Weight Gain/Loss: A Journey and an Introduction

(My Credentials:  Years of Firsthand Experience)

        If I taught my students anything, it is that if you keep writing long enough, you will get to a real story, an authentic tale, a truth so sharp it has to be told.

        As I sat down today with my laptop, five months into my second year of blogging, I realized today is the day.

        Why?  Because there is nothing anyone can think or say about this topic , or even this post, that I have not thought or said myself.

        I am in this wonderful stage of life that may have me writing a blog post on growing tomatoes or painting furniture one day and the very next day I may decide to write a post on an issue that my heart tells me plagues us all, in one form or another.

        It has different faces.

        It is socially acceptable.

Contrary to what some may think, it is not an issue of morality or character.

   It is a contradiction in terms. 

Some people may see it as a harmless, periodic overeating experience that everyone enjoys.

It is love and nurturing and memories and tradition and cookbooks and past happiness.

Others may feel it manifested in the need to over control that urge, socially or otherwise.

For some, it fuels our need to do more, be more, fix more.

It keeps the smile tilted and the anger/fear in check.

In still others it may be an insecurity that can’t be appeased- a feeling about fitting.

Most people may choose to not address this at all. It is a non-issue.

        One last caveat.

        There are no universal answers here, no perfect food plans, no magic, no last chapter in the diet book, no magazine article read at the check out counter,no doctor’s admonishment, no aha moment.

        This is a cautionary tale.

        Take what you like and leave the rest. 

My blog profile picture was taken two years ago, the night of my retirement party, that my daughters and husband hosted.

Unknowingly, I was at the end of a 3 year period of substantial, sustained weight loss.

I didn’t know that chapter of my life was going to change that very next day.

I didn’t know I would not have the willingness to do what I had done anymore.

All I knew that night was I was being set free from a schedule, from bells ringing, from a wonderful world that was in my soul.

Who would I be? What would I do?

I did not know the slippery slope I was on.

        The plan I followed for three years prior to that night began as a last ditch effort to once and for all address the craziness of being off or on a plan to lose weight, progressively losing that battle.

        That plan worked if I worked it.  In fact, I believe God carried me.

God did for me what I couldn’t do for myself.

By now, many people may have stopped reading.

I understand that.

So now after two years of highly overrated  yet glorious freedom , I am seeking answers.

I am not sure where God leads you when he has given you the answer once.

Is it like my daughters sometimes teasingly say?

“Mother, I thought we discussed that.”

I hope not.