Ah Ha Moments

Life is full of “ah ha moments.” Little signposts declaring white water or cliffs ahead. Recently, these signs in my life, like contractions, are coming far more frequently and closer together. It’s time to make a change, and here is how I know.

Ah ha moments:

• Finding an empty tortilla chip bag in the bathroom.
• Carrying a bowl of popcorn, and sticking out your tongue, and eating what popcorn sticks to your tongue. Literally, lapping up your snack like a puppy.
• Legitimately holding up a poncho at Target and thinking that look might work for you.
• Watching a commercial where a dog lost weight with Fresh Pet and wondering how bad it tastes.
• Discovering your thighs have been looking for a bigger place on Zillow because they are tired of always bumping into each other in their current residence.

Then there are “ah ha moments” of a different kind. The kind where people who truly care about you (your family) or people who are paid to care about you (your doctor), keep sitting you down for conversations and keep saying words like, “What’s going on?” and “worried about you” and “irreparable health damage.”

I shall back up a bit. I have been heavy for thirty years of my life, and I have been dieting for thirty years. (“Well, that’s the problem, you call it a ‘diet.’ It’s suppose to be a lifestyle change.”) Call it what you will, but I have modified my lifestyle in a myriad of ways for thirty years.

I have been vegetarian, pescetarian, Presbyterian. I’ve been low carb, low fat, loca. I have tried Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, and Jolly Ranchers, and nothing worked.

And then I got sick of it and stopped.

So, tell me I’m lazy or a quitter or a loser, but you wouldn’t be saying anything I haven’t said to myself in meaner tones.

Those mean tones were the real problem. Most of the motivation for my diets was out of hatred for my body. But more than just hating my body, I really hated myself. Not that I don’t think that I am funny and lovely and wise. Because I do. (Did you see what I did with that Presbyterian/Jolly Rancher joke? See? Funny.)

But my weight has been a lifelong shame. And I would diet to quiet the guilt and shame that would keep me up at night.

I didn’t want to be dictated by guilt. This is something I was working on eradicating in other areas of my life as well. Not that I shouldn’t repent for real sins, but guilt and shame shouldn’t have rule in a heart that belongs to God. This was something He was teaching me across the board. More on that another time.

So, to stop acting out of shame as far as my weight was concerned, I just stopped dieting. I thought maybe I should just settle into my skin. I’m a heavy girl. I can still be stylish and attractive. We have stores dedicated to just that mission. This is my shape, I should make it work instead of fighting the natural order of things. I actually thought this was healthy.

I was mistaken. Because this new line of healthy thinking did not lead to a new life of healthy eating, and I started to put weight on. Quite a bit of weight.

In my attempts to get rid of the guilt I tried to detach guilt from the “guilty foods”I had denied myself most of my life. Or, in plainer terms, I ate chips and ice cream.

The “this is just who I am” attitude lead to “this is just sleep apnea, acid reflux, and prediabetes.” I can be curvy, but I can’t straight up die.

I say I stopped dieting, but I also gave up. I also lost hope. And maybe those last two are not exactly in the past tense.

So, the question is, how shall we then live? (Thanks, Francis Schaeffer.) How am I to exist? Not hating my body, not guilting myself into actions? Free from shame? “Free indeed” as the Bible says? Yet also find lasting motivation and change in my relationship with food? Be a good steward of my body and soul?

And here I sit at the laptop again and talk to the therapy of the internet about my body image issues, how I should really feel about food, and about freedom. And about God, the trustworthy, all powerful Creator.

I have given up, but He has not.

It’s time to sort out the truth of it all once again. Keep me company won’t you?