When Losing Weight is the Least of Your Troubles

oedipa_maas

Sometimes, losing weight and getting healthy and strengthening your self accepting messages should be at the top of the list. It's important to live a life undragged down by joints that won't bend or move without pain, lungs that feel like they are gasping for air through a collapsed balloon. The mirror that says you are ugly, no good, no one will love you, look at those stretch marks, look at those veins, look at the cellulite that says with every bump "You are nothing if you are not smooth and taut and beautiful and badass." If you condense it all down to one thing, it is always this: You never are, and never will be enough. Give up now, you'll end up back where you started, more self loathing than ever.

If you follow that voice, you will keep the pattern up until you die. Until there is no time left: no time for new adventures or new feelings or new surprises or new loves or kids or silly doggies that pull you out to the beach to play ball.

The weight is the fulcrum, I won't tell you otherwise. But the weight is also second to our grit, and our love, and our willingness to be sad and vulnerable and if you have to, turn your back on the people or inside voice that is screaming so loud you can't hear anything but the cold. You say: I hear you. But even if I didn't, I'd still be moving forward.

Our determination and openness to change and to try and to fail and to succeed is the muscle of our heart.