My Pants Don't Fit

I have been a yo-yo dieter probably since puberty. It's been a cycle of self-acceptance to self-hatred to self-deprivation to self-acceptance again. At some point, maybe in my late 20s I decided that I wasn't the fattest kid on the playground, so I would stop the vicious cycle and just concentrate on being healthy, maybe working out. In fact the times in my life when I haven't focused on dieting but just eating better and working out more are the times I have lost the most weight. And then 2008 happened . . . it was a tough year full of personal challenges and MUCH weight gain. Some of it I didn't have a lot of control over and rather than start the vicious cycle again, I found excuses to not seriously do something about it. I told myself I was too tired from my 1.5 hour commute to go work out. Or it was too cold outside to take the stairs. Or one meal with french fries wouldn't make THAT much of a difference. I tried briefly doing a crash diet before I went to South Beach this past September. But my heart wasn't in it and I found yet another reason to justify NOT trying to live healthy. I think that time I figured if I could still get a date, I probably wasn't THAT much of an oBEAST (as my friend Kisha calls it). Plus, frankly, the year had taken too much out of me and I just wasn't in the mood for self-deprivation. LIFE had deprived me of enough in 2008 and I just wasn't in the mind state to count calories, weigh myself, or focus on strength-training.

Something happened in the early winter of 2008 though. Actually, it could have been several things -

1. Not fitting into my pants
2. Noticing that I had spent way too much money on drinks and appetizers at Happy Hour
3. Being disgusted by recent pictures (and normally I LOVE picture time)
4. Not fitting into my pants

So, in my list of "31 Things to Do Before I Turn 31," I slipped in "Drop 20 pounds." I will probably need to drop more although to be honest, I don't want to be a slave to the scale, but it's a good start. Including it in that list also represented, for me, a true commitment to doing something about fitting into my pants (I have already accomplished some of my 31 Things). Plus, my homegirl invited me on a trip to Jamaica for her 40th birthday. Even worse than not fitting into my pants would be being mistaken for a beached whale . . .

I anticipate it will be a struggle. I anticipate I will fall off the wagon sometimes. I anticipate I will seriously investigate plastic surgery. But I also anticipate I am actually going to try. Because it is just not a smart fiscal decision to buy a new pair of pants just because I can't fit into any of mine.

Let the journey begin!