Hindsight

This morning I got up and went for a run. It was very hot and the 3 miles were really tough. This is probably TMI for this sort of public space but it's that time of the month and the lower half of my body literally felt like it weighed 500 lbs. Each step felt like I was dragging my leg forward. Not fun at all. Still, with a couple of walking breaks I pushed through.

I'm once again feeling semi- motivated to get back on the healthy train. The last month or two has been filled with so many fun things, but sadly fun often = heavy drinking and eating. My goals on where I want to be weight wise are so different than where they used to be. If I could just get back to the place where I spent the majority of college I would be ecstatic. It's funny to think that I spent all of college wishing I could lose X pounds or look like so and so. Hindsight really is 20/20.

Take these pictures for instance:

In every single one of these pictures, I remember seeing them and thinking "I look so huge next to my friends." Looking at them now, I really don't look much different from anyone else. To be blunt about it, my image of myself was really fucked up. Luckily my image/self esteem issues never came out in severely damaging ways (like eating disorders, for instance) but it really took a toll on my mental health and general well being. I spent a few years with a therapist discussing a lot of these issues and made significant progress on the way I look at myself and others. Today I would be THRILLED to look how I did in those pictures. But the question remains, even if I did look that way, would I still be unhappy with how I looked?

The above photos were taken 6 months-a year before I ran the New Bedford half marathon. For the few months in training, I was also losing weight pretty quickly (and fairly easily because I was exercising so much). I ended up at a weight I hadn't seen for a number of years, and yet I STILL wasn't happy with where my body was at. I was still comparing myself to my friends and other girls when I went out. I was still embarrassed to wear a bikini when I went to Florida for spring break. The way I feel when I look at photos from that time is easy to imagine: mostly shock that I was still disappointed with how I looked and upset that I worked so hard only to put the weight back on, 

Sometimes I feel like I'll never get back to either of these places. No matter how diligently I watch what I eat or how many hours I spend working out, I just won't get there. Sometimes I feel like I don't even care. I'm pretty happy as I am today. Yes, I don't look how I did in those pictures, but I'm also really enjoying life and am having no problem dating or making new friends. I feel so much more confident about my self worth than I ever did in college, even at my very lowest weight.

I really don't know where this is going. My struggle with losing/maintaining my weight continues, as I'm guessing it will for the rest of my life. When it comes down to it, what I really want is:

- To increase my activity and fitness level

- To fit into all of the clothes I have and feel better when I go shopping for new clothes

- To reduce some of the pain I'm having in my neck/back

- To fill my body with food that will give me energy and keep me healthy in the long run

- To find a way to balance this all with dating and an active social life

Obviously to come close to looking how I did in any of those photos would be an added bonus, but I know it would take a lot of work to get there, and even more work to STAY there. Let's be honest, I've never been successful at maintenance. Considering I haven't even mentioned this on the blog in a few months, I think it's a step in the right direction. We'll see where I go from here...