Update!

I realize it has been a few weeks since I last wrote.  Things have been happening and not the things that you would expect.  My friend, who I have been trying to help, has had some set backs.  Health problems just keep popping up left and right for her.  She was experiencing lots of pain while we would walk - WE WERE UP TO A MILE AND A HALF!  We were so excited.  But the pain got so bad that she had to stop and go to the dr.  After many many tests, they found that she has arthritis in both legs and in her left foot.  They are worried that she has hairline fractures in the bones in her legs as well.  I am almost 37 and she is 3 years younger than me. 

Let me back up..... You see, my friend struggled with an eating disorder, anorexia, through high school.  The "in" thing was to be thin.  I remember those days.  It would frustrate people to no end that I could out eat most grown men and not gain a pound.  I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and how much I wanted.  I would never have been anorexic because I liked food too much.  And I would never be bulimic because more than anything in the world, I hated to throw up.  But not everyone was blessed with a metabolism like mine that burned calories as fast as I could chew and swallow the food.  I watched friends struggle with their weight, try to control their portions and exercise to try to fit the body image that society said was okay.  And while I didn't know my friend at that time, I knew others like her. 

She struggled with anorexia until after she got married and pregnant with her first baby.  That is when the doctor told her that she had to gain weight.  And so she started eating.  And stopped exercising for hours a day.  And with each pregnancy (5), she gained a bit more and moved around a bit less.  There are other circumstances as well, but those discussions are for another day. 

So my friend went from super skinny to....bigger in fifteen years.  Just like I did.  The biggest difference is what happened during our teen years.  Eating disorders are a terrible monster to fight.  They attack your mind, first of all, creating images that simply aren't accurate.  Then, after they have a hold of your mind, they attack your body.  Or rather, they force your body to attack itself.  Any food that comes in is stored.  Your body becomes terrified that you will starve it.  Your body uses every nutrient that it can find to survive - even if that means leaching calcium from your bones and other substances from organs and muscles. 

In my friend's case, once she allowed herself to start eating again, her body went into survival mode.  It decided that it would NEVER be starved again.  It would store EVERYTHING that went in, creating a great big food storage for itself.  And the weight began to pile up.  But it began to pile up on a weakened body - one that didn't have the strength to support it.  She now lives every day in pain and exhausted. 

Some people feel that the choices they make early in their lives won't affect them forever.  Or they think that their choices only affect themselves.  I beg to differ.  Right now, my friend is laying in a hospital bed, undergoing tests on her weakened heart with five children and a husband at home.  And all for the price of fitting the body image that society created.

This may be kind of a downer post - if it is, I'm sorry.  My purpose is to make us think.  Achieving health and wellness is one thing.  It is an important thing.  It is a vital thing.  But losing weight in an unhealthy way just to match the airbrushed pictures in a magazine is just tragic. 

I am still on my journey to lose weight.  But I have accepted the fact that I just may be curvy for the rest of my life (which by the way is something I LONGED for when I was a skinny, straight up and down as a board teenager).  The idea of me ever getting down to my supposed "target weight" of 135 or 140 is probably never going to happen.  And I am okay with that.  I don't want to be skinny.  I want to be healthy.  I want to hike with my kids and not get winded.  I want to be able to jog a mile and not want to pass out.  I want my shopping cart to be full of fruits and veggies and good healthy food instead of frozen pizza and corndogs.  But most of all, I want to live.  I want my heart to be healthy to enjoy my grandkids.  I want to eat a slice of birthday cake and a dish of ice cream for their birthdays without injecting myself with insulin to counteract it.  I want to live to see my children's children have children and have the strength and flexibility to get down on the floor and play with them.  I want to live for years and years with the love of my life and see all of our dreams come to pass.  And the only way to do that is to get on the path of health and follow it.