Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Expectations

My towel wrapped around me tonight.

For most people this is not profound. "Yes, Adrienne, towels do that." Maybe they have always for you. Not for me.

Maybe it has been wrapping around me, completely, for a while and I just now noticed? I'm not sure.

I've officially lost 75lbs. It has taken me a total of 11 years and 3 separate tries, but I am 10lbs away from the scale reading 199. There are a lot of things I expected would be by now, but it never occurred to me that the towel would wrap all the way around.

If you've never been "morbidly obese" (God, what a ridiculous term) then I don't expect you to understand the following.

There are things that I expected. I expected to be proud of myself, and I am. I expected that I would feel better, sleep better, look better, and I do. I expected all of these things and more. I expected to step on the scale and read 199 and suddenly every struggle for the past 11 years would rush through my mind like a movie and that I would be so overwhelmed with emotion that I would collapse on the floor of my bathroom, sobbing with joy as if this miracle has just taken place before my very eyes without my involvement.

There are also things that I did not expect. I didn't expect to feel kindof numb. I didn't expect to still see myself as the fat girl. I didn't expect people to treat me differently (they do). I didn't expect people to be jealous, or judgy, or weird with me. I didn't expect to be surprised that the towel would wrap around, or that Jillian Michaels videos would no longer be hard, or that running would one day not be enough to take off the lbs. I didn't expect to still be unhappy with pictures or that I would still not fit into American Eagle jeans.

The list goes on and on.

Here is the thing. Life is full of moments where we expect certain things to happen or certain moments to be a certain way. We can't rely on that. Anything worth doing is going to be hard, much harder than you expected. If you want to start a journey to lose weight, or change careers, or start a family, then you have to throw all of your expectations out the window because the final product may not look like what you thought it would.

Here is what I think will happen when I see 199. I will be full of pride for what I have accomplished. I will remember all of the hard work and realize that I DID that. Every pound came off because I made choice after choice,  not because of some miracle that just happened to me.

Or maybe I'll collapse on the ground. Who knows?

Tears will probably be involved.

I'll let you know.

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations! That is wonderful! And yes, I understand what it feels like to finally be able to wrap a towel around myself. What an amazing story you are writing. You are an inspiration!

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