Category: commitment

I have started over before.  In fact, my blog is over a year old, and I have bounced right back to my starting weight, and then some.  So me declaring that I am starting over might elicit nothing more than a yawn or an incredulous “Again?”, but I am drawing the line in the sand.  It’s time to either start making real changes in my life, or just accept being fat.  I refuse to do the latter.

Seeing the kids this past weekend reminded me that this is about so much more than looking good in a pair of jeans, or a number on the scale.  For better or worse, kids are always watching the adults in their lives, and more sinks into their brains than we realize.

My oldest stepdaughter said she wants to lose weight.  My heart sank.  She is, by no stretch of any imagination, overweight, and she most certainly does not need to lose weight.  I mentally ran down all the female role models closest to her: a snooty grandmother with a stick wedged permanently up her ass, who emphatically believes that appearance is absolutely everything; an overweight, out-of-shape egg donor who moans constantly about her weight while doing nothing about it, and insults other women instead of lifting a finger to improve herself; and…me.

What about me?  I deliberately don’t mention my weight to the kids.  I know they are already fed enough of that body-and-appearance obsession at their other household, and I refuse to add to it.  But they are not blind.  They can see that I am overweight.  They can see my weight ricochet up and down.  So whether I piss and moan about it or not, I am still not being a healthy, strong role model for them, when they desperately need one.

I need to do better.  I will do better.  So I may have started over a million times before, but this time, I am going to keep in mind that there at least four other, very important reasons to do this besides myself, and those are my four stepkids.