Recently I have lost between 20 and 25 pounds… I seem to have 3 pounds that I just keep going up and down depending on the day. Back in January if you had told me that it wouldn’t have made that big of a difference in my life I would probably have told you that you were crazy… but it turns out…. it really hasn’t. Do my clothes fit better? Yes they do. Do I like seeing the numbers go down and having a sense of accomplishment? Sure of course I do… who wouldn’t. Did it change my life…. no not really. If anything it has forced me to look at my life in a whole new way. Why? Because I thought it would make me happy, and it turns out I was wrong.

Losing weight and the lack of happiness that it has brought me has forced me to take a good hard look at my life, both current and past, and figure out what the root of my problem is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy. I have a great husband, 3 great kids. I live in a nice town.  I am happy about the many different areas of my life, but I could not honestly say that I’ve been happy with myself. I assumed it was because I needed to lose weight… and where did that idea ever come from to begin with? I did… there is no doubt about that. But why is that were I turned to first? Why is that were so many of us turn first? We make resolutions to lose weight, get in shape, to perfect ourselves… our outsides. Why don’t we instead turn to our insides? Because it we are really being honest with ourselves we would see that our insides are what shaped our outsides, and unless we address what’s really eating us, any attempt we make at fixing the outsides will be temporary at best, only leading us to feel worse on the inside yet again.

So what did I discover about myself? At this point it’s almost what didn’t I discover. When you pull away the vanity, the things you think matter, it is absolutely amazing what you realize doesn’t matter. The most surprising thing I realized about myself, was that deep down, I didn’t really want to do this. I can’t tell you that it was because I loved myself just as I was (I didn’t) or that I was comfortable in my own skin ( I wasn’t) , but what I can tell you is that I found a sort of comfort in it. It was something I could more or less control, and it was something that kept me safe from the monsters under my bed.  The past hurts and shame that have followed me around for the better half of my life.

I didn’t get here on purpose. Towards the end of high school I was up and down a little weight, nothing abnormal. I really put on the weight between my son being a year and a half old and two. I didn’t do it by partying or eating too much (although I’m sure at times my diet could have been much better, I was a young mom, worked full time and was finishing my degree). But once I landed here, once the shock and horror wore off, I found that it was easy.  It solved a lot of problems that I had experienced when I was younger. Unwanted attention vanished, and I was free. Sure I felt uncomfortable in my jeans and avoided running into anyone I knew our of embarrassment, but even then, avoiding people felt better too. I was able to live my life more or less without worry. I would pretend I didn’t like it, and I didn’t to a point. But did I try to change it? No not really. I would diet a day or two here and there. I would join the gym, then waste my money by never showing up. I told myself it was for noble reasons, I was a busy mom, I didn’t have time, I was busy making other things a priority. The awful thing is I never realized I was happier for it. This is a looking back kind of thing. I can almost draw a parallel line between my life feeling more secure and my weight gain. Coincidence? Maybe, but after addressing the feelings that have come with weight loss I can’t say for sure it was.

Fast forward to now. I am at my lowest weight in recent memory. I am also at my lowest weight I have achieved myself… the last time I lost a lot of weight was when I was pregnant with my now almost 4 year old daughter and that was a combination of horrible lasted my whole pregnancy morning sickness, and getting diagnosed with gestational diabetes so being insanely aware of what I was putting in my mouth. I have had to come face to face with my feelings and insecurities around weight loss. It has also made me come face to face with the unhealthy relationship I developed over the years with food. I was so excited the first week or so after deciding to lose weight because the scale started going down. But I struggled to keep the motivation. This is a little embarrassing to admit but the only reason I didn’t stop is I literally placed money on myself to loss weight. I can’t stand to lose money, especially as a frugal person so I continued to move forward. I realized that 2 and a half weeks is kind of my end point for most things. I can do any diet, and plan for about that time… and then I give up. I can’t tell you why that number seems to be the case , but it is. Every month on the 1st you weigh in…. after I weigh in a go off my diet for about a week… then I’m motivated for 2 or so weeks… and then I just want it to be over. It’s the vicious cycle I’ve been in since January. Maybe it wouldn’t be this way, if the weight loss had really been the key to my self happiness. But it wasn’t.

Turns out the key to my self happiness is evicting the monsters. The flip side is, to evict them, to kick them out and keep them out, you have to face them. I have found that has been harder, and at times more painful than just ignoring the fact that they were there.  As I have shed what has been my protective layer, coming face to face with my monsters has been a very difficult process, but one that I am hopeful I will come out on the other side stronger and more confident for. In the past as soon as I started to take off my protection, I was quickly feel like I was in danger and layer it back on. This time has been different, I have had to face it, feel all the uncomfortable feelings I’ve avoided for years, and decide that it’s ok, that I’m ok. What choice did I have? I either completed this challenge, or admitted defeat. It was always and still is an option, but I finally bet that I could do it, and wanted to keep that promise to myself.

I am a little disappointed by this whole process, and a little embarrassed by how simple I thought making myself feel happy would be.  I am still struggling to fully understand it. I believe that what’s on the inside really is what matters, but feeling good on the outside makes your insides feel good. But is seems that weight loss is just a band-aid for the bigger wounds, the ones that really need to be address if happiness is going to occur. Healing as it turns out is the key to happiness, at least for me. I am not magically healed from my past hurts and insecurities. This whole process has forced me to break myself down in order to build myself back up. I am still building. I hope and pray that this whole process will make me be a better wife, and a better mother. I hope it helps me to help my children , especially my daughter, to avoid the same problems I have had by being equipped with the knowledge that I have now. I hope that I continue to get closer and closer, and eventually land in a place where I can look at the issues that got me here, and no longer care, to no longer feel the effects of them. I’m close, I’m so close I can feel it.

I feel like I could go on and on, but I won’t, because there really is no more that I want to say. I will end this with a quote from one of my favorite songs of all time by Pink. The song is Glitter in the Air.

“Have you ever looked fear in the face and said I just don’t care….”

Someday the answer will be yes.