I think I can see the finish line….almost.

The music I normally listen to does not lend itself to a good workout.  I realized that pretty early on.  I mean, you can say what you like about James Taylor (the man is a genius, after all) but he just doesn’t cut it in terms of getting me on the move.

And so I’ve realized that my workout music is completely out of character for me.  Or at least, the songs that really keep me going are.  I mean, I like to think of myself as a pretty well-rounded person, musically speaking.  There’s not a whole lot of music that I’ll dismiss completely.  But before I started working out…well, you wouldn’t have found Eminem on my iPod.  I think that the guy’s a misogynistic asshole, so I don’t make a habit of listening to his stuff.  It’s basically the same shit over and over again.  There’s only so many times you can hear a guy rap about murdering his ex-wife before it gets old, you know?

….But damn me if he doesn’t make some pretty awesome workout music.  I’m sure that wasn’t his goal, but he kind of succeeded, anyway.  I think it mostly has to do with the fact that he always sounds so pissed off, you know? Like he’s gritting his teeth through the whole song.  Now, there’s still some of his stuff that I wouldn’t listen to if you paid me, but several of his songs have found their way onto my workout playlist.  My new favourite has to be “Till I Collapse.”

In other news: big loss this week! Four pounds.  I could barely believe it when I saw the number on the scale.  That makes for a total of 58.2 lost so far.  Only 20.4 to go until I reach goal.  I had a “deadline” set for myself; I wanted to reach goal by my birthday, May 22; but I decided to extend that a little bit, because I know I’ll only disappoint myself if I don’t make it.  So now, I’ve decided that my new “deadline” will be the first day of summer, June 21.  That gives me nearly another month, and I’ve calculated that in order to lose the 20 pounds I have left by then, I’ll need to lose an average of 1.7 pounds weekly.  Obviously I don’t expect to lose that much every single week, but I think I should be able to get there by then.  If not, I know I’ll be pretty damn close.

20 pounds to go.  Holy shit.  I never thought I’d get even this close.

All the little things

Even though I’ve lost 54 pounds in the past year, every now and again I feel discouraged.  Mostly when I have a week when I don’t lose anything at all.  It’s tough to stay motivated sometimes when you don’t see results at the scale.  Even though the logical part of my brain knows that I can’t lose every week and that there are normal fluctuations that will cause me to maintain — and, yes, even gain — some weeks, there’s a small part of my brain that whines every time I have a no-loss week.

It’s those times when I try to keep in mind all the little things that, even though they seem so insignificant, have really made up the bulk of my “whoa!” moments.  It’s these little things that keep me going during bad days/weeks.

For example: I’m thirty-one years old and, until six months ago, I couldn’t cross my legs.  At all.  I would try, but I could never do it.  Now? I can do it easily and comfortably.  Of course, every time I do it I hear my grandmother’s voice in my head: “DON’T CROSS YOUR LEGS, IT’S BAD FOR YOUR CIRCULATION!”, but that’s beside the point.  At least I’m *able* to do it now!

Also: I’ve gone through my entire life not being able to reach my hands up behind my back to undo my bra.  Seriously.  I could never get my hands up far enough.  I damn well can now!

I can stand with my legs together.  All the way down.  Again — I could never do that before.  Ever.

And as for the biggest “holy shit” moment, there’s a funny story to go along with it.  About three months ago, I was out for a walk.  And after a bit, I started to feel weird.  Like, as I was walking, I was thinking, “Something doesn’t feel right.”  So I stopped and took inventory of everything.  No pain, no dizziness, nothing out of the ordinary — so I continued walking.  But something still didn’t feel….right.  I stopped again.  Still no pain or anything, so what the hell was the issue?  I started walking again, and about ten minutes later it struck me like a bolt of lightning.

My thighs weren’t rubbing together.  At all.  Not even a little.  As a matter of fact…they weren’t even touching.

I thought I was going to pass out right there on the sidewalk.  I mean, honestly.  I used to hate summer (and wearing shorts) because not only did shorts look horrendous on me, but my thighs rubbed together so much that they ended up looking like those big red Swedish fish.  I would chafe, they would rub together so badly.  And I went from that to having them not touch at all?

No wonder I felt like something was totally wrong.

