It's all in your head............................

        I joined the fitness club at my church called Z-Fit 4 Life (www.zionchurchonline.com)!  It’s a bunch of women working out trying to get our temples in the condition God wants them in.  I have to take as many measures I can, because I need as much help as I can get!  LOL……

        One of the things I hate about allowing myself to gain all this weight is that I never want to be seen like this!  I hate it when I run into old friends, schoolmates, and boyfriends, whom last time we saw each other, I was a healthy size eight. Or at least a ten or twelve!  Now, my twelves have turned into fourteens, and my fourteens have turned into sixteens!  As soon as people started telling me about sales at Lane Bryant and Ashley Stewart, I knew I was in trouble!  I know in the back of these old friends’ minds, they’re thinking, “Boy did Christina let herself GO!”  I hate it, especially when the old boyfriends come around.  Good job showing those jerks what they’re missing out on chica!

Perhaps I have a poor self-image – but I don’t want to be fat anymore.  I have a right to desire a healthy body.  I have a right to want to lay off the chocolate and sodas and make healthier decisions.  I have a right to want to exercise.  I got involved at church because I see most of these women once or twice a week – and by us joining forces, I’m hoping to get some type of support or accountability network going.  I have every right to desire that for myself.  My self-image may be poor, because my health is poor.  I have let myself go.  I have been lazy in my attempts to lose weight.  Even as I type, I am all talk and no action.  Moving at a snail’s pace has been pretty much what I’ve been about, and though I am sooooooooooooo tired of it, am I really ready to move on?  Am I really ready to move further?  Or do I find so much comfort in eating that I am choosing not to find other ways to deal with stress?

I have a birthday coming up in April, a wedding to attend in June and my cousin and BFF are trying to drag me on a plane to the Dominican Republic in October – and by then I better look GOOD!  But my point is, I can hope and dream of meeting my resolution to lose twenty pounds before my April 19^th birthday.  I can hope and dream to lose ten or more before that wedding I have to go to in June (because I HATE dressing up – and if I have to dress up, I want to look good).  And I want to be down forty to fifty pounds before hitting the Dominican Republic beaches.  When old friends see me I want them to see a healthy me - not a short, stubby, girl who looks like she's trying to wear baggy, 'comfortable' clothes to hide her fat but it's not really working.  But I have to work for all that.  Weight loss doesn’t come easy, and I am starting to realize that more than anything – it’s a battle of the mind!  Before exercising on the regular, and before learning the right foods to eat, you have to start on the emotional aspects of eating.  Why do you eat?  If you're eating and your stomach ain't rumbling - then you're not hungry, so why are you eating?  Because you had a bad day and you feel like you deserve it?  Because you're bored and lonely and you feel you need to go cook something to make the time fly by?  Because it's there?  You know you weren't thinking about eating chicken until you drove by the KFC!  It's all in your mind, and once you win the war in your mind - I am almost certain that the rest comes easy!  But the question is, how the (bleep) do you do that?  LOL.......Are there such things as "Food Therapists?"