“When I lose 50 pounds, I’ll finally be able to…”
“I can’t wait until I get thinner because I’ll…”
I’ve said things like this so many times. I spent years waiting for that magical moment when I would finally be the right acceptable size. And then, only then, would I have permission to start living my ideal life.
But until then? Diet and weight loss. Constant exercises in delayed gratification, rationing my happiness so that it could stretch over as long a time as possible.
It wasn’t easy. I’m a passionate person who enjoys intensity. I wanted to feast upon life. Take it all in at once. Like a beautiful, blissful Mardi Gras.
Not this weighing and measuring. And waiting, always waiting.
I spent years feeling like I was living out of a suitcase and not my body. I couldn’t really settle where I was because I was afraid to unpack.
Fat to the Future #
When you’re fat, you can’t just be. You’re forever becoming. Always on your way to somewhere. This means you don’t live in the present but in the future. The difficult part of all of this is that it doesn’t allow you to be mindful since mindfulness is about living in the present.
And yet it was mindfulness that delivered me from the cycles of indulgence that had confined me to my body.
Being able to just be in my body, to feel it, to love it — even if it wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned for myself. Or what I would choose if given a selection of other options.
Being able to stop waiting for the future and to just _exist _in the present. To really taste the food I was eating. And to make decisions about food not because I loathe my body and long for change but because I love myself and want to take care of this place where I live.
My weight goes up and down, depending on what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll get smaller, maybe I won’t. But now I’m living in the moment. And it makes all the difference.