What Is Your Normal?

Being a person who has struggled with being overweight since toddler-hood, my sense of self was that I was an obese person, like I was made this way. Obese was my "normal". My identity. My destiny. My attempts at weight loss were frequent and varied, but the results were always temporary. The times I spent close to my healthy weight never changed my personal identity. I always knew that all those pounds of fat were waiting in the wings, ready to slam back on me. I was never safe from it, like I was being stalked.

The emotional chaos of never feeling at peace with my body took it's toll in many ways. Every choice and decision I made in life, somehow pivoted from my low self esteem and my knowledge that I would never be good enough.

I could never figure out how other people maneuvered through their lives, seemingly free from the constant anxiety I had with food and body image. Did other people go to school with a burning empty stomach in their attempt to be normal? I would watch my thin friends and try to figure out how they ate so much, so freely, without any guilt or shame. Why weren't my siblings fat? What was wrong with me? Why was I different? Oh..right...obesity is me.. my normal.

I lost my weight on Cambridge 14 years ago. The amount of effort to lose the weight, was nothing compared to the mental work I had to do to change everything I believed about myself and who I was. Instead of seeing my obesity as normal and moments of thinness as temporary, I had to flip that and force myself to believe that my obesity was what had been the deviation from normal. My body had spent 42 years trying to deal with my physical and emotional demands. It hadn't failed me, I had failed it. I may or may not be more prone to weight gain then someone else with different DNA, but that is my reality to accept and to be responsible for.

We all come in to this world with different challenges. There is no standard "normal". Just your own personal story. My story is that for most of my life, I believed a lie. A lie I convinced myself was true. Obesity is not my identity, my destiny, or my curse. I spent my life justifying my poor health and not ever really taking responsibility for it.  I am not that person anymore.