Running

Well, I should really call it walking. But it has begun. After months of trying to talk myself into doing something, I started getting up early to walk/run. I love summer mornings and I feel awesome after I run. So there it is...exercising has commenced. Now it's just the food thing.

Even though I have started exercising I still have the battle all the time. I feel like I have a tiny girl on each shoulder. One is running and full of energy and is so annoying that I want to punch her in the face. The other one doesn't care. She is eating yummy things and laying on a soft, lovely couch. She doesn't yell at me when I eat cookies.

It is my constant inner battle that I am afraid will be there my whole life. I saw something interesting on Oprah. I don't know if anyone else saw it...Oprah had an author of a book called "Women, Food, and God". There were some really good things in there. I am going to try and read it. It left me with a lot of things to think about but not understanding how to apply them to me. One thing that really stood out to me was a girl at the end of the show. She had lost and gained and lost and gained 100 lbs. She finally has been able to keep it off after she worked with the author of this book.

They talked about feeling "unworthy" when you are overweight and once you lose the weight you will finally be "worthy" of love, acceptance, whatever you are lacking. Unfortunately I totally relate to that. I feel like that more often than I would like to admit. I have found it even more overwhelming since moving back to Utah. It is like all the insecurities I had as a teenager are here. I felt them the second I moved back. I distinctly remember sitting at a family event and seeing all these family members I hadn't seen for a long time and thinking, "why would they even want to talk to me at all? I am such a fat slob." Mind you, I could fit into a size 8 at the time. It really didn't matter what I weighed, it was all in my head. Insecurity is an ugly disease I deal with every day. It is going to take something more than myself to overcome it.

I have to admit, a lot of that insecurity went away when I lost weight a few years ago. I thought I had it all figured out. It was a very emotional process and I thought I healed a lot of things when I was all wrapped up in it. But it is just a life-long process, I guess. A constant battle of choices. So I will embrace the annoying running girl on my shoulder. She feels better and has a lot more to give to other people.