Part 1 of 2 — thoughts on the podcast “Tell Me I’m Fat” — This American Life

“Tell Me I’m Fat – This American Life”

Intro: folks, I am off on a trip with a couple of great traveling companions, taking a cruise to the Eastern Carribean, so I’ve written two blog entries to carry over until after my return. Thanks and a shout-out to Megan (you know who you are!) for posting about the podcast mentioned in this two-part blog.

Part 1: A Different World

Author Lindy West (”Shrill”) makes the simple statement: “The way that we are taught to think about fatness is that fat is not a permanent state. You’re just a thin person who’s failing consistently for your whole life.”

Host Ira Glass references Lindy West: “As long as you’re a fat person who’s trying not to be fat, that’s acceptable. That’s a good fat person.”

It occurred to me while I listened to the podcast that I have forgotten much of how it felt to be super morbidly obese. (FYI, that’s anyone with a BMI of 50 or over. I started this journey with a BMI of 67.1.) I remember the big things, but not so much the dread, the constant feeling that I should somehow apologize for being the size I was.

The size of my body was a constant concern, and that’s not even including the health issues I faced. I’m speaking about how my obesity was as much a consideration in every movement as breathing itself; it was inescapable. It not only colored how others viewed me, but how I viewed myself. I had to be constantly aware of how my weight might change my plans, whether it was how far I might have to walk, whether or not adequate seating to hold my body was available, and yes, there was the time we couldn’t consider buying a particular car because I couldn’t sit comfortably in the driver’s seat.

“As long as you’re a fat person who’s trying not to be fat, that’s acceptable. That’s a good fat person.”

Ira Glass, quoting Lindy West

I refuse to say I was totally unhappy as an obese woman; I firmly believe we make our own happiness, and while I dealt with depression and poor self-esteem over the years, I also found joy in many things, including my family, my work, my experiences. I didn’t punish myself and deny myself life’s pleasures. But neither was I capable of living the life I wanted to live. I was healthy and active as a young adult, and I knew damned well what I was missing.

As I ventured through the variety of weights and diets I’ve experienced over the years, with varying amounts of success, I knew that as long as I was making some kind of effort toward losing the weight, I felt a burden lift. It didn’t even matter if I was successful at all; I could tell myself that I was doing something to change my situation. No one else might even be aware of my efforts, but if I wasn’t trying to manage my weight, I felt guilty, as if it was totally fair for the world to expect me to become a better person by getting in control of my weight.

Not only did I feel as if I should constantly apologize for being obese, as if it were a totally selfish act I grabbed for myself, but I knew without a doubt that others were judging me. I could be the largest person in any given room, and yet be totally invisible. I would not demand attention for myself, but I also noticed how often strangers would not look me in the eye.

I remember, once, being at the lake with my husband, and some loud teenagers yelled at me for being a beached whale. That sort of thing, I could always dismiss; I didn’t know those kids, so why would I care about their opinions?

It was the people I had to actually interact with that could leave me feeling like a second class citizen. The store clerks that wouldn’t wait on me. The servers at restaurants that brought out everyone else’s food but had to be asked to bring me mine; the servers that immediately suggested salads, as if they were just trying to be helpful.

I felt as if I was living a lie; I was mentally fat and trying to pass for normal.

– Me, re: losing 140 pounds years ago

When I lost 140 pounds in the span of roughly a year, it was a fast enough loss that the change in how I was treated was extremely noticeable; so much so that I didn’t really deal with it well. Fat isolated me, but there’s also some comfort in isolation. I wasn’t fully prepared for the swinging pendulum of how the world treats fat people as opposed to those who are closer to a normal weight. I am still sure beyond a doubt that my slide back into weight gain after that short success was because I couldn’t fully adapt and cope with how different life is after weight loss.

The changes have been very gradual this time around, and I’ve had many more opportunities to learn how to handle the differences. Before, I felt as if I was living a lie; I was mentally fat and trying to pass for normal. It was a hurdle I never fully jumped. I also admit that I became quite judgmental toward other obese people, becoming as guilty of judging others as those who treated me the same way. I wanted to push myself away from that formerly fat me and act as if that time of my life never existed.

