RfS Mini-Challenge~~ Letters To Myself: You have changed. STAY CHANGED!

Hubby and I, 2003

Hubby and I, 2012

Letters to myself --past, current, and even future:

Hey, Past me!

What a long, hard, exciting, self-discovering road you started online 5 years ago on May of 2007. You didn't know it then, but you were gonna try a host of things to get over your obesity and food issues. You messed up...a lot. But you didn't give up. THANKS for not giving up.

For a lifetime, you fought the body images and propensity to chub up, then fatten up, then obese up. You got to 299, began blogging at 279, and now, five years later, you're 179. Good for you! 100 pounds less than when you started blogging for weight loss. It worked. The blogging helped. It was the right thing to do.

You lost years --decades--to illness and poor habits. You lost opportunities to fear and self-loathing. But you didn't lose hope.

You took hold for a last fighting chance in 2010...and it worked. Losing 120 pounds takes serious mojo--real commitment--no matter the path one takes. For us  (you, me) , it was not a surgical path--though that was strongly taken into consideration as an option. It wasn't a drug-assisted path--cause, really,  you wanted to GET OFF drugs, not get on more, and you didn't plan to stay on any drug for long term (and I'm old enough to remember the horrors of the Fen-Phen).

I'm off the high blood pressure pills. I have resolved the prediabetes. Ya done good.

Hello, current me. What you got to say?

Well: It was not a solitary path,  which surprised the introvert in me.  Though in the end, for all of us,  it comes down to the "I"  doing it, still, I did it with a blog and with bloggy pals and with challenges and with online research and reading and trying and failing and trying again. It was a bumpy road, crazy bumpy road, before I hit on things that I liked and that worked: Pilates, walking, eating with fewer starches and eliminating gluten and most simple sugars. Eating lots of organic veggies, fruits and good protein. Lots and lots of fluids. Lots of mutual encouragements.

It was the path of learning and moving and portioning and studying and rah-rahing. It was the day by day, meal by meal, full of introspection type of path. It was a path supported by people of all types who had a similar fight to fight. And that I have ended up leading challenges was revelatory, as it became a big tool for ME to help others.

Right now, it's a rough patch. With 19 pounds to goal weight, those 19 pounds feel as monumental as the 139 I initially looked at losing. It feels far away and too hard. And maybe I won't get there. I'm thinking this way.

Whether I do or not get to that "magic number",  what is most important is to keep those good habits that took so much work to inculcate. FIGHT to keep them. FIGHT to not regain. FIGHT to learn more and eat better and move consistently.

Because I feel good. I feel better than I have in 22 years. I feel alive again. I feel pretty again. I feel strong. I do feel old--and I am old--but I feel younger than the morbidly obese me.

Little things daily add up to joy: wearing clothes from "non fat" stores. Crossing my legs. More limber sex. Bending over with ease. Playing ball. Walking as the moon rises without feeling like I'm gonna die out of breath. Not using a cart at the grocery store cause I can carry 5 bags  of stuff on my own. Fitting comfortably in my car with space between my belly and the steering wheel. Having my husband praise me and my efforts. Seeing his eyes looking at me like I'm his spanking new bride--again. Wearing dresses again. Liking how I look in pictures (which I pretty much never liked, but relativity and perspsective changes when one transforms).

299 lbs, 2004, "The Blouse" size 30/32

2012, trying on "The Blouse"
which can wrap around me...

Life is much better HERE. That's what I wish I could send back in time to myself in the 80s. Get there sooner.

But to my future self, I say:

Do not lose this blessing, this feeling, this rebirth. Keep this. Do better. Hold on. Remember that it's the majority who lose what they have gained due to complacency. Do not become complacent. Become...a person of good health habits. That's the crux. GOOD HEALTH HABITS....feed that. Nurture that.

You changed. You feel it, right? How internally, you inhabit a better landscape? You moved to a nicer town. The air is fresher. The sky is wider. The trees and flowers here are so beautiful. Don't go back to the dirt and noise and ugliness of the morbidly obese ghetto you found yourself stuck in. Stay here. If you move, move to an EVEN lovelier part of town.

STAY CHANGED. For life.

And life will be better because of it.

Don't lose this fight. Be a warrior...for your (my) own good.

And God bless you (me)> :D