Tired of black every day!

This is the picture that did it - the one that broke the camel's back! My friend Michelle was doing something sweet when she posted a picture she had taken of me and her boyfriend Brandon. The only thing is that she posted it directly to my facebook wall. Nice... a picture I could not crop before it was out there for the world to see!

While I deleted the picture from my wall, I did not delete it from my profile. Instead, I kept it there - for inspiration!

I have been overweight much of my adult life - anywhere from 20 lbs to as much as 45 lbs at one time. I've lost a significant amount of it a couple of times, only to gain it back again and then some. I'm not even a big eater actually. I simply have bad eating habits. I'm lazy, usually eating one meal a day and then having sweets to make it through the rest of the day. I'm not a good cook and rarely plan what to eat, so it's always just been more convenient for me to get something quickly whenever I'm hungry.

As for exercising, I've been much better over the last couple of years than I had ever been in my life before then. Aside from the times I made the effort to lose weight, I never exercised. But having joined a gym a couple of years ago, I'm proud to say that I go fairly often. And if I take a break from the gym for a bit, I make sure to go for long walks. I don't enjoy exercising, but I do make much more effort these days to do it.

However, exercising alone has not kept me from gaining back some weight over the last couple of years. Of course, I could tell I was gaining - my clothes were getting tighter and whenever I did see a picture of myself, if I couldn't crop it, I wouldn't even dream of putting in online. (Cannot stop those friends from doing it though, ha!) Then eventually, my other solution for staying in denial about my weight became wearing black nearly every day. I know I looked cool, but really, every day? If for some reason I actually did wear a color, I would simply cover it up with a black sweater. Even for the warmer days, I have a black lightweight cardigan with short sleeves.

Now though, at this weight, the black tops don't even help hide anything anymore, as proven by the picture above. At the beginning of this year, I realized that I would need to lose about 35 lbs. These days, with so many people overweight, I may even look fairly average. However, whenever I see someone fit, I think to myself, I could look that way if I want. So why don't I? Finally, I realized I have a choice - to accept being overweight or to do something about it.

Well, I'm 42 years old now, and feel really good about who I am as a person. I've worked hard at becoming happy and living a life that I love. Now though, it's time to do something about how I look and feel about myself physically!

While making my resolutions for this new year, I decided to be intentional about what I would do. I joined Weight Watchers as a way to learn how to eat, started taking yoga classes on a regular basis (because I enjoy it), began learning kettlebell (my sister Tracy offered to teach me) and joined the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training in order to run a half marathon! Yes, a half marathon!! This is whole other story in itself, and so I will explain more in my next post.

For now, I simply wanted to share one of the reasons (I really have about three reasons) for this next journey of mine. My kids, my daughter Dana and son-in-law David are a big part of much of what I'm doing. I'll share more about our "team" later as well. In the meantime, I'm already feeling much better (lost 5.2 lbs in three weeks), very optimistic about my year, and grateful to already be having those mornings when I'm getting dressed and considering wearing something other than black... well, considering!!

p.s. There's no guarantee that I won't gain back what I'm working on losing right now, but today is all that matters. Whenever I'm working on becoming a better me, I feel good. So thankfully, I am feeling great today!