There are other things, too.  Like, I can feel my collarbones.  Can’t see them yet, but I can definitely feel them.  And I can feel bones in places where before, there was only fat.  And my calves aren’t fat anymore; there’s actual, visible muscle there now.

So these are the things that keep me going when I’m having a slow loss period.  I may not be where I want to be yet, but it’s obvious from all the little things that I’m getting there.

MYOB

I think there needs to be a new movement.

There’s already the “fat acceptance” movement, and the “health at any size” movement, both of which champion the idea that not everyone has to be at their “ideal” weight to be healthy.  Both great movements, and I hope more and more people embrace them as time goes on.

But I definitely think there needs to be a new movement, and I’m tempted to start it myself.  I’ll call it the “mind your own fucking business when it comes to anyone’s weight but your own” movement.

….The official name may need some work.

Seriously, though.  It boggles me just how often people seem to think that other peoples’ weight is any of their business.  I started to notice it not long after I started losing weight — people not only have this ridiculously distorted notion of how much I weigh, but they also feel free to share bits of “wisdom” like: “You don’t need to lose any more weight!” “You’d better stop, you’ll fade away if you lose any more!” and my personal favourite, “You must spend hours at the gym, I don’t have the time for that.”  (With that last one, there’s just no way to win, because if I lie and say I do spend hours at the gym, people think I’m obsessed, but if I tell the truth and say I don’t go to the gym at all, they think I’m starving myself instead.)

What I’d really like to ask all of these people is: “Why is my weight, or how I lost it, any of your business?” Because it’s really not.  I don’t particularly care if these people are perfect strangers, casual acquaintances, close friends, or even my own family.  It’s none of their business. When it comes to the weight I’ve lost, if people want to acknowledge it, fine.  There are ways to do that, though, without trying to stick their noses into what is essentially my business and my business only.  I’m not starving myself, I’m not killing myself at the gym (hell, if I were doing either of those things, I’d probably have lost a hell of a lot more than 52 pounds by now.) I’m doing this my way, and everyone needs to shut the hell up with their “helpful” suggestions and concern.  If I want suggestions, I’ll damn well ask, and I wouldn’t just ask anyone, so to have people assume that their feedback is wanted or needed drives me absolutely up the damn wall.

It’s sort of amazing to me that, when I was fat (and yes, that is the word I choose to use; I don’t use “overweight” because, hell, I’m still overweight, but I’m not fat anymore) people actually tended to keep their opinions to themselves more than they do now.  I can’t ever remember a time, for example, when people ever expressed concern over my weight and the harm it might be causing me when I was barely 5 feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds.  So where was the concern then, when I was at risk for high blood pressure and strokes and type II diabetes and heart disease? Where was the concern when I could barely walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded? Where was the concern when I couldn’t go into a store and buy clothes that I felt good in, rather than just whatever happened to fit? Where were all those backseat physicians then, and why did they only come out of the damn woodwork when I started making changes for the better, and those changes became apparent?!

When other fat people talk about how being fat is so difficult for them, I can sympathize to a certain degree.  You can’t do all the things you might want to do, physically speaking.  You can’t buy the clothes that you might want to buy, because half the time they don’t fit, or even if they do, they can be ridiculously overpriced.  And yes, no doubt fat people are discriminated against and ostracized.  But for me, personally? I’ve had more negative comments since I got smaller than I ever did when I was fat — and this time, the negative comments came from people who, really, should know better.  When I was fat, most of the negative comments came from people whose opinions I didn’t give a shit about, anyhow.  But now, the bullshit is coming from people who, at least for the most part, are at least somewhat close to me.  They may never mean for the comments to be negative, but to my mind they are, because the time when I needed them to be concerned about my weight was fifty pounds ago.  Not now.

So.  Let the “mind your own damn business” movement begin! (Even if it is only in my dreams.)

When the going gets tough…then what?

It’s February 11, 2012.  As of today, I have been officially losing weight for a year, a week, and nine days.  Up to this point, I’ve lost 52.4 pounds.  Which, I suppose, is a pretty large amount of weight; it’s certainly more than I’ve ever lost before.

I still have 26 pounds to lose to get to goal.  And I have to admit…at this point, it’s getting more and more difficult.  I guess I knew this point was coming, when I’d already lost *most* of the weight I wanted to lose, and things started getting tougher.  I guess I’ve just never actually gotten to this stage before, so I didn’t realize just how difficult it was going to be.

