There was a time when I was almost ninety pounds heavier than I am today.  Ninety pounds.  That's a whole other person.  When I think back to heavier days, I don't remember being miserable - not exactly.  What I remember is this very heavy sense of inertia.  This sense that the world was pretty heavy all of the time and I think that my weight reflected that feeling. 

I would often binge, I was not terribly active (read: I didn't sit on the couch all of the time, but the thought of seeking out activity didn't appeal to me either), I made poor food choices and paid little attention as over about five years, my weight climbed and climbed. 

So what changed?  It wasn't that I woke up one morning and said, "I need to change."  I wish it were that easy.  Over a series of visits with both my Primary Care Physician and my Endocrinologist, my weight started becoming a more significant factor in both my general health and my diabetes control.  I needed more and more insulin, my cholesterol made its way up right alongside my weight, and I was sick more often than I should have been.  There were lots of suggestions and lots of trials - Atkins Diet, Symlin (for the sole purpose of weight loss), Weight Watchers.   None of them worked.  Sometimes, I'd lose a little weight, but I almost always gained it back - sometimes, plus some. 

What really did it for me was the mention of surgery.  Both my PCP and Endo mentioned that a lap band procedure might be my best hope.  I guess, deep down, the idea of surgery seemed to me a last resort.  This may or may not be true, but it's how it resonated for me.  My stubbornness in this case might have saved me the pain, the expense, and the aftermath of such a procedure.  Because as soon as it was mentioned, I started making decisions that I thought might get me on a better track.  

I started planning meals.  Simple enough.  My eating habits before involved too few meals and too much when I did eat.  Those habits also included food choices that bordered on ridiculous for a type 1 diabetic.  I liked chocolate and ice cream and milk shakes WAY too much.   So, I started packing a lunch for working, forcing myself awake in the morning to have breakfast, and shopping for fruits, vegetables, rice and lean proteins.  It wasn't brain science to figure out how to eat well - it just wasn't as simple as 1-2-3.  It took more will than I thought I had sometimes.  Avoiding processed foods was just as challenging.  Why not just buy frozen meals?  One look at the side of a Lean Cuisine entree box showed me the ways of sodium and carb overload.  This doesn't mean I was perfect - and today, it remains challenging to eat well, but I knew if I was going to lose this weight without the help of a scalpel, diet was the best place to start.  

Next, I kicked myself into gear.  The summer I decided to start these changes, I lived right up the street from a great beach along the Taunton River.  It's brackish water, with a bit of a current, and not too much nasty wildlife.  I committed to 3-4 days a week of swimming just before the beach closed at dusk.  I couldn't go to the gym, given how self conscious I was about my weight.  Instead, I got in the water on those nights, swam out for fifteen minutes, treaded water for ten, and swam back in.  Blessedly, I was reasonably fit for a girl my size, and able to keep up.  As the summer progressed, and I started to lose, I would swim for longer or swim on more nights.  

By the end of that first summer, I had shed 35 pounds in just over 3 months.  And I felt good.  Little by little, that inertia crept away.  That fall, when jellyfish started streaming into the water I was using to swim, I found my way to a gym.  Beyond that, I found myself using the stairs, walking at lunch hour, parking further away from things.  I was changing - not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.  Over the next two years, I lost another 35 pounds.  

It's been three years since that first seventy pounds.  Little by little, more weight has come off.  

Today, I am as fit as anyone I know.  I can do push ups from a handstand position.  I am a yogi.  I am a boxer.  I work metal.  I bike all over the city I live in - and I keep up with anyone I'm biking with.  I can run three miles in under 30 minutes (something I couldn't do even in high school).  I am almost forty years old and I am physically - and in many ways mentally - better than I've ever been.  

Is it still a struggle?  It sure is.  But this summer marks the fifth anniversary of the summer I started slowly, surely, doing the right things for myself to be the best I can be.

Why am I writing this now, you ask?  Lately, with life a busy storm of chaos and difficulty, my eating habits have tended toward not great.  It's not that I'm overeating, so much, it's just that I'm picking things that aren't the best.  I'm not gaining weight, but I can feel that my body misses the nourishment it was getting.  I suppose I wanted to write this tonight to remind myself of how far I've come and remind myself that life is better on this side of the fence.  

So, get to it, I say.  Out loud, just now, to myself.  Did you hear me?