I do not want to be the woman who lost weight

You have to understand, I was always the fat girl and I did not diet or yo-yo. Then I lost 80 pounds. Thus I became the woman who lost weight. I got lost in the fog of all the accolades that brought.

Then life happened as it always does. My new identity, as small and fit, was too fragile and too unreal to stand. My normal resilience didn’t apply. I’m resilient, yet I neglected to apply my resilience to making healthy choices. I defined fat as my largest size, not as the absence of a healthy BMI. I abandoned my own truth that diet and exercise were necessary to keep me healthy. I was rowing on that river in Egypt like it was my true home.

But I have decided this will not be the end of my story. I am not interested in an identity that includes part-time resilience and denial. As joyous as some moments were in being the woman who lost weight, I need to be the woman who got healthy and showed up fully engaged for her life.

This is my record of how I lost the weight for the last time and got healthy.