Realizations

 Bottom Line up front: It was a bear of a day.  Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong and I spent much of my day, in my car, trying to fix stuff.  Sigh.  I thought a few times, "Fuck it, I'll go eat something b/c this sucks".  I didn't do that.  But I also didn't eat as much for lunch so instead of not listening to my body and trying to power through an hour long Jazzercise class, light headed and under-fueled, I opted for a 20 minute walk.  And just listened to the woods around me.  It was wonderful.

And now for the Whys.  Why I am doing the Lean Eating Program. 

1. Because I want to be smaller, fitter, stronger.

2. Because I'll feel better.

3. Because I'll be confident in myself when I'm smaller, fitter, stronger.

4. Because I've felt like a fraud being big and confident.

5. Because if my outsides match my insides, I feel like I can be who I'm supposed to be.

Hard one for me this morning b/c honestly, my answers were superficial. And I had to ask myself, "are you really doing this because of the size of your a$$?". And I was...and then I waited and more came to me. I have felt that I am not the person I'm supposed to be at this weight. This weight that I'm carrying belongs to someone else.

Hang on..it's gonna get deep: A therapist friend told me once that she believed we carry things that aren't always ours to carry. And I thought about it and came up with this:

• My parents weren't ready for me. It was their first pregnancy and I was born a month early. The crib/nursery weren't even set up. I carry weight in their anxiety of my early arrival and their inability to even accept that a little one could be born prematurely.
• I was a lovely child but wild as the day is long and had many many questions. And many times I was told to be quiet and to stop asking questions. I carry my mother's inability to parent differently.

And so on and so on. I'm not saying that my parents are to blame for the fact that I'm 100 # overweight. I'm saying that I internalized a lot of the anxiety and fear and depression that my parents had and have often thought my weight was a shield. Because even though I cuss like a sailor and talk a bunch of smack, I'm still as tenderhearted as they come and just want to be accepted for who I am. And the excess weight is like a constant interference...like static on a AM station..that prevents me from getting there.