I am 52 years old. I weigh 240 pounds. Somehow the outside doesn't match what I feel in my brain. I've avoided looking into mirrors, because the image reflected back to me doesn't feel like me. I don't own many photos of myself. I hate photos of me. I always felt the photo was taken at a bad angle. Okay, so the camera wasn't a good judge. The mirror wasn't a good judge. How about the scale? Really 240?
I remember feeling fat when I was 140. That was when I enter the Army. It seems that I was always on a diet. I drank lots and lots of diet soft drinks to fill my stomach and to silence the craving for food. My weight crept up to 160, but I still managed to have a shapely figure after having my children.
College came, I was raising two children on my own, carrying a full load of credits and working part time at minimum wage in between classes. After a long day, I wanted hot food prepared for me and delivered directly to me at my door, no mattered what I looked like. I could come home and put on PJ's, nobody would see me. So Dominos Pizza became a staple for dinner. I packed on the pounds while in college. Although my clothes were getting tighter, I never realized how big I got until the day I weighed myself and saw the scale hit 200. 200! Unbelievable. I went on the Jenny Craig diet and lost 60 pounds. Then I gained it back when I went off the diet. I went on the Gloria Marshall diet and repeated the pattern.
Most of my children's life, I sent them off to play - while I stayed behind. I never was comfortable in my skin. I always thought I would become active after I got fit. It didn't feel right to have a fat person doing things in public. No, I should lose my weight in the privacy of my house and come out when I was looking better.
It went like that in my 20's, 30's, 40's. I keep believing I will start tomorrow. I just want one more day of eating or drinking what I will miss once I start my new diet. Once I started that diet, I would be perfect. Then I would drink 32 ounces of Diet Coke and realize it really doesn't taste that good. Why did I ruin today's possible start by drinking that?
My husband bought us an inflatable kayak. The weight capacity is 250 pounds. I knew the time was now to begin to enjoy it, or else I may never get to use it. We went out to Rockport State Park. I could get inside of it. It felt amazing to be floating on top of the lake as the waves created from motor boats pushed the kayak up and down. I didn't feel confident enough to maneuver it where I wanted to go. I was afraid that it might begin to leak. I stayed close to the shoreline. But I got a bit of a taste of what it was like to be participating instead of watching others enjoy the lake.
A new first for me. I wore my bathing suit for the entire time we were at the lake. I didn't hide my fat thighs under the fabric of my clothes. Whether other people judged my whiter than paper thighs or not, for the first time I wasn't giving it any thought. The breeze felt good against my skin.
One of the downsides of our kayaking adventure was that I had a difficult time getting out of the kayak. I just was unable to rise up from a sitting position inside of the kayak while balacing the kayak on the water. My husband had to lift me out of it.