I’ve done some calculations (calculations that, I suppose, I probably should have done way before now, but whatever) and I’ve figured out that my BMR (basal metabolic rate) is 1554,5 calories.  Your BMR is, in a nutshell, the amount of energy or calories you burn per day at rest.  So basically, I burn off 1,554 calories a day by doing no exercise.  Based on my BMR, then, my daily calorie needs are calculated at 2,245 calories.  So, in order to lose one pound of body fat in a week, I would need to take in 500 calories below that (in other words, 1,745 calories.)

1,750 calories is actually a lot of food.  Or, it could be, depending on what you actually eat in a day.  I suppose if you were eating McDonalds every day you could rack up 1,750 calories in one meal.  But I don’t eat that stuff very often, so I could easily manage to survive on 1,750 calories a day.

So why is it so damn difficult to lose the last 26 pounds, then?

I’m still exercising.  I still get out and walk 90-120 minutes five or six days a week.  But I guess maybe that’s not enough anymore? I’m not sure.  I think (as much as I really hate this idea) I’m going to have to start exercising at the gym.  I’ve noticed, on the few occasions that I did actually go, that I can burn over 200 calories in 20 minutes on the treadmill, and 400 in that amount of time on the elliptical.  I guess, even though I do manage to walk pretty fast outside, that I can just go faster on the machines (I guess that would be because I don’t have ice and snow to deal with on the machines at the gym.)

If I could lose even 2 pounds a week (which falls into the healthy weight loss range) I could get this 26 pounds off by my birthday (which would be fantastic.)  I suppose I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I didn’t lose it by then, but I won’t lie — it would be awesome to have it gone by then.

It’s hard at this point not to feel discouraged, because this is getting to be so tough.  But I won’t give up.  As someone said to me the other day: “If you were climbing a flight of really steep stairs, and you tripped and stumbled three quarters of the way to the top, would you turn around and throw yourself down to the bottom of the stairs?”

So I won’t throw myself down the stairs.  I’ll start from right where I am.  And hopefully it won’t take me another year to get to the top.

Confessions of a (former?) fat girl

When I was in elementary school (and junior high, and high school) I went through some pretty vicious bullying.  It was all pretty awful, but I think the hardest period was elementary school, when the popular girls made me their target.  You’ve seen the movie Mean Girls, I bet? Well, yeah.  That.  Only I wasn’t Lindsay Lohan.  Of course, my bullies weren’t Rachel McAdam or Lacey Chabert, either, but that’s hardly the point, right?

Anyway.  Unfortunately, the ringleader of my “mean girls” was my cousin.  I’ll call her “Kelly” (I suppose I could use her real name, but there’s really no point, and even though she’ll most likely never come across this, I’d rather try and protect her anonymity, regardless of what she did.)  Anyway, she was, of course, one of the popular girls.  And she was the “pretty one” in the family, which only made things worse.  Worst of all?  She was skinny, dammit.

I won’t bore you with the details of what went on — I would imagine that most of the people reading this are female and no doubt know of the kinds of psychological bullshit pre-adolescent girls can put each other through — but suffice it to say that she was, pretty much, a little bitch.  As we got older (well, actually, after fifth grade, for some reason) the bullying stopped, at least on the girls’ part, and I mostly forgot about the torture she put me through.

I don’t see her much these days, even though we still live in the same town (and, in fact, work for the same organization, although in different branches.)  I did see her last week, though, at my uncle’s funeral, for the first time in about a year.

She’s overweight.  By quite a bit.

And I’d be lying, you know, if I said that part of me didn’t do a little internal dance.  Because that part of me felt like, well, maybe this was karma at its finest, you know?  She tortured me so much for being fat.  She never let me forget it.  And now here we are, twenty years later, and I’m not the family fat girl anymore.

I won’t lie.  It felt pretty damn great.  And while I would never, ever rub her weight in her face the way she did to me when we were kids, I can’t help but wonder what it feels like for her to be on the other side of the table for once.

Why, hello. I’m awful at updating.

Holy shit, it’s been over two months since I updated this thing.  HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?! I set out with the best intentions, planned to post every day. I guess real life got in the way? I don’t know.  Excuses, excuses.  Bahahaha.

Anyway, I will write a (much) longer post later, when I’m not halfway out the door for my walk.  There’s a lot I need to fill you all in on (yeah, because sooo many people read this blog, I’m sure.)

