Back in the saddle (well, bike seat) again

It's been a good week from where I sit. Today was my weigh-in day (even though I technically did it yesterday), and I'm down 8.6 pounds from where I started back at the end of February. I didn't really start doing the program again until last week, though, so I'm pretty pleased with myself. Down 6.6 pounds from the first of April, so if I can keep this pace up, about eighteen months from now, I should be at goal, and quite a bit smaller than I am now.

The biggest thing I did differently this week was to head back to the gym. It's so funny, and it seems so simple, that to get back to the gym all you have to do is go there. And while in practical application that's true, there's a head game that goes on with it as well, somehow because I rejoined the gym back in February. Why did it take me nearly three months to head back? The best I can tell is that I didn't want it before this past week. I said I did, and maybe even I thought I did, but, clearly, I didn't until I really did. I feel like I'm writing in circles, and honestly, that's the way it is in my head too. The same impulse that told me I was ready to go back to the gym is also responsible for me feeling like makeup and curl care are again part of my daily routine. The strangest part is that I don't know where this feeling came from or why now. I may never understand the difference between what I want, and what I think I want, but the main idea of *this* paragraph is that I'm back doing the things that I know I need to do to be successful.

Because I don't understand, and because I don't know where the impulses originate, I'm meeting back with my therapist who specializes in additions (perfect for me!), and spending a lot more devoted time in the Bible. I do pray for wisdom and insight through this journey, and that God will show me what I need to see as long as it will get me to my goals. Maybe, however, discernment would get in the way at this stage, and I'll know more at the end than I do now at the beginning.

Interestingly, I came across this blog post this morning. (I hope it's okay that I linked to it, and if not, I hope that the woman who wrote it will let me know!) For some reason, I am really struck by how this woman feels. My current pictures look much more like her old ones, so when I read how she feels looking back, it's very right-now for me. 

I look at me … past vs. present. That is me. All of those pictures are of me. People say they do not recognize the girl in the other pictures. I’m here to say: that girl is me.Don’t look at her as an abomination, because enough people, myself included, did that already.Don’t congratulate me on no longer being her; I still am her. And doesn’t she deserve to be? Don’t tell me I look better; I don’t. I look different.Don’t speak of her as if she is a poor, piteous person. She’s not.She’s me.

I think I need more time to process this further, but my initial feeling when reading this was, this is how I feel about myself now. I am not a circus side-show, no matter if I look like I need a tent-maker to design my clothes. I worry about people noticing me starting to lose weight, because in the past when they have, I've run right back to food to get my comfort layer of blubber back on. I know I need to change my head through this process too, and that somehow I have to get beyond our sex-centered culture, my personal history with mean people who didn't value me, and perhaps hardest of all, myself and 38 years of damaging scripts replaying in my photographic memory. And if this woman, who is now, by all physical accounts, "better", struggles with this, the road I'm on is apparently going to get bumpier than I even imagined.

Good thing I'm working out, and remembering how to take care of myself in the falls.

MR