Winning the Battle

There comes a time in every overweight person's life when enough is enough.

When you realize you're not getting any younger, and you don't want to be fat and inactive and useless throughout your thirties, nor do you want to be riddled with weight-related health problems by the time you hit the big 4-0.

When you acknowledge that all your previous weight-loss "attempts" weren't really attempts at all, since going on that worthless soup diet or eating nothing for days to fit into that dress for your friend's wedding, was just a quick fix and not really a commitment.

When you stop making excuses about exercising and realize that your hour-long Big Brother watch-a-thon could be just as easily spent walking in place in your living room as it is sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn.

When you figure out that body-slimming undergarments don't actually make you smaller, they just redistribute fat to places it wasn't before.

When watching televised accounts of incredible weight loss becomes less about drowning your "why can't that be me" sorrows in a Big Mac and throwing the remote at the finale of The Biggest Loser, and more about motivation and inspiration.

When you can no longer call it "baby weight", especially since your baby is able to tell you that, "Mommy, you have too much chubbs on your butt."

When you resign yourself to not having a "cheat day", since people with as little discipline as you do have become the size they are because of willy-nilly cheat days that spiral into cheat months.

When you stop blaming your thyroid problem for the way you look and realize your weight is of your own doing (I have a serious thyroid problem - in fact, I'm guilty of using the excuse myself - and I can tell you with certainty that a thyroid problem, even one as out-of-whack as mine, does not cause a 50lb weight gain. You can't eat deep-fried wings and laze around your house and still blame your weight on your thyroid.).

When you reach the conclusion that losing weight is a simple formula of burning more calories than you take in, and that even the fancy and expensive "miracle pill/supplement/concoction" isn't going to solve your problems for the long term.

When you finally admit that french fries aren't vegetables just because they're made from potatoes.

When enough is just enough, plain and simple. I've reached that point.

Being fat sucks. I've spent that past 12 years complaining about how much it sucks, yet I've failed to sincerely try to do anything about it. I've even written about it with the best of intentions of losing weight, but my words never concretely translated into actions.

I quit pop in mid-January, my biggest hurdle, and haven't touched a drop since. And, though I did see minimal results, I didn't change my eating habits. I went on a diet at the end of April, but through the chaos of kids' birthdays, the end of school, vacations, and many excuses, I fell off the wagon a month later.

Then I got on the scale. Yikes. That was "the point", and I haven't looked back since. All I had to change was my attitude.

I no longer feel a bitterness toward skinny people, food, or exercise. I don't harbour feelings of deprivation and resentment because I can't get a Blizzard, instead I feel strong and proud how I'm able to resist the temptation. I don't curse my husband's late night snack, I look at it with relief that it's not entering my stomach and disrupting my steady course.

I put a sign on my fridge that says, "you're only cheating yourself", along with two pictures: one of myself and one of Jessica Simpson.

Aside from the occasional glass of milk or juice, the only thing I drink is water. I have completely (and unbelievably) cut ice cream out of my life. Other junk food and sweets are cut to an absolute minimum, though not eliminated entirely. I make sure to eat breakfast every morning. I have a filling supper without stuffing myself up to the eyeballs. And I never eat anything after supper is over - not a carrot stick, not a cracker, nothing. Those are my changes, and it's working.

I've lost 35lbs because of those very do-able and realistic changes. The point I'm trying to make is, if I can do it, anyone reading this can do it, too. I was the best of the best excuse makers; the thyroid patient; the busy mom; the "did you hear about that new pill" queen; the chronic complainer. Not anymore, no more excuses.

And I've never felt better.