Weighty Issues

Today I will share with you something that is on my current to do list.

Do you ever have one thing that just keeps showing up on your New Year's Resolutions, or your discussions with friends and family (understanding that they usually bring it up and discuss how you NEED to lose weight), or where you begin to have private discussions with your Skinny Latte's and Popeye's Fried Chicken with mashed potatoes smothered in sausage gravy and a large O N I O N ring order.  Whew, salivation is good because it clears the palate...  I am having a food "glow" memory right now while eating dry pretzels instead of the good stuff.  Sigh.

Once upon a time in High School back when Brook Shield's said nothing would come between her and her Calvin Klein Jeans, I, too, wanted to bend over backwards and slip my dainty 150 lb butt into a pair of straight legs that gaped at the back.  I did just that by saving $50 in babysitting money (that was real money back in the day).  Awwww, didn't I look good.  I felt sooooo gooood.

Soon after my stupendous acquisition, we had weigh-ins for the Health Department or some other such agency tracking our height/weight disproportionate statistics (Jenny Craig must have been in on this scheme knowing that if she caught us fat girls early, we would flock to her doors as later consumers.), I just felt that I wasn't skinny enough to wear my Calvin's.

So, now I'm 21, exercising like a Jane Fonda wannabe and quite muscular and, boy, could my lungs push for the burn.  Now, one of my first bonding experiences with mental illness raised its ugly head.  A 50 ish male friend of mine thought there was something going on between he and I because I saw him as a father figure... Short story, I felt that this was all my fault and up to 220 lbs I gently added air and Ben and Jerry's to my previously svelte figure.

So now, forward to 32, I weigh in at 200 lb but I walked at least 3 miles every day (along with a love affair with the small Reese's cups (not the minis - they just don't have the right chocolate/peanut butter proportions - I'm a connoisseur and kids these day just don't know the real thing - so very sad.)

Okay, three months or so, after a breakup with a best girlfriend (no sex involved - just the regular girlfriend stuff when you exercised together to Richard Simmons with Sweating to the Oldies), I got pregnant with my son, who is soon to be 14 in June 2014.

With finding out I was pregnant (how many sticks can a girl pee on before she get the hint?).  The next downward (or upward) spiral of weighty issues was about to strike.

I was in shock with the following responses:  my best girlfriend dumped me, my mom walked out of the room (nothing said) when I told her I was expecting, and a 4-year dysfunctional relationship of booty calls (some love on my part, lots of cheating on his) plummeted downhill with his response of  "I'm sorry."  I was hoping for something more.  At the end of the pregnancy, I was 240 lbs.  Wasn't this all baby, pent-up breast milk, and a little fluid retention for good measure?

After baby, a year breast-feeding, working (my baby went into day care at 5 1/2 weeks), taking another 18 months to finish my Bachelor's degree, and a lot of life experiences that will be discussed in time (I can't tell you everything all at once that has taken many therapists years of crying, sobbing, and chocolate (that is just their part), my working weight, was around 270 lbs.  Yes, I understand that I am past baby weight here and moving into way beyond John Cena and The Rock combined.

While I strive to be completely honest about the ups and downs of emotional eating, weight pain which is much worse than tattoos and child-birth, I wonder will I ever be happy without my "happy" foods.

I dunno, my dry pretzels look pretty good, but only because I just found my stash of M&Ms from last Halloween.

I hope you can appreciate my life experiences because there is always one more bowl of butter pecan ice cream around the corner.

Continue to build a life worth living.

Julie Anne Joyce










.