Damage Control

Starting weight: 311 lbs, 6/17/02
Ending weight: 190 lbs, 10/15/05
Current weight: 250 lbs, and counting

Furtively dragging my butt back to this blog after gaining another 30 lbs. I was really pleased to find kickass comments from my friends in the trenches. Thank you, bronwyn, v'ron, susan and dolley!

I'm just posting a short one, to get myself back into the habit of doing it. I keep putting it off, because I feel like there is just too much to write, and I feel overwhelmed.

This was a hard winter - end of a close friendship, end of a seven-year job, new career, new job that competes with new career, tonsillitis, followed almost immediately by the flu...and a new grand total of about 60 lbs weight gain. I just got the pix back from a recent show I emceed (my new profile photo...a more honest depiction now, despite the red wig and the "mistress" collar, which are not, honesty compels me to admit, typical accoutrements of mine). I can't say I was exactly surprised, or appalled (I actually think I look pretty cute). But man...I am a fat girl. And I look older - lots older than I did this time a year ago.

I'm pro-fat-folk - - I don't believe in the harassment that passes for concern about people's health that is going on wholesale. I feel guilty for how unhappy being fat makes me, but it does. My chin is completely gone...the most shocking thing about the photos. How could I have missed that? I must be unconsciously posing myself when I look in the mirror so I can't see it.

The other thing is the discomfort, the muzzy, hazy-headedness, the easy fatigue. I was an athlete for about five good, solid years - - - in the last 6 months, I blew all of that. I feel like Superman on the kryptonite, and I hate it. The good news is that I don't have to get thin to regain the benefits of my former exercise regimen. As of this week, I am back on it - commuting to work by bike, taking longer rides on weekends. I'm going to sign up for a Wednesday lunch hour yoga class in the building where my new job is and start making 24 hour fitness work for their keep again.

So, that's my stated goal for the next month or so. I want to drop the weight I gained by my next birthday (March 2008), but I think the most important thing right now is to get my exercise legs under me again. I can't believe how much less depressed, how much more alert and alive I feel when I exercise. I know now that it's impossible to lose weight, to maintain weight loss if you stop caring whether you live or die. Exercise brings my body into the equation, and it has a pretty strong, unconsidered opinion on the whole thing: it wants to live. Stupid brain.