The Beginning Of The End

This is it. This is the beginning of my journey away from taking up too much space on this planet. I am a happy, loved accomplished, mother of 2 and wife to a fabulous man who still finds me sexy. None of this affects the fact that I am fat. There, I have finally said it. I am fat. I am tired of being the biggest person in the room, store, picture or wherever I happen to be. I am 5'9" and 265LBS. I am the height of an average American male (though I am the shortest person in my entire family) and am built for work. I have an large natural muscle structure (Mom had me help move furniture up and down stairs at 3) and I can see that same large muscle structure in my oldest. I have always been taller and stronger than nearly every women I have encountered. These things I can not change, nor would I. I accept that I will never be a skinny, small, petite, cute or tiny woman. I am OK with this. I am not however fine with the 100+ LBS of fat that I am also carrying. I have always been overweight (the first physical I remember, I was 11years old, 5'8" and 150LBS) and I want to know something else. I have never liked a picture of my self (at least not until years and LBS later). I have great hair, a classic hourglass shape (that has become more and more buried) and have the potential to be really attractive, but 32 years on this planet and I have yet to do something about it. I have a family of naturally thin and lean people from whom I did not learn how to manage my weight. I married a man from a heavy family and we have proceeded to lay on the pounds. Nine months of bed-rest during my oldest child's pregnancy pushed up the scale over 80 LBS and I have never gotten all of it off. I actually loved being pregnant as it was a real excuse for being heavy. I need to take off the excess weight to improve my health, my happiness and my longevity. I need to figure out a healthy way to manage it, to teach my children to manage their own weight. My youngest may never struggle with the issue, but my oldest has my same build and while being strong is an enormous blessing, being overweight is not. I need to shed these pounds and shrink my ass. I no longer want to wonder if I could fit on the roller coaster, if I was wiling to risk the humiliation of trying and failing. I no longer want to stuff myself into airline seats and know that it's not just my long legs that crowd my knees into the next seat, it's also too mush padding on my rear end. I hope that by writing this blog it helps me to be more open, honest and brutal with myself. I hope that it helps me to finally tackle this issue in my life and inspires me to make a positive change. I may dream of taking a trip that is physical and helps me shed all the pounds while doing something my family and I love, or of a job that would do the same. However, I need to tackle this issue where I live and not keep waiting for the solution to come to me. I need to just do it. Thank you for tuning in and I hope that through collaboration or just community, I can not only change my life, but help someone else as well.