This is the year I turned 50 and the year I dropped 50 pounds. It’s the year i rediscovered the fact that I am “girly” and that I like clothes and dressing up. This is the year I feel like I came out of a fog that I have been in for the last 10 years and started dating again.
I had a hard time turning 40. I came to the acceptance that I wasn’t going to have children, the man I was seeing had broken up with me and I was diagnosed with high blood pressure in a freak medical experience. It was a terrible way to enter this decade of my life.
My ambition in my field was strong though and I moved up in management at the company I worked for and when I quit, I wrote a book, started a company, and went on the road speaking. I also dove into my side career and began producing a ton of photography. But I also got fatter.
I was happy but I wasn’t happy. Physically I was ignoring what was happening. My body started into pre-menopause and I was fat and alone with extra-long and painful periods and the beginnings of hot flashes and night sweats. It sucked all the way around.
They say you can’t be any use to anyone else unless you are happy with yourself. And for me that meant finally getting a hold of the weight issue. I never said it out loud. I never discussed it with friends. But the weight kept me from thinking about relationships, from having fun, from going out, from getting dressed up, from loving myself. I poured all my energy into my art but not into me.
Sometime after the new year in 2013, something snapped in me. I finally made the decision to do something about the weight. I also realized that I needed help and couldn’t do it alone. I started a plan that came with weekly visits, time to chat, weigh-ins to stay honest. And it was hard. The first two weeks I was starving and light headed. Suddenly the amount of food I was consuming was cut in half.
But I got through it.
I also decided to take some classes – in letterpress – and discovered the art of linoleum block print making. So now while I am still working hard on my business, working hard at the second photography business, I have brought pure art making back into my life and a lightness of being has resulted.
Oh, losing the fifty pounds has helped too. Everything is easier – walking, sleeping, exercising, being alive. I have more energy. I can fit into clothes that are fun and cute and suddenly I have gone crazy with the shopping. But knowing that I am still losing and replacing clothes, I am doing it via thrift and second hand shops. Which in and of itself is fun too – there is the hunt and what I end up with is not the same as what everyone else has from the mall.
I may be thinking and dressing too young for my age but I feel like the last 10 years of heaviness and oppression has lifted and I deserve to enjoy this.
A friend recently commented that I looked relaxed and happy. I thought well I look thinner and happier but he was right, the relaxedness and the satisfaction of accepting that I am a work in progress in the right direction, has made me much happier.
Here’s to a new year, with new adventures and insights and a continued new me.