Maybe, then, I wouldn’t feel as if I needed to apologize for my existence. Instead, I could justify it. Not that searching for justification of your own existence is an improvement.

I know a lot more, now. I know that obesity is not a simple matter of overeating; it’s a complicated riot of health issues, genetics, and yes, lifestyle choices play a part, but they are not solely to blame. Just about everyone has a skinny friend who can eat their weight in junk food without gaining an ounce. Despite the diet industry’s continued insistence on CRAP (Caloric Reduction As Primary), none of our existences are as simple a matter as calories in, calories out.

Part of my success thus far has been in nurturing the ability to separate weight control from emotional response. My intrinsic value as a human isn’t measured on a bathroom scale, no matter what the number reads; it’s simply another indicator of whether or not I am caring for my body according to my goals. Diet gurus, fat shamers, and others who demonize obesity rely on that emotional response. It’s a cultural influence, as well; I was raised to believe that carrying excess weight was wrong. I was mislead to believe that being fat is a moral failing, a sign of weakness. In truth, it’s simply a physical state, like any other.

Taken in that light, I reject identifying myself by my weight loss as much as I reject identifying myself by my weight. My old self is not my enemy. I was no less of a person, no less worthy of consideration, when I weighed 371 pounds.

It’s a different world for me, these days; my personal assessments are based more on what I can accomplish, what I add to the conversation, and less about my reflection in the mirror. Perhaps the differences in how I am treated have something to do with how I treat myself and others. I will always live with the echoes of a world that judges the obese unfairly, but I am determined not to rebound those echoes.

Next week – Part 2: Physical Exorcism

It’s Spring Break, and we’re out camping — my husband, my dog, and me. We like camping at the lake near where we both attended college, so this is often a week of reminiscing as well as camping.

A little over two years ago, we planned to camp here and couldn’t get a site in the section we wanted, so we drove down and looked at available campsites; it’s not far from our home, so why not? The section wasn’t yet open for the year, so we parked our vehicle and hiked in.

I remember that hike. I felt brave enough to walk the circle of campsites, but not all the way around; I couldn’t make that distance, and the distance I did walk required stopping about every third or fourth campsite and resting. Yes, I weighed a bit more than I do, now, but the biggest difference was my knees. Even with a fairly high pain tolerance, it’s not at all comfortable to walk hills and concrete with knees that have no cartilage or synovial fluid left. Bone on bone — it’s painful, as anyone with severe arthritis will tell you.

Without bashing you over the head (again) with the vast improvements in my abilities since then, I will say that that life is much easier without so many restrictions, and I am immensely glad that I made the very conscious decision to get out of my own way, both with weight loss and with knee replacement surgeries.

It’s amazing how different the world can be when we actively work toward changing our limitations, regardless of what they might be. Setting out to conquer the small things will eventually pay big dividends. Picking something relatively easy can lead to successes that make you want to go just a little farther.

Two years ago, my abilities were much greater than they were three years before that. I would never have even have attempted a hike at all, for fear of falling as well as the immense pain from just carrying my weight. Two years ago, I was pretty happy to have made it as far as I did, and I think I even wrote about it, here. And now? I’ve happily made the same trip several times over with no stops, just to walk to the bathhouse and back.

Next week, my feet will carry me even farther. Just watch!

I haven’t talked about actual weight loss for a while, so it’s time.

Just this morning, I managed to push through a new low; the last was achieved last October on the day I left for a cruise. I knew that would be my low for a while, since I was heading into vacation, holidays, and my second knee surgery. Now I’m at a new low, so of course, I have spring break next week (camping) and I’m leaving on another cruise after that. In other words, I’ll have some retracing to do, but it’s also life. I’ve learned how to deal with such things without feeling as if I’m punishing myself.

This path has never been linear; it’s more like a twisting dirt road through the mountains (with an occasional plow over a low water bridge that’s flooding) than it is a sunny interstate, with plenty of obstacles that have required me to figure out ways to work through and around them.

And that’s exactly what I have needed.

I think most of us who are or have been morbidly obese and dream of losing the weight that complicates our lives have dreamed of miracles, where we wake up the next day to find that our previous issues were just a bad dream. That’s part of the fascination with television shows that show massive weight loss, the before-and-after pics, and so much more. We want to know it’s possible.

