Trying...Again

For about the 437,000th time in my 35+ years, I started a diet and joined the gym. You know the drill, "Oh god I'm so fat. I gotta get in shape. I'm such a blobby pig." And for a few weeks it goes well, then you get a craving for a Quarter Pounder, you start making up reasons for not going to your aerobics class (this is when the desperate need to reorganize your sock drawer hits you), and before you know it, your fat pants are tight and you've grown another chin.

But this is the first time I've started a diet and exercise regimen while:
1. Being on medications for bipolar disorder
2. Participating in individual and group therapies, dealing with my negative self-image issues
3. Having a flexible enough schedule to work in vigorous exercise
4. Realizing in four years I will be 40 freaking years old

Except for a brief few years (during which I met my love and got married), I've always been overweight. I've done Weight Watchers. I've done NutriSystem. I've done tabloid diets and grapefruit diets and eat only yogurt diets. I've done TrimSpa, baby. I'm the yo-yo queen. I must have dropped and added the same 40 pounds 40 times. The permanent fat cells in my body must be like, "Hey, you're coming back again. Welcome back, where ya been?" and then during a diet, "Ooops, there you go again. Never fear, they'll be back."

I'm sick of the whole business. The big joke is, when I was at my most thin, I was working out twice a day, I wore a size 6 jeans, and I still thought I was fat. Warped. I mean, I look at pictures of myself from 1996 to about 2001 and my jaw drops. At the time, I never realized I looked that good. I only saw the flaws. The fact I didn't have flat abs or pencil-thin arms. The fact I still had a round-like-a-Muppet face.

So I'm trying again. With perhaps a different attitude and perspective. I'm not doing it to snag a man (which was usually the case before...I'm luckily snagged by a man who wants me to be healthy but who loves me because I'm me). I'm not doing it to fit in my wedding dress (I swear I starved for a month to make sure that damn frilly thing fit). I'm not doing it for any other reason than the fact I WANT IT.

I look in the mirror and I don't see the me I want to be. Even if I got to where I was when I was at my best, I'm not sure I'd see the true me. I'll never again be that thin, 25-year-old, short-skirt-wearing, single girl.

But maybe I can try to be someone I like and respect and admire. I'm trying to sort through the mess to find her. She's hidden deep, underneath a human body and historical baggage and guilt and self-loathing and a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey.

Until then, it's off to the elliptical trainer.