Later!

Demonizing food? I don’t think so.

I belong to an online support group comprised of people who (surprise, surprise!) are all either trying to lose weight, or have already lost it and are trying to keep it off.  For the most part, I find the board to be informative and helpful in my own weight-loss efforts, especially the section of the board devoted to my own eating plan (Weight Watchers.)

However, there is one thing I’ve noticed about the boards in general that is kind of bothersome to me personally.  And it’s not just something I’ve encountered online, either; it’s something that I think everyone may have noticed at one time or another in real life as well.

For example, this morning I read a post on the board from a member who was seeking advice on how to deal with a “slip-up” she had a few days ago (she ate French fries for lunch.)  Everyone gave advice that I’m sure was helpful in their eyes, and I’m sure that the member in question found at least some of the replies to be helpful in her situation.

But what I don’t understand (and again, this may just be me) is this idea that some foods are “good” and some are “bad.”  Like, bananas = good; French fries = bad.  Yes, I know that if I’m trying to lose weight I shouldn’t eat French fries at every meal, but…what in the hell is wrong, exactly, with having a serving of fries for lunch? In the same vein, what’s wrong with having pizza for dinner once a week? Or a bag of potato chips, or some chocolate?  Why do we have this mindset that if we want to lose weight, we have to cut certain foods (or even entire food groups, in the case of the Atkins plan) completely out of our lives?

I mean, good on you if you’re the type of person who can look in the mirror and say, “OK, I have to lose X number of pounds, and in order to do it I have to stop eating X,Y, and Z” and then actually go ahead and stick with that.  Me, though? I know I’m not that kind of person.  I know that there is no way in hell that I am ever going to be able to give up everything I love to eat for the rest of my life.  Not only that, I’m not willing to even try it, because I know I won’t succeed.  If I tell myself that I can never have chocolate again, I know exactly what’s going to happen — the first time I have a craving, I’m going to eat every piece of chocolate I can get my hands on.  So wouldn’t I be better off having a small piece of chocolate when I get a craving, rather than denying myself chocolate altogether and bingeing on it because I’ve attempted to deprive myself completely?

I watched Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Supersize Me last night and it only cemented my beliefs in terms of demonizing foods.  Yes, okay, McDonalds is not the healthiest option out there in terms of fast food.  It’s high in fat, salt, etc., etc.  All you have to do is watch that film once to know that Spurlock’s “McDiet” did some major damage to his body — and in a relatively short period of time.

But here’s the thing.  Spurlock, for his experiment, ate McDonald’s three times a day.  For a month.  For thirty full days, if McDonalds didn’t sell it, he didn’t eat it.  When one of his doctors suggested that he take a low-dose aspirin once a day for the duration of his experiment, he wouldn’t even do that.  And I ask you — who honestly eats McDonalds and nothing but for thirty days straight?

I ate McDonalds for dinner on Wednesday night.  Is it the best choice I could have made? Nope.  Do I feel bad about it? Nope.  Why should I? I’ve lost 45 pounds in ten months — without giving up a single thing. Sure, I probably could have lost it a lot faster if I denied myself everything that’s “bad” for me, but would I have been able to stick with it in the long run? Nope.  I don’t eat stuff I “shouldn’t” every day, but when I want something, I have it, and I don’t sit around ruminating over how I shouldn’t have eaten it, or how I’m really not “allowed” to have it.

I just will never understand how food became the enemy.

 

Motivations

I haven’t updated this blog in almost two months.  Holy shit, I’m a bad blogger.  I started with the idea that I was going to post in here every day, but I have fallen seriously behind.  I promise I won’t go that long without a post again.  (Not that I have a huge readership here, but still.  It’s a way to keep myself accountable, if nothing else.)

So just for an update on the weight situation: As of tonight (weigh-in night!) I have lost a total (so far) of 44.6 pounds.  I’m more than halfway to my goal weight, with only 33.8 pounds left to lose.  That seems like such a bloody huge number, but it’s definitely better than the 78 pounds I started with, right?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about motivation.  You know, the stuff that keeps me going during the tough times….but maybe more importantly, the stuff that got me on this path in the first place.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked “So, what made you decide to do this?” in the past ten months, I wouldn’t be worried about finding a job.  Everyone’s interested in what made me do it.  And I’m never quite sure what to say, because although there are a bunch of things that made me decide “This is it”, some of them….well, some of my motivations are less than pure.