The glimmer of hope that I have to offer is that it is possible, but having lost a massive amount of weight relatively easily and fast a number of years ago, I know that these battles I wage, now, are actually much better indicators of success down the road. I have tackled — and learned from — the experiences I’ve encountered along the way. I’ve accepted that there isn’t just one way to slay this particular dragon; there is no magic way, no best way. Only the way that I find works for me personally, which is why I urge people to find their own paths rather than hoping to glean my methods.

It sure would have been easier to wake up from a nightmare and be skinny. I’ll grant you that. I’ve failed enough times at this that I didn’t quite believe what I’ve achieved to this point could happen to me, personally. Someone else? Sure! But me? Nope. There are still times when I feel like I’m living a dream, and tomorrow, I’ll wake up and find all 192 pounds I’ve lost were just fiction.

If I were on the outside and reading this, I would think that anyone who’s been actively working on weight loss since 2013 has settled in and knows they’re gonna kick this. From the inside, though, I’ve been working my way along by focusing on the next thing — and the number of obstacles that stand between me and my eventual maintenance are now very few. My horizon, once mountainous, is leveling out and I can see where I just might end up. But it still feels a bit dreamlike.

Me? No longer obese? That’s a mere 15 pounds away. Someone pinch me! 15 pounds is nothing — not even ten percent of what I’ve left behind me.

Will I likely gain weight while camping and then going on a cruise? Probably. There was a day when I would have simply never gone back on my diet after vacation, partly from a sense of unfairness that I should have to deal with this, but life is unfair. Whining about it while doing nothing gets us exactly nothing, right? Or worse — the something we get is weight we didn’t want!

The difference now is that I’m not on a diet. This is my not-so-new normal — for the rest of my life — and dealing with weight gains and losses will be in my personal geography for the rest of my life.

Last Sunday, I joined a number of fellow Parrotheads and froze my butt off while working a double aid station at a marathon. The weather was definitely in winter mode; highs in the 30’s, a sharp wind at times, rain, and for a brief time, sleet and snow. But then, that’s the nature of the weather beast this time of year in Arkansas.

It was an asset to have a number of clothes that are loose; I was able to dress in a LOT of layers, including leggings under my jeans and several layers of shirts under my borderline too-big winter coat. I was bundled up and still cold; I’ve lost a great deal of my insulation, it seems.

Our double aid station serves as the two last aid stations on the route — and markers 19.2 and 24.1. When the very last of the racers come through, they’re followed by a police escort, so some of the crew left when the race crowd thinned out and things were put up, and a few of us stayed to cheer on the very last of the walkers. Because — at least to me — even if you’re dead last, you’re a winner just by finishing something as challenging as a marathon in crappy weather.

We made a group pic before we all headed homeward; and I finally noticed it posted on Facebook a couple of days back.

My first thought was not what a rough but fulfilling day it had been, how I was so impressed with the diversity of the folks who challenged themselves to run or walk 26.2 miles, or even the camaraderie of our great group of volunteers that donated their time and enthusiasm to distribute water, Gatorade, pretzels, goo, bananas, and oranges to weary racers.

Nope. My first thought was how fat my legs still look. That immediate disappointment hit me in the gut. Who on earth do I think I am, being proud of a body that is still grossly imperfect?

That day, I felt like I had come so far; sure, I was tired and cold at the end of the day, but the only thing that held me back was not being able to make the first step into an RV. I may have new knees, but that doesn’t mean I’m any taller; I still have short girl problems.

Looking at that photo, though, brought up visceral reactions of feeling like a fraud, like I haven’t made the progress that I have. It’s these unplanned reactions that take me back to my self-defeating behaviors of years ago. Rationally, I realize that those feelings are incorrect perceptions and just leftovers of my insecurities, and that of course my legs are still large; even when I was at my lowest weight, my legs were large. That’s just how I’m built, and losing weight at 57 does not make me into a supermodel when my body type is far different. My reality is that most of my weight was carried in my hips and thighs, so most of my loose skin resides there, now. Just because I’ve lost weight doesn’t mean I’m going to become something I’ve never been.

