Healing and my skinny jeans

My agenda for this weekend was to get some good sleep and exercise.  I just haven't been sleep well, so these are times when my body is practically begging me to find some nappy time.  When I was in my 20's, I thought naps were for old people.  Now that I'm in my 40's, I either have totally changed my attitude about them or now I'm considered an old person.  Ha ha, hardly!  I did have a great walk with Sara today at the lake.  Here's a picture I took overlooking the lake from where we were sitting and chatting.

Walking around this lake with all the ducks swimming, children playing, dogs running around and such beautiful weather makes me feel pretty blessed that I get to have that time being healthy with a good friend.  3 miles seems to go pretty quickly on our walks.  If you have never walked with a friend, I highly suggest it!  You can easily get lost in the conversation and forget about all the calories you're burning at the same time.

I was telling her my story of seeing the initial therapist this past week.  I thought a lot about that encounter this week and the tears I shed as I told the therapist why I was there.  I really think it was a big release for me since I was just holding in everything so tightly.  The thing that has broken my heart the most and I think really contributes tremendously to the sadness I had been feeling is weight gain.  When I came to Optifast in the beginning, I had hit my bottom.  I didn't think things could possibly get worse.  And, as I was losing weight, things were changing so drastically for me.  I never realized how much I was allowing the weight on my body to dictate my self-worth as a woman and as a human being.  As I got smaller and smaller in sizes and as the pounds and inches were just falling off my body, someone else entirely was emerging.  That's not to say that I wasn't the same old Kathy, just a Kathy with a different attitude, one that smiled a whole lot more and meant it.  Think about it ... I had shed 190 pounds in about nine months.  It's impossible not to have some sort of change.  However, after I got off the Optifast products and as I've been on different medications to help deal with the pain I've been battling, a drastic amount of weight has come back on my body.  A lot of it was a direct result of the medications.  A couple of them had the most significant side affect being weight gain.  Instead of attributing it to that, I was viewing myself as someone who had failed.  That coupled with all of the pain and emotional turmoil that I have been going through the last year, two years, five years, etc. led me to pick up food to deal with emotions.

About a year and a half ago, I was dating someone and it was very serious.  We talked about marriage a lot and were in a really good space with each other.  I loved him deeply and I know he felt the same way for me.  But, something happened and it ended.  Perhaps someday I will say on here exactly what happened but some of you who know me personally already know.  At the time, it broke my heart.  Shattered me into a million pieces.  I felt like I couldn't even breathe.  I'm not trying to be melodramatic, but I just mean that it was terribly difficult to live through and pick up the pieces afterwards.  Somehow, one day piled onto the next and I felt like a part of the world again.  I haven't dated since that time; I guess it has just taken time for my heart to mend.  That feeling I had at the time is exactly how I felt with the weight gain:  brokenhearted.  In time, though, I will heal from this, too.  I'm a tough girl in many ways and I know I can whether this storm.

In the meantime, I did something today to stop punishing myself for gaining weight.  My clothes either are extremely tight on me or they don't fit any more.  So today I went out and bought some clothes that actually fit me.  Yes, they are bigger than what I was fitting in, but there is no reason for me to torture my body by wearing clothes that just don't fit me.  I put the things that are too small in the closet in my guest bedroom.  One of the hardest things for me to put away was this pair of skinny jeans I had fit into.  I worked really hard to get into them and they looked really good on me.  Now looking at them on a hangar, they look so tiny!  I wasn't tiny necessarily, but definitely at my smallest.  I know someday soon, if I stay on a course of eating healthy, continuing on with Weight Watchers and therapy, I'll get there again.  And I bet I'll even make those skinny jeans look big on me.  Thank you to everyone who has continued to support me as I've gone through these challenging times.  You have no idea how much it has meant to me as I've been trying hard to heal my broken heart.  Thanks so much especially to the other bloggers who share themselves so honestly on their pages.  It helps me know it's the healthiest thing I can do for myself, too.