Four Years or a Lifetime?

These pictures show where I was in early spring, 2003. The one with the guy was at a Karan Casey concert. I thought I was just incredibly svelte. The other is at a wedding for one of Luke's friends in February of that year. Seeing that picture of myself in that PANK suit, brings back a flood of agonizing memories.

I had bought the suit a couple months earlier, and had it cleaned. I hadn't worn it in a couple months, and took it with us to Atlanta for this BIG fancy wedding. We got to the hotel just in time to shower and primp and dress before heading to the event.

When I put my almost new suit on, it wouldn't zip all the way up in the back, and I had to use safety pins to keep the top from popping open. I was devastated, and cried. The reception that evening (where this picture was taken) was at one of the ritziest Country Clubs in the metro Atlanta area in Buckhead. I sat and never got up, for fear the safety pins would pop open.

It was, without question, the lowest point in my life in years.

But I put it out of my mind until the woman you see on the right -- Claire Smith - sent me this photo a couple months later, in early April 2003.

And right then and there, I made a promise to myself that I would either lose the weight, or manage somehow never again to sit through a miserable evening because my clothes didn't fit.

On April 30, 2003, I joined Weight Watchers Online, and I was never the same again.

I started that day at 155 pounds, having lost probably 8 - 10 on my own by starving myself, which I knew I couldn't sustain.

I set 135 for my first goal - but when I got close, I switched it to 125. As I neared that goal the holidays were upon us, and I knew if I weren't in a losing frame of mind I'd be careless, so I reset it to 120. I reached that goal early in February 2004, and continued to lose for months afterward in modest amounts.

I got down as far as 110.5 pounds (September 23, 2006), but never intended to stay there, so now I'm at 115 - 117 most days and it feels right.

Let me make this clear: being at a comfortable weight for myself hasn't solved all the problems in the world. It hasn't made my life amazingly wonderful, because my weight didn't have any impact on how well and much I was loved. But it has done this - it has, I am sure, added some years to my life, and it has given me a renewed sense of vitality as I traverse through my "middle years."

I look forward to being a grandmother who can actually do things with her grandbabies one day, and not sit idly by, mumbling about how my knees have given out, or my hips are too sore.

I enjoy feeling like my husband can be proud not just of the person I am (which I am certain he is, regardless of my weight), but also of how I look. (He doesn't say it much, but I know he is happier that I don't look like a dowdy middle-aged mom anymore unless I choose to look that way.)

I enjoy putting on clothes and makeup and fixing my hair and catching sight of myself and thinking, "WOW -- not too bad for a former Chubby who's nearing 50."

But mostly? I'm just proud of myself for doing this, and doing it right.

And I'm also grateful for the other gifts is has given me in terms of friendships that have made my life fuller and wider and deeper, and for what those friendships have meant to me in how I have broadened my horizons. I've traveled to places I'd never have dreamed of going, I've comforted and been comforted, amused and been amused, by friends who were all out there waiting to meet one another, and count myself richly blessed by their presence in my life.

I scarcely remember how that woman - who was warm, and loved, and smart, and gutsy -- felt when she saw herself every day. I remember only a sense of sadness from time to time, and occasionally some anger that she'd allowed herself to do this.

But I have taken the bits of her that were never lost -- the joyful parts, the lover of life bits, the cockeyed optimist parts, the best parts of one who loves deeply - and rolled her into a woman whose knees no longer ache, whose hips don't bother her, and who faces a future in good health to spend with future generations.

It was a gift I gave myself, and which I continue to give myself with every good choice I make, and those choices mean what I eat and the people with whom I invest my truest self.

I'm proud of myself, and I'm deeply grateful.