Health, what does it mean?

Health, what does it mean?  Is it a coveted set of unattainable measurements set forth by the fashion industry or some person you don’t even know?  Is it starving to fit in with a crowd you don’t even really like?  Is it telling yourself and the world around you lies so that you can live with what you see in the mirror?  No.

I’m on a continuing journey, one that is leading me, hopefully, to a brighter place.  Since April 2010, I have lost 150 pounds.  I know that number by heart and each time I see a digit drop on the scale I add it to that cache as if it were gold I’m ferreting away.  Yet, when I look in the mirror I don’t see it.  I am quite literally half the person I was, but I still feel like a beached whale, most of the time.  Before you get worked up at that statement I implore you to please read on, I promise it will make sense.

I was gathered round the kitchen table of my sister’s house last night.  Funny how we always seem to gather round the kitchen no matter which house we gather at; it’s as if the kitchen is the heart and soul of the home.  Where all our memories are made and shared and laughter wafts through the house filling it with love.  Last night, we were looking at old photos.  Of course there were some old ones of me.  There was one in particular of me sitting by the pool of my first apartment.  I was in black shorts, a pink tank top, gold sunglasses, my dark brown hair was cut in a short chin length bob and I had it pulled back in a severe half back to keep it from blowing in my eyes.  I’m sure at the time the picture taker thought it was a cute photo, a way to capture a lazy day by the pool with family.  But all I saw looking at that photo were the rolls of fat the protruded under my shirt like a roly-poly and how grotesque I looked like I had been broken and someone just pieced me back together but didn’t take the time to line up the parts.

Everyone in the room did a double take.  I’m used to that these days.  “My Kristmas, I’m so proud of you!  You’ve really come so far.”  And I know I have; but not far enough.  This journey isn’t about cosmetics, it’s about being healthy.  Though if I am being totally honest with myself there is a small part of me that has to admit, yes, it is also about wanting to finally be pretty in my own eyes.

For years I’ve hidden behind the “big is beautiful” motto.  And I do believe that as long as you are HEALTHY, that big can be beautiful, because not everyone is meant to be skinny, I am proof of that.  I could starve myself, but I will never be a size 2.  I would look like an alien with a really large head and a bag of bones for a body.  That’s not beautiful, or healthy. 

I woke up one day and was ready to shed the layers of self loathing that I was hiding behind and my journey began.  You would think that being half the person I was that my journey would find closure, but in many ways it’s only just beginning.  The last thirty pounds I have to go will be the hardest to lose not only physically but mentally as well.  Helping others to understand that this is not about them, and to accept that this is the real me is a challenge all of its own.  And explaining to others that this has all been for me, for my health so that I can finally love myself, so that I don’t have to hide, or lie or creatively stretch the truth to make others believe that I am happy when I am really wallowing in my own self purgatory of fat, ugliness and ill-health.  It was easier to be fat and unhappy.

I know that I am my own worst critic, and I will get comments targeting my abusive self talk, but to those who have never walked in my shoes, never been the target of others hurtful words, never been told to put down the pizza and do something productive, you can’t imagine what negative self talk is.  This is motivation.  I never want to be that girl again.  Everyone else may have loved me when I was 150 pounds bigger, but I hated myself.  I woke up every day wishing the world would end; wishing if it didn’t that I could somehow make myself invisible to the naked eye so that I could hide from the world.  I was embarrassed, afraid, and ashamed.  I was my own judge, prison guard and parole board, and ultimately I was the only one who could set me free.

I wish I could say that it’s been an easy road.  Then again it seems that I wish for a lot of things.  But after years of living behind the lie I’ve built a ferocious desire to hold my head high.  Each day I step a little further into the light.  It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done.  But Eleanor Roosevelt once said “Do one thing every day that scares you.”  She was a smart woman.  In my fear I find my strength.  I can do this.  I am worth it.  I know what health means and I don’t have to be anyones idea of beautiful but my own to achieve it.

Before - 150 pounds ago

After - only 30 pounds left to go!

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