I try to be as accurate as I can be when assessing my own body; I want the mental image I have of myself to match the physical reality, because dysmorphia doesn’t serve me. I want my choices for my body to be based on rational decisions rather than emotional reactions. And I want to love my body, with all its upgrades (knees) and changes; one of my biggest goals is to be comfortable in my own skin, when I have spent so many years feeling as if I should apologize to everyone I know for being morbidly obese. And for being ashamed.

Those residual feelings may always be there; I wish I could merely erase them, but even 5 1/2 years in, I cannot hope to completely undo the mental damage caused by spending my entire adult life as a morbidly obese woman. These shadows will color my own emotions until I’m fully healed from them, confident that I need make no apologies for who I am, how I look. And the truth is, I never should have felt that way to begin with, but the stigmas I grew up with have been hard to discard.

That’s why writing out this blog is important for me; it’s a reality check, a mental work-through of the emotions that, left unchecked, get a life of their own when they don’t deserve it. We all deserve to live our best lives in whatever skin we are in at this moment.

A few weeks ago, I thought about pulling my (nearly 36 year old) wedding dress out of storage and trying it on. That thought has stuck in my mind ever since, so this week, I did it. Those of you that live in Arkansas know that it’s been raining for around 47 years straight, and I have a knack for getting weird ideas when I haven’t gotten some legit vitamin D for a while.

I think it’s a foregone conclusion that it fit or I wouldn’t be writing about it, so no spoilers, there. 😉

I tried it on once before, probably 12-13 years ago, when I was at my then-lowest weight, and couldn’t get it zipped up — but I weigh less, now. I don’t remember how much I weighed when I got married; I was far too busy and poor to worry much about dieting before my wedding. I was a college student, then. I was on a school meal plan with limited options, but I know that when I walked down the aisle, I was not at my lowest adult weight.

It strikes me as surreal that I’m on the verge of being the thinnest I’ve been since getting married in 1983. This body has been through so much since then, and I am hardly a 21 year old woman anymore.

Regimes have fallen, volcanoes have erupted, Milli Vanilli exposed the public to the hazards of lip syncing. You have to be 35 years old to hold the office of U.S. President, so my dress is eligible. My daughter was born, I ate a lot of pizza (a lot of pizza!), I have gained and lost the rough equivalent of the Titanic — and lost it — a few times over. Miss Piggy and Kermit broke up.

In other words — life happened.

I’m not really sure why I kept my wedding dress; it wasn’t well preserved, and it probably sounds funny saying that I’m not all that attached to it after storing it for a few decades, but I’m glad I did. There’s a grounding that comes with trying on clothes, even if you know there’s not a chance you’ll wear them, again; hello, hoop skirt and puffy sleeves, 1983 is calling!

While I’ve been pleased with the gradual decrease in clothing size over recent years, nothing quite drives it home like putting on something I haven’t been able to wear since the Cold War.

I do have a couple other pieces of smaller clothing that date back even farther, including a Gunne Sax dress (for those times when you just feel all Little House on the Prairie) and an embroidered jacket (be real, people, I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, peace out!). I would be quite surprised to lose enough weight to fit into either of those, but who knows? Obviously, I never thought I’d fit into the wedding dress again, either.

Blame it on the rain.

I know many of you likely come here to read about actual weight loss, and I haven’t had that to report, lately. My most recent low was last October, just before I left for a cruise. Sometimes, I feel like I should apologize — but in thinking about this, I’ve realized that while seeing someone lose weight is a fascination and a draw, it’s not at all why I come here to write and share.

Hey, I get it. It’s why people watched The Biggest Loser for so long. Seeing someone change before your eyes, especially losing incredible amounts of weight, is a rarity. You hope they post those infamous before and after pics; we all have seen the saddest pics ever for the ‘before’ pics, and then a victorious, smiling person standing with both legs in the same leg of a huge pair of pants.

I’m less than half the weight I was when I embarked on this journey. Although I’m not in maintenance yet, and I’m not fully sure what that will look like because I’m basing that transition on my health rather than my weight, I, too, could pull out my start weight clothes and look something like a child in a parent’s over-sized clothing. My shorts were 4X; my shirt 3X. Eventually, I might take such a pic for my own purposes. I am proud of where I am and where I’ve been — and where I hope to continue to be as I move forward.

