THE BEGINNING

I went to the doctor today and I am finally ready to take responsibility for not making my health my top priority. I am 194 pounds with a BMI of 33. I have pre-hypertension and possibly pre-diabetes. I have tried to ignore my not so optimal health, but I have realized that it will not just fix itself. I am going to a pre-diabetes class in August and I am trying to learn to eat using the glycemic index. Of course, the other part is sticking to an exercise regimen.

I know this will take a lot more than just losing weight because I have done this before. I lost almost 100 pounds previously and was featured in a popular magazine for my accomplishment. However, I was so unhappy and so lost. I did not know what to do with the attention that I received and was taken advantage of by a lot of people. I was naive because I believed that losing weight would make everything okay; it did not.

I feel like the ugliness I see on the outside is a manifestation of the ugliness I feel on the inside. I am going to have to learn to accept myself for who I am now because I know that I will not love myself any better when I lose the weight. I managed to get to a size 4 the last time that I lost weight and I still felt that I was fat. It is a mindset that weight cannot transform.
So, here I begin my journey towards health and well-being. I am afraid because I am facing all the damage that I have done to my body by ignoring it for the last three years. It is embarrassing at the doctor's to see where I am now. I am embarrassed and try to hide in my home as much as possible. I have lost contact with all of my old friends because I am ashamed for them to see me with how overweight I am now. I am not sure if it is a bad thing that I have not seen them though, they were not the greatest friends to have. We, as a group, were overly obsessed with our thinness and our looks. I realized that I was a shallow, empty shell of a human being at that time. It has been disheartening to see the old friends that I have run into reject me completely because of my weight. I am often saddened by the realization that my relationships with people were purely superficial.

I have much work to do, but I am ready. I feel like a fraud standing behind layers of bubble wrap, hoping to keep myself from falling into little pieces. It is time that I began to unravel the layers and face the world head on. When the layers have all been removed, I know that I will still be in one piece and will be stronger because of the journey I have chosen to embark on with the conscious awareness that losing weight will not change my world, but accepting myself will.