Obviously I’m doing it for health reasons.  Really, that’s the major force behind all this.  I mean, when I started this journey, when I made this decision, I was over 200 pounds.  Since I’m only 5 feet tall (“5 feet on the nose”, to quote my doctor), that’s a hell of a lot of weight to haul around.

More than that, though — more than the prospect of bearing a strong resemblance to a whale — my delightful family medical history pretty much demands something that at least approaches a healthy weight.

Let’s see now: both of my parents have high cholesterol, high blood pressure and debilitating arthritis. My father has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), sleep apnea, and congestive heart failure — all conditions that are exacerbated by excess weight.  He takes a total of nineteen pills a day and uses a BiPAP machine at night, because without it his breathing stops (up to 40 times an hour.)  I also have an aunt who died in her sleep in 2003 from complications of sleep apnea.  She was 49.

Type II diabetes is raging in my family.  My mother has it, along with three of her brothers and one of her sisters.  On the other side of my family, three of my uncles and three of my aunts have it.

Arthritis also runs in my family.  As I’ve already mentioned, both my parents have it, along with every single one of their siblings.

In terms of my own health — well, three years ago (two days after my 28th birthday) I was diagnosed with early-onset osteoarthritis.  That same year, I was diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome.)  And this past January, after my annual round of bloodwork, I was diagnosed with insulin resistance (a precursor of type II diabetes.)

So yeah.  Health issues? I’ve got plenty of my own, and don’t want to end up with as many as my older family members have.  And luckily most of the conditions common in my family can be managed (or prevented entirely) by keeping one’s weight under control.

But then….well, then there are the not-so-”noble” motivations.  Everyone has them, but a lot of the time people don’t want to admit them.  For fear of sounding shallow, I guess, or just sounding like an asshole.  Me, though — I don’t mind admitting that I’m a bit shallow and that I don’t mind allowing my inner asshole free rein every now and again.

I’ve always been overweight.  Ever since I can remember.  I look back at pictures of myself from primary school and I realize that, yeah, okay, I was cute then, with my pudgy knees and shit — but once you reach a certain age, pudgy knees? Aren’t that fucking cute anymore.  And frankly, once your clothing size gets to be higher than your age, you’re edging into dangerous territory.

Especially when it comes to other kids.

Let me tell you — when it comes to bullying, I know whereof I speak.  I went through every kind of bullying you can imagine.  But back at the beginning, it didn’t take much to kick it all off.  I was, after all, the fat kid in the class, and my classmates took every opportunity to remind me of it.  And it became a vicious cycle — I was fat, so all the other kids tortured me, so I was depressed, so I ate to try and dull the pain, so I got fatter, so the torture got worse…..you get the idea.

I don’t want to bore anyone who might be reading this, so I’m going to try and make a long story (somewhat) short: I left high school determined to one day make my bullies eat their words.  And now this is one of my bigger motivations.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to my godson’s eighth birthday party.  It was held at the local skating rink.  While I was there, I bumped into one of my school bullies (I literally had not laid eyes on him since the last day of high school, thirteen years ago.)  He didn’t recognize me (although I have no idea how; I might be 45 pounds lighter, but my face has not changed a bit since then) and I said hi to him and then said, “…You have no idea who I am, do you?” He said no, so I told him.

I’ve often heard the phrase “so-and-so’s jaw dropped” but until that moment, I had never actually seen it happen.  I won’t lie; it was one of the most incredible feelings ever to see that expression cross his face.

And then, before he had a chance to say another word, I said, “Yeah.  It’s me.  Can’t think of any fat jokes now, though, can you?”  and turned and walked away.

For all I know, he may have been about to apologize for the way he treated me way back then.  (I doubt it, but hey, I’m feeling magnanimous; let’s give the asshole the benefit of the doubt.)  The thing is, though…even if he had apologized, I doubt I would have accepted it.  Because even though I’m skinnier than I was in high school, I’m still the same person on the inside.  And so, if the only reason I’m worth an apology now is because I’m no longer “the fat girl”, he — and any other person who ever bullied me — can take their potential apologies and shove them up their asses, sideways and tied to bricks.