Massive weight loss is an attention getter with its own “viewer demographic”. Both those who will never need to lose half or more of their body weight, and those who dream of it (as I once did), often hope it’s a fast process, a linear and predictable one. I watched the first couple of seasons of The Biggest Loser, where contestants were judged only on their ability to lose weight each week, and if they didn’t show a loss (or, heaven forbid, they showed a gain), there had to be some failure responsible. They didn’t try hard enough. They were caught sneaking something in the kitchen and exposed for it. No, it couldn’t ever be that the human body is a complicated thing, and sometimes it just doesn’t do what you hope it will.

I couldn’t stomach how they treated the contestants. I know from direct experience that fast weight loss isn’t necessarily the best method, and that morbid obesity takes a large physical toll on the body. To me, it seemed as if the contestants were being punished rather than taught how to change. I know with absolute certainty that there’s a segment of the population who think obesity is a moral failing and that the morbidly obese should be punished. But lifestyle changes that are forced on someone are rarely effective; check back with the heart attack survivors who are told to stop smoking, and see what they’re up to a few years down the road. Many may have forgotten the lesson in stopping their behavior, only to return to it.

I was a big time loser. I lost 140 pounds — and never learned the lesson. I didn’t learn how to respond to the very things that destroy most weight loss efforts, and for me, this blog and this effort is more about resetting my normal to be the healthy response than a return to the detrimental. All of us experience life challenges that threaten our norms; it’s how we respond to them that makes the difference.

Whether it’s a vacation or a major surgery or an emotional roller coaster, my new intentionally chosen normal is a return to what I know makes me feel my best. If I come back from vacation a few pounds up and I find that frustrating or a surprise, I haven’t been honest with myself; choosing to eat differently on vacation will cause weight gain. If I know that going in, and I accept that I will need to deal with the gain afterward, then it’s an expected outcome that can be dealt with.

I have, in the past, slid off diets and dropped back into the habits that made me obese in the first place. Most of us have set out to change something, only to backslide. I’ve known what I was doing at the time, but it’s usually been a matter of being so frustrated with whatever was going on that I either didn’t want to go back on a diet after a vacation or food was a comfort during an emotional situation. The issue isn’t so much the sudden change in eating — as it is not recognizing the damage done by the aftermath. Making a temporary deviation a permanent situation, all while beating myself up for failing yet again, does more to kick me psychologically than anything else. It’s self-punishment by imagined reward.

Here, have a cupcake with three inches of frosting on it. Feel better for the five minutes (or less) it takes to eat it. And then beat yourself up for making the decision to eat it once you can’t taste it any longer.  Sound at all familiar?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it, again: frustration over diet is never improved by going off of it. I have been there oh, so many times, and you would have thought I would have learned the lesson much earlier, but so many of us do the exact same thing. And by doing that same thing — going back to the behavior that got us in the situation in the first place — we embrace that “normal”, for us, is the behavior that harms us.

For me, learning how to recover from the challenges in life is important. I knew having two major surgeries in one year would slow my weight loss this past year, and it did. But I’ve also accepted that I feel better when I am firmly entrenched in my normal, and that, these days, is the return to the path that’s making me a healthier person. I know I feel better. Mentally, I feel more powerful and in control when I know I am back to normal, and that the definition of normal has changed.

That’s the victory, for me. Not before/after photos that insinuate that I was an unhappy, unhealthy wretch in the sad-face ‘before’ photo and so vibrantly happy in the ‘after’ photo, as so many show. It’s not a fleeting notoriety for beating the odds, because this isn’t a one-and-done thing. It’s an ongoing lifestyle built and constantly corrected with small choices and adjustments.

I understand that people would rather read about the huge changes that come with massive weight loss. The season finales for The Biggest Loser were all about showcasing the winning participants as if, now that they had finally lost the weight, all the troubles of their existence would suddenly dissolve. The New York Times article “After The Biggest Loser, Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight” points out that all but one contestant in Season 8 regained all of their lost weight, plus some. While I may disagree somewhat with the reasons the NYT puts forth, much of their temporary victories in my mind can be blamed on the methods used.

