I know focusing on losing weight instead of embracing our larger selves isn’t popular right now. If you’re solely about body positivity and having a healthy body at any weight, I get it.
As a therapist, I preach body positivity, and practice it. Also, healthy bodies at any weight are commendable, and I am currently sporting one. So we are not diametrically opposed if those are your standards and values.
What my personal weight loss journey is about is having the healthiest body I can achieve, and being able to do the things I’m passionate about for the rest of my life. I’ve found these goals aren’t possible at my current — and certainly not from before I started the journey — weight.
Do I have a healthy body even at my current weight? Yes. The doctor told me yesterday that my blood work is perfect. She also noticed that my current medication is handling my blood pressure very well.
I usually won’t let doctors weigh me, since I weigh myself nearly daily. I just tell them the number. Their scales always seem to report me as heavier, which is demoralizing for me.
Apparently I gave in last January, and weighed in at 183 on that visit to the docotr. Which means, I’ve actually lost 9 pounds since then and didn’t realize it until I started my current regime. I had stopped weighing until four weeks ago, when I started at 178 pounds. I’m now at 174.
Due to my age and the requirements of Medicare health coverage, I’ve had every test known in the developed world in the last two months. Even the colonoscopy to track the pesky diverticulitis, which brought me to the Emergency Room twice this year, didn’t find anything more than a few moderate diverticulae.
I know. Too much information. Just making my point about being healthy for my age and weight. I could stay this weight and probably be fine.
However, after breaking both ankles at the same time two summers ago, and experiencing the frustration of being immobile, I’m no longer willing to risk becoming immobile for any reason.
My weight puts extra pressure on those ankles which, even with titanium rods, swell with the fatigue of carrying around 175 pounds or more. My knee that I tore dancing the Bachata five years ago protests when I walk more than a mile, or attempt too many downward dogs in yoga.
Hips? Yeah, they yell at me too.
Will all those issues go away when I lose 30 pounds or more? Not completely. I earned these joints with a lifetime of activity. Will they be much less bothersome on long walks, while dancing, and doing those damned downward dog poses? Yes.
Please understand that I still go to the pool, where I do leg and abdomen exercises when I’m not blissfully floating. I don’t really swim. I have cute and even sexy suits to wears.
I wear dresses that follow my curves, albeit looser in the belly area, and I wear skinny jeans and yoga pants. I do wear flowy, loose tops over those yoga pants and jeans. Nevertheless, as anyone who looks can see, I like my shape.
I’m grateful every day that I can walk at all. I love my dimply thighs for supporting me and getting me everywhere I want to go. Which is a lot of places.
My sisters and I are going to Scotland in August. We are training for it as if we were training for a marathon. We’ve agreed if one of us falls, the other two will pick them up and keep trucking. And there will be no complaining about physical ailments of any kind. That’s the toughest rule.
Releasing some of this weight will make following that rule easier.
That and Scottish whiskey. How many calories are in whiskey?
. . .
Stay tuned for my continuing weight loss saga. And tales of Scotland.
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This post was previously published on New Choices.
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The post Let Me Take You on My Body Positive, Healthy at Any Weight, Weight Loss Journey appeared first on The Good Men Project.
