Me = A Work in Progress

In my life, however short it might be in the grand scheme of things, I’ve been a lot of things. A daughter, a sister, a friend, a blonde, and a million other things that don’t mean anything unless you actually know me. I will say that I have always been two things in particular. Shy is the first one. I’ve gotten a little bit better at that the last couple years, but I’m still shy to a fault. That’s why I’m a little surprised to find myself about to divulge this second thing, but here goes: I’m fat. Okay, so it’s not as well-kept a secret as I’d like to think, but I don’t usually talk about it, so it qualifies as a secret in my book.

I’ve been fat since about the third grade, but my mom says I was always “sturdy” or “solid.” I don’t know what being sturdy or solid has to do with being fat. It seems to me that fat is bad and sturdy isn’t bad—sturdy is something I couldn’t help being. I can help being fat. Being solid is who I am, being fat is just something I am. So you can imagine how it confuses me when I say “I wasn’t fat in kindergarten” and my mom comes back with “but you’ve always been sturdy.” Is there a right or wrong way to interpret that? My interpretation—or the interpretation I choose to make—is that she’s telling me something to the effect of “you were born with child-bearing hips,” in which case, it’s a compliment as far as I’m concerned. I want hips that will bear children. Sturdy children. Children that will be able to bear more sturdy children.

Maybe opening with a “my mom said…” story was a bad move. I hope that that story isn’t taken the wrong way. I’m not one of those people that blame their parents for all their problems—well, at least not this problem. I made me fat. When my parents told me to eat more vegetables and less mashed potatoes, I was the one who threw a fit until they gave me what I wanted. I was the one that got out of bed in the middle of the night to eat cereal or potato chips or pizza or anything that I shouldn’t have been eating at two o’clock in the morning. I made my own decisions about food and I’m more than willing to admit responsibility for what happened as a result of those decisions.

I’m thinking about all of this now because I recently—as of January 2nd—changed my lifestyle. I say “changed my lifestyle” because it was recommended to me that I not call this change a “diet.” A diet is temporary. What I’m doing is not, will not, be temporary. What I’m doing is hard, but it gets easier every day. What I’m doing makes me feel like I’m gaining control over my life, pound by pound—in fact, twenty so far. Every time I make a conscious decision about what to put into my body and whether to walk or drive somewhere, I get to decide my future.

I have always been fat, but I’ve made the decision that I won’t always be fat…but I will always be sturdy—just so everyone knows. The secret is out.