercise I got, other than a few jaunts to the store with Jas, was walking from my bed to my chair to the bathroom to my chair to the kitchen to my chair and back to bed.  My apartment is only like 700 sq feet so that's not very far at all.  The point is that last week sucked, and I'm feeling bloated and disgusting and irritated at yet another setback.

The deal is, I'm not crazy about all aspects of the show, but I was watching Ruby tonight and found myself rather inspired by her success.  She's lost 100 pounds, and though she can be kind of whiny and irritating, she's not quitting.  I don't really whine so much... I just quit.  And then restart.  And then quit again.  It's exhausting and I'm sure it's irritating to you all.

I've not got it all worked out, but I'm not giving up.  That's why I'm being honest about eating horribly for the last week.  If I said nothing, and just wrote ambiguously, I could get fatter and stop doing weigh-ins and have a weight loss blog where I never concretely write about weight loss, just abstract ideas about what it means to me to be fat and what I hope being thin would be like.

I'm not into the whole "visualize to realize" movement.  I think it's a bunch of crap.  That said, when I can't fall asleep at night I've started to try and actually imagine what my life will be like if I lose this weight.  There's one image that comes back to me again and again.  I can't quite see my face, but I imagine myself trim and fit, athletically so, maybe 150-160 pounds, dressed in a cute workout clothes.  You know, something like this , that sporty gal you see at the grocery store and scope out her cart because maybe if you buy and eat what she does you might get to look like her.  I doubt I'd be that skinny, but still... I could definitely see myself wearing cute workout gear like that.  I can only try to imagine having an actual space between my thighs!

But I digress... so anyway, I imagine myself looking cute, with my hair in a pony tucked into a baseball cap, all iPod'ed up, taking my baby for a jog around Green Lake in my sweet B.O.B. Revolution stroller .  That is my fantasy- to be fit enough to have a baby, to be healthy enough to take him jogging, and to do something that literally thousands of mothers take for granted.  I'm not pretending that fantasizing makes it real, but it does remind me, imagining how good it would feel to realize that fantasy, that the work will so be worth it.

It's an oft abused cliche, but there's that saying that "Nothing tastes as good as being fit feels" and I think it's totally true.  If I lost this weight, and weighed 140 pounds and was fabulously trim and fit and felt incredible, and eating one slice of chocolate cake would balloon me back up to 360 pounds, cartoon style, I would never eat that slice of cake, or that cookie, or that plate full of buttery stuffing.  I'd remember the labor it took to work those pounds off and I'd say no way, none of it is worth it.

It's harder, though, to already be here, to work so hard and not see results.  If I could magically be 140 pounds, on the condition that even one bite of chocolate would blow me back up to 360, believe you me- I'd say buh-bye to the chocolate.  But it's harder to see that, the whole "This cake is keeping me at heifer range" bit, when I'm still here.  This is why I self-destruct when I do lose weight.  In the last five years I've lost a collective 250 pounds- 40 here, 60 there, 5 here, 30 there, 10 here, 25 there.  The problem is that one bite, one slice, one cake didn't shoot me back up to where I started (and beyond).  Collectively, though, over time,  the pounds found their way onto my girth.  I sit here, wanting to lose weight but struggling to believe that it will work and I can be different and, if I'm being honest, that Jesus really does give me the strength to overcome, that His love is better than life and He can actually be fully satisfying, more than any triple fudge cake with dark chocolate cream cheese frosting ever could.

Still... you know the thing about fantasy fit jogging mama Tami?  She's happy.  Her life's not perfect, but she's both physically and emotionally and spiritually out from under the hundreds of pounds of excess weight.  It reminds me of how, in high school, when I was feeling fatteriffic at 200 pounds, my best friend told me that she had a dream about me, and in it I was thin and I was really, really happy.  It was kind of prophetic, really, and I know it's true- I won't have a perfect life when I'm thin, but I'll be out of prison.  It will be scary new territory to try and navigate, for sure, kind of like Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption (best.  movie.  ever.) but I won't have to kill myself (see the movie, or google it, if that made no sense).  I'll be free from prison but ready to start a new, better life.

So I'm clinging to Jesus, and holding onto fantasy fit jogging mama Tami.  I like to imagine her ponytail swishing side to side, as her feet bounce of the asphalt in that great jogging rhythm as her baby takes in the beauty that is Green Lake from the comfort of his sweet stroller.  I like to see her smiling, humming along to her best ever iPod playlist, and I like to know that she's free and happy.

Truly, I can't wait to meet her.  I must remember this when I go for my next walk and want to kill myself because it's been three weeks and my body is in rebellion.  Fantasy fit jogging mama Tami is totally worth it.