Slow loss and transformation isn’t as glamorous, but it’s more likely to be effective. This process is not a race. In the long run, beating the odds and maintaining my health for as long as possible is far more important than the soon-forgotten before/after photos. If you’ve forgotten I was ever 371 pounds, that’s fine. I haven’t, although I’ve long since stopped looking behind me and am ultimately focused on a better future. Dwelling on past successes is far less important than the simple choices I make on a daily basis.

Losing weight is tough. Moving forward and maintaining health is both the ultimate challenge and the end goal, and what I train for with every choice I make, including in how I recover from life events. It’s the sole reason for this blog; the examination and learning process of how I move forward into a future that has been indelibly changed — and that’s a beautiful thing.

Five and a half years. A child born on the day I started this journey would likely be in kindergarten. A car bought on that day would, on average, have around 80,000 miles on the odometer; the equivalent of more than three times around the Earth. A college student starting on September 3, 2013, would likely have graduated and may even have started their career.

I have been in the process of changing myself for that long. Most of the time, it seems as if my life before has disappeared, and this is who I am, now. I look in the mirror and I am still surprised at what I see. I feel great; I can do what I want to do — and the things on the bucket list are now possible when they weren’t, before.

But I have a ghost. I tend to forget about her until she pops up unexpectedly, like yesterday. I checked in at my orthopedic surgeon’s office for my final surgery follow-up, and the woman at the desk went down the normal list of asking me about any changed information. And then, she glanced at me, and said “we need to take a new photo for your files. You don’t look anything like the photo we have!”

My photo was of my last driver’s license, taken in October, 2014. A year and a month in, there was little distance between my ghost and me; I hardly knew she existed. Before that point, I had been on a few diets that had lasted longer and been more successful. I had yet to prove to myself that the changes I was making, in the process of becoming healthier, would stick.

The day — the moment — I made the decision to try one more time, without ever realizing it, a part of me pulled away; that ghost, that image of me at that moment before I changed. The ghost is me who might have never changed.

It’s easy to forget she ever existed, especially as I move through each new day doing things that weren’t possible for her. I hardly owned a mirror five years ago; I couldn’t bear to see my own reflection, and when I had to look, I cringed, made excuses, and tried to only focus on whatever the reason was for looking. There are very few photos of me, then, for that same reason; I dreaded being remembered as I was, then. I was more likely to make a silly face if I just had to be in a photo, or find a way to hide behind someone else. I spent a lot of time trying to escape who I was.

Sometimes, she pops up from nowhere. She’s the anxiety that the jeans I haven’t worn since before surgery won’t make it past my hips. (They do.) She’s the fear that if I deviate from plan for a day, I’ll be back at 371 pounds tomorrow. She’s the residue of the person who thought she didn’t stand a chance at the things she really wanted to do, and there are still times that doubt creeps in and reaches out for me in an attempt to hold me back.

She’s the echo of my life before. But unlike so many who manage to change and then denounce the people they were before, I cannot and will not do that; those faint reminders keep me honest and on my path. I don’t hate the person I was; there’s no point in that. Besides, I did that years ago; I shunned who I was, before, became overly confident, and then slid backward and regained every ounce. (And quite a few more.)

We are all the sum of our experiences, and to remove or attempt to forget the lessons in any of those experiences, good and bad alike, is a mistake. The acceptance that the ghost will always be with me is a crucial step in my future success.

I am not her any longer, but she’s always within me, that ghost of me.

I’ve been obese for the vast majority of my adult life. Even after losing 191 pounds, I am still considered obese.

In my particular case, carrying excess weight for so many years took a hard toll on my body. Sure, there were the usual suspects: high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and the myriad of health issues that eventually caught up with me. But probably the biggest issue I had was the damage done to my knees.

During the years that my knees were decidedly crappy and I was at my heaviest weights (yes, plural, because I have never stayed at one weight for very long, it seems), I coped in various ways. In the past decade or so, I went through three braces; two were DonJoy rigid frame braces that were custom made for my body, and the third (last year) was a different kind of brace that saw me through the rest of the weight I needed to lose before having knee replacements.

In addition, I’ve had canes, a travel (folding) wheelchair (with extra width), and I’ve coped with the restriction to being able to walk very far in a lot of ways that amounted to being able to travel shorter and shorter distances.