But I do love running into people I went to school with.  It’s always such a friggin’ joy to see the amazed expressions on their faces.  It’s especially fun to run into them when they try and act like we were best buddies or something: “Oh my GAWD, I haven’t seen you in for-EV-er! You look FAB-ulous! How’s it GOING? Tell me all ABOUT you!”

And I’m always torn between just nodding and being polite but aloof, and verbally tearing them a new one because, hey, if I wasn’t good enough for you to speak to in high school, don’t kid yourself that I’m going to magically forget all that shit and act like I give a shit about you now.  PTSD might have caused me to block out some of the shit that went down, but I remember enough to know you were an asshole and probably haven’t changed.

So yeah, that motivation’s probably not “the best”; it’s probably shallow and, for all I know, dangerous in some way.  But that doesn’t change the fact that it is, in my opinion, the major driving force behind the success I’ve had thus far.

What it all comes down to, I think, is two words: Whatever works.

Kicking it up a notch

I went to see my doctor this morning.  Nothing wrong; I just wanted to touch base with her because I haven’t seen her since the end of January, and I needed some routine bloodwork done (to check my B12 level).

The first thing she said when I walked into her office was, “Holy crap, how much weight have you lost?!” Ahahaha.  Fair enough; like I said, she hasn’t seen me since January 30, and I didn’t have any weight gone at that point.  So I told her how much I’ve lost so far, and she said, “Wow…it looks like you’ve lost a lot more than that.”

So she measured me (I still haven’t grown an inch over five feet…dammit) and weighed me (167.2 this morning).  Then she calculated where I should be, comfortably, in terms of weight.  I had already semi-decided on a goal weight, but I wanted to see what she had to say (because, after all, I am not a doctor, and what I think is reasonable may not be a good number.)

Surprisingly, though, I had it right.  My goal was 125 pounds, and she thinks that’s right where I should be.  So…bonus!

I also asked her about whether it would be safe for me to take up running (since I have osteoarthritis in my spine) and she said it should be fine.  She recommended that I use the Couch to 5K program, because that takes you through a slow increase over nine weeks.  I’ve already downloaded the playlists for each week, and I can’t wait to start.

I was planning to start after supper, but unfortunately the weather isn’t cooperating.  Ugh.  Hopefully the rain stops soon, but if not, at least I got a 2.5-mile walk in earlier today (walked home from my appointment!)

Getting rid of the “fat mentality”

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I’ve been overweight for the vast majority of my life.  And when you spend that much time in a certain mindset, it becomes ingrained, I think.  Or at least, that’s what I’m beginning to realize.

Here I am, nearly forty pounds lighter than I was six months ago.  I’m now at a weight that I haven’t seen since…well, hell, I can’t even remember.  I know it has to be at least fifteen years, though.  So I should be realizing by now that, you know, I’m not really “the fat girl” anymore.

Try telling that to my brain, though.  Because it’s not buying it.

The logical part of my mind, of course, knows that I’ve put a hell of a lot of work into my weight over the past six months.  And that part of my mind is well aware that I look rather fabulous, and that there have been a lot of changes.

But then there’s that other part — the part that refuses to recognize that this work is paying off.

This is the part of my mind that insists, every time I eat something that I “shouldn’t”, that I’m going to gain back every pound, every ounce I’ve lost in two bites.  The part of my mind that tries to convince me, when I choose to wear shorts on a ridiculously hot day, that I look like a two-ton heifer and that if I do wear those shorts, I’d better not go out in public.  (Do you have any idea how much it took for me to wear shorts to my WW meeting two weeks ago?) The part of my mind that refuses to believe that, even after nearly forty pounds, I’m still fat, and I’ll always be fat.

And you know what? That part of my mind, as much as I hate to admit it, is partly right — at least on the last point.

It doesn’t matter how much weight I lose.  Forty, fifty, a hundred — it doesn’t matter how I look on the outside if I don’t try to silence that voice on the inside.  That voice that keeps telling me that this is never going to work in the long run, that I’m always going to be the fat girl in the room.  If I don’t get rid of the fat mentality, I’m always going to be that fat girl.

So that’s it.  That is it.  From now on, I’m not listening anymore, no matter what it takes.  Because I have worked too hard to let some ridiculous inner voice sabotage my success and my future progress.  I’ve proven that I have what it takes to get where I want to be, and I’m not going to let anything stop me.

Least of all myself.