When Bigger Is Actually Better in the Weight Loss Journey

"I once caught a fish wish THIS big!"

 

 

 

 

Big? 

What's a word like "big" doing in a blog about weight loss?

Perhaps it's the pollen that's gotten to me, or the fact that I haven't had a good night's sleep since the Stone Age but yes, "big" does belong in the world of weight loss blogs.  And contrary to what every man you've ever met has ever told you:  size does matter.

This won't be another rant about how my thighs are so big that my ankles haven't said hello to each other since I was 13.  It won't be another snarky joke (altho I do love me some snarky jokes!) about someone telling me they "like the swing in my backyard" or asking if I'd "like some fries with that shake".  I'm not talking about the physical world anymore.  I'm talking about the thing we lost sight of that's encouraging and nurturing our toxic relationship with food.  I'm talking about the dreams we have - or had - for ourselves.

I don't know about the rest of you but I always thought I'd be living a bigger life than I currently am.  Ask any little kid you know what they want to be when they grow up and I'll bet you not a single one of them replies, "Fifty pounds overweight with a bitchin', tricked-out CPAP machine!"  Yeah, me neither - and yet, here I am.

When you (and by "you", I really mean "me" - but allow me this poetic license just this once) lose sight of the things that used to make you happy and excited to get up in the morning, you start filling the hole with ill-advised coping skills - eating, drinking, drugs - you get the picture.  I was never fat when I was happy, but sadly the reverse was just as true.  Life sure can drop a house on you and keep you pinned down until your plans for yourself get diminished to the size of putting one foot in front of the other to just get through the day.  I totally get this because it's happened to me for like the past dozen years.  I had to get off my life path and devote all my energy to saving my son.  And then my life became all about him and what he needed with no guarantee that there would ever be a successful outcome.  Plenty of "professionals" doubted there would ever be one.  And it practically killed me.  But that's what you do when you're a parent - kids in the lifeboat first, everything  and everyone else second.  Happily, he's on pretty solid ground these days but he's still only 17.  "Stuff" is surely bound to come up - but I think pray the worst is behind us.

During that time I kept putting on more and more weight, despite the urgent warnings of what it was doing to my health.  But hell, I knew that - I mean, I do have a mirror and a closet full of clothes that don't fit, so yeah, I get that I'm fat.  Eating was my default setting whenever the stuff hit the fan.  But now that less stuff is hitting the fan and it appears I can get on with my life again, I realize that in that 12 year shit storm, I lost track of the life I wanted to have.  At first I put all my dreams away for later and then practically buried them thinking there would never be a "later" when I could look up to them again. 

But now I think I can - and it's time to think BIG, baby!!  I want to live a life as big as my dreams!  I want to play more tennis and learn to play golf.  I want to be a normal sized person again.  I want to travel.  I want to take a serious stab at writing (and actually have 3/4 of a women's fiction novel written).  Then I want to get an agent and sell a million copies and go on the speaking circuit and make enough dough to pay for whatever health care is going to cost in 20 years.  Yeah - me and a million other writers, right?  Why me?  Hey - why NOT me?!  Think BIG!  Live BIG!  You only get to do it once - but if you do it right, as someone much smarter than me observed, once is enough.