Just this past Wednesday, I donated the braces — all three of them — to a local charity thrift store. When I did it, I felt like crying, or changing my mind and taking them back; I just had a really rough time letting go of those particular things. I felt like I was giving away something intensely personal. I don’t have the same attachment to the other disability-related items we still have in the house, but I’ve struggled with why I felt so odd about releasing the braces. Heck, since two of three were custom fit to my formerly short-and-wide self, I’m not sure anyone will ever be able to use them, but it seemed wasteful to me to throw them away if there was the slightest chance of someone else benefiting from them.

Even if I were to reverse my path (please, God, no!) or develop knee problems again (DOUBLE NO!), I could not use these things. They were specifically off-loader braces, and I’m not even sure it’s possible for knee replacements to end up in the same situation that my knees were in before replacement. So essentially, keeping them was total nonsense.

The week before last, I took the cane I’d been using after surgery and tucked it in the back of a closet. I’m not sure why I didn’t just go ahead and donate that, too, except both my husband and I have used that cane during surgery recovery, so I don’t feel like I own it.

It’s hard for me to grasp, at times, that shedding these items is a good thing. I struggle with releasing these things, even though I know that there’s no way I could ever use them, again. Sometimes, I feel like I live a fraudulent life; getting up in the morning and strapping on a leg brace to keep my knee from locking in place was a fact of life up until May 29 of last year.

Most times, I feel like I’ll just wake up from this dream and be back exactly where I was when I started. Lord knows, I did that to myself enough times, sliding backward and regaining not only every ounce of weight but every disability to function that came with it. There’s still a part of me that doesn’t really believe that I’ve accomplished what I have, and that I don’t deserve the rewards I’ve received. I suppose I’ll always keep a little of this with me; being able to remember what my life was like even as recently as last spring, dealing with two belligerent knees, keeps me honest and focused.

Emerging from my disabilities has been my biggest goal in my journey toward health; giving away the things that I used to depend on just to function has been a cathartic recognition that I’ve achieved one of my biggest goals. It takes my breath away at moments like this; I hope I never forget these hard-earned lessons, and remember it every single day.

Walking and exercise time is also brain time, for me; I don’t listen to music when I walk. I prefer to walk outdoors, which has been a challenge with the recent cold snap. (On a side note, as a former Chicagolander, when — exactly — did I become such a wimp about cold weather? Our lows here have exceeded high temps elsewhere, but here I am, wanting winter GONE NOW.)

I stay in the moment. I am conscious of each step, still, as my body continues to recover from surgery; I am nearing two months out, now. I think about the things I need to do, the things I want to do — which aren’t always the same thing, mind you — and I reflect on what I want to accomplish, so I’m also looking forward.

All the times I began a diet, I looked forward far too much, and often held myself to an unreasonable and unachievable standard. Even when I was a relatively thin teenager, and wanted to lose maybe 20 pounds (oh, for those days!), I kept thinking of the moment when I would be at a goal weight.

But it wasn’t just that goal weight; it was the imagined world that came with it. Not just what I might wear, but how I might present myself to the world, how others might view me, and the things I would be capable of doing as a thin (and therefore more attractive, in my young mind) woman. As I aged and began any number of varying diet programs with increasing amounts of weight to lose, the end game changed, but it was still just another form of fantasy. Everything would be perfect when I reached that future point, and my life would just magically be right in every way.

Even when I started this journey and started to believe it was really possible to lose a large amount of weight, those daydreams of what life could be like as a different person were there. I just really didn’t know that the different person I imagined was actually a return to who I started out to be in the first place; that I haven’t become someone different, but rather, I have become more me.

As I’ve witnessed this becoming, I’ve realized that visualizing some person who isn’t me right now isn’t fair to myself. I am who I am right now, and I have good reason to be happy in my own skin while I continue to work on improving my health. I may not be exactly who I am in this moment a year or five years from now, but it does me a great disservice to think of myself in terms of unachievable goals. Failure is at the end of that path; the idea of “perfect” has to change to being my best self today, tomorrow, next year.

