start over – Sweat & Sparkle

I have tiptoed and danced around the topic of weight loss here. I have wanted to write about it, about starting over, about my day-to-day struggles and victories, but, to be honest, fear has stopped me. What if I lay it all on the line, set goals, make plans…and then fail?

For some reason, while out for a walk yesterday, it finally struck me how irrational that is. If I fail but don’t blog about it, I still fail. But if I blog about it, I can write about it, get the feelings and the words out of my head, and anyway, don’t we all fail at times? Is it such a bad thing to publicly share that, hey, guess what: I am human?

So here we go. After losing over 70 pounds last year, I stumbled. Well, I guess it was more than a stumble. It was a flat-out, epic splat. I could blame the anniversary of my mom’s death right after I had lost the weight, and a lot of travel around that time, but let’s get real. All of that is a copout and nothing but excuses. I stopped working out, stopped watching how I ate, and I rapidly gained the weight back.

Not all of it, though. I would love to get back on track before I am right back where I started.

So what’s the plan? I know what I need to do: work out, eat better, drink more water, cut the soda, log my food. Everything that worked for me before. And writing here, because Lord knows I have a long way to go and could use all the support I can get!

I lowered my goal weight by 10 pounds, because when I lost weight last year, I felt like I still wasn’t quite where I would like to be. I may adjust that as I get closer to my goal, but that feels like a million miles away. For now, I just need a target to start moving toward.

So…before I chicken out and don’t post this…let’s get started on day #1, shall we?

I can’t pretend it doesn’t still hurt. It will still hurt for a long, long time, and it will never go away. Losing my mom ripped a chunk out of my heart that simply cannot be replaced or filled. I miss her every day, in a million little moments, realizing I can’t call her, I can’t email her, I can’t plan my next trip to visit her. It’s like a vicious sucker punch that knocks my breath away, and it takes a minute to catch it again, to stagger back to my feet.

But I have grown tired of laying on the floor. Mentally, emotionally, I have been checked out ever since my mom died. Maybe even before that, when I knew what was coming before it happened. I will still mourn, of course, or else I wouldn’t be human. But I feel like I got stuck, dug myself into a pit that I couldn’t get out of and wasn’t even trying.

That wasn’t helping anyone, especially me. A thought flashed into my head this morning: taking care of myself is like honoring the way my mom took care of me. Who knows, maybe she nudged that thought into my thick skull to help me shake some sense into myself. I believe in spirituality and some form of life after physical death, so maybe she is still looking out for me.

I am going to drift back to things that made me happy. I have so many hobbies, so many interests, so many sources of joy that I have abandoned, feeling too overwhelmed to even think about them. Well, it’s time to think about them. It’s time to think about my loved ones. It’s time to think about me. And it’s time to get back to living.