Life 'on hold' for 15 years

In Khaliah Ali's book (see earlier post), she talks about how she sometimes felt her life was on hold while she was overweight. That really struck home for me. For about fifteen years there have been numerous occasions when I have promised myself that I would do x, or y, "when I lose weight". It was as though losing weight was an inevitability - something that was just around the corner - it was just a matter of actually getting off the starting blocks. Of course, that corner was a long one that went on forever. The reality was that, that time, "when I lose weight" just never came. I think that perhaps the eventual realisation that it was never going to come was what finally convinced me to opt for gastric surgery.

I had a wardrobe full of clothes that I was going to wear "when I lost weight". Clothes that wouldn't even fit when I bought them, but that I was convinced I would be able to wear in a week or two, or a month or three! There have been so many things that I wanted to do too, "when I lost weight". I wanted to walk The Pennine Way, there were mountains I wanted to climb, I wanted to take up running again and get serious about playing badminton. I wanted to go walking with others and be able to keep up and I wanted NOT to hold my husband back when we went for walks together. I have been doing this for years, constantly asking him to slow down because I was so out of breath and unable to keep up the pace. Now he is getting older (he's quite a bit older than me) and I fear I have robbed him of those years together when we could have done more adventurous things but couldn't because of my lack of fitness.

It's a weird feeling when part of your brain lives in reality and part of it lives in some fantasy land. The reality-conscious brain knew I wasn't going to lose weight (i.e. permanently) and got totally and utterly depressed. The fantasy-land brain was always hopeful, perhaps even in denial, and did all the silly stuff of buying smaller clothes that wouldn't fit etc. There was even a sense of it being OK when I ate tonnes of chocolate - because I would lose the weight tomorrow. Fat chance.

I guess being a bandit means that I am no longer in denial - and that's a step forward I suppose. I am still very hopeful that I will lose all the weight that I want to and eventually reach my target weight. I am gradually becoming accustomed to the idea that I won't necessarily like the way my body looks when I get there but I will at least have no excuse for not getting fit and staying healthy any more. I am hopeful, at last, that I no longer have to live in that fantasy-land, that my age-old fantasy might actually become reality after all. I have lost 5.5 stones (78 pounds) but stilll have about 4 stones (56 pounds) to go. My target is still such a long way off but I am no longer going to live for tomorrow - I'm living for today.