That’s one of the biggest single reasons for my success this journey; that acceptance that not only am I happy with who I am in this moment, but even if I’m happy, I can always be looking forward to improving myself, making a better me. It’s the whole picture, not just the weight loss part of it; it’s everything that’s part of my world.

Regardless of what the number says on the scale, I will always be pushing forward; whether it’s my health, my enjoyment in life, bettering my circumstances, honing my skills. These things are a complete package, and if I hyperfocus on one to the detriment of something else, I’m not making my world a better place. It’s about perspective, and about valuing myself while still holding myself to a better standard.

Learning this means that hopefully, I finally have success; and that I won’t be fighting the same battles time after time.

Last week, I mentioned the first of two rings with phrases on them that mean something special to me. The first was She believed she could, so she did. The other? You are stronger than you know.

I’m 57 years old. I think I know myself pretty well, but the past few years have taught me that I’m capable of far more than I give myself credit for. So many things I firmly believed were beyond my abilities, I’ve reclaimed. You’ve been right here with me; you know the list without me spelling it all out, again. (And if you don’t know, I invite you to read past blogs.)

I’ve had to stop and question why I believed I could no longer do those things, and I’ve discovered that it wasn’t because I wasn’t capable, but because I’d totally given up on the conviction that I was able to change myself. Failure either degrades you or makes you stronger; I chose to not let my past failures forge strength. That was a mistake. I was meant to learn from them.

It takes a willingness to deeply examine what the cause of a behavior is in order to change, and I spent a good chunk of my life letting myself believe the surface excuses instead of the painful process of healing what was wrong. It was far too easy to blame outside forces, genetics, and the luck of the draw, and then settle with what I was — dissatisfied with my health, my abilities, my existence.

Morbid obesity is often a complicated matter, especially for those of us who deal with a full deck of contributing factors. The difference, for me, was deciding that I could do something about those contributing factors instead of just letting them continue to hold my body hostage. It has been an arduous and often frustrating journey, figuring out what works for me and what doesn’t, far exceeding the number of years I have vested in my current (and I believe — permanent) journey. I spent so long treating the symptoms of my disease and convincing myself to be happy with that, that I never realized I was capable of addressing the underlying issues.

The simple name for a complicated issue is metabolic syndrome; “Metabolic syndrome is not a disease in itself. Instead, it’s a group of risk factors — high blood pressure, high blood sugar, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and abdominal fat.” (Source: WebMD: https://www.webmd.com/heart/metabolic-syndrome/metabolic-syndrome-what-is-it#1) In addition to these risk factors, I also deal with being hypothyroid. In truth, I wouldn’t even claim that hypothyroid is in addition; unhealthy cholesterol levels used to be an indicator of hypothyroid before the advent of statins. (See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109527/ )

My mistake for so many years was in accepting that this cluster of issues couldn’t be solved. If we drive a vehicle that burns oil, we know darned well that just adding oil doesn’t solve the problem; there’s something that needs to be addressed and it’s not going to fix itself just by continuing to add oil. It needs to be fixed before it gets worse. So why do we accept this for our bodies? My first step was to look at the underlying issues and attempt to address them.

That was the beginning of strength; not the patience or willingness to continue with weight loss, but rather, the desire to change what ailed me. My first real change came with fighting for a correct hypothyroid diagnosis, followed by correct dosage; for whatever reason, getting properly diagnosed with thyroid issues is far more of a fight than it should be. And just between you and me, while it didn’t magically make weight loss easier, what it did do was make it possible for me to rise out of depression. (WebMD: Hypothyroidism and Depression – https://www.webmd.com/women/guide/hypothyroidism-and-depression )

That simple decision has branched into nearly every area of my life, and improved it; I have not one single doubt about that. It took a lot longer than overnight for the changes to set in, though; I never would have had the ability or the personal strength to set myself to the same standards I hold, now, when I first started discovering my issues, then. Had I tried to suddenly take on all that I do, I would have failed; not just because I wasn’t yet strong enough, but because I was still hiding from myself.

That’s the cool thing about strength, though; it builds as you use it, once you finally decide to use it. It amplifies and becomes more than you originally imagined. It makes you stronger — harder — a fighter.

I am stronger than I know, even now, and I believe we have that ability — one small step at a time, if necessary.