Thank you.  Thank you all for your supportive and wonderful words that made me cry all day yesterday—because I’m a big softy and I cry when people are so overwhelmingly nice to me (I didn’t cry in Michigan, that was another kind overwhelmingly nice). And I cry when people say things that ring true, and I know I’m being ridiculous but can’t seem to get back to that place where I know those things are true, too.

Perfectionism has always been an issue for me.  I don’t expect other people to be perfect, in fact I’m constantly telling the people in my life to be kinder to themselves when they fall short of some unreachable ideal they’ve set out for themselves.  And yet, I have such a hard time doing that for myself.  I expect so much of myself, and sometimes I wear me down.

For now, I have resolved to eat.  To eat healthy foods that nourish me, but won’t send me spiraling down a rabbit hole of self-loathing.  But I will not diet, I will not count calories or points, I will not allow myself to focus on anything that could bring out the obsessive calorie accountant in my head.

As for exercise, my foot has not completely healed, which is something that has been incredibly disheartening.  The bone itself is sturdy enough, but the soft tissue is still swollen and painful.  Training for my next race starts at the end of May.  For now, I resolve to go easy on my foot, to let it heal, so that I can run when it really matters.

Writing all of this, there is a voice in me that is calling me a pansy, and says that I can do more, work harder.  But for now I am holding my ground, in hopes that my ground will make me stronger and more able to fight that voice off in the future and perhaps will bring me back to that place where I didn’t even think about dieting, I just ate what fueled me and felt good about that.

Thank you again.  For reading.  For being so supportive.  For reminding me that my struggles aren’t so different from anyone else’s and that this too shall pass.

Kim

I am going to be very, very honest.  Get ready.

When I started this blog five years ago I was in an amazing place with my body.  I had given up dieting.  I loved myself, I loved exercising, and I for the first time in my life since I was 9-years old, didn’t give a hoot about calories, points, or carbs.  And that was the premise of this blog, healthy living sans the crazy.

Somewhere along the way something changed and I fell into cycles of extreme dieting and exercise, all the while hoping you didn’t notice that I was kind of a sellout.  I know you did, but denial is a beautiful thing.

Over the course of the last year something else happened.  I just stopped caring.  I simply didn’t have the energy to diet anymore, but not in the same inspiring way I had when I started this blog, in a way that meant not taking care of myself at all.  Notice the lack of blogging– that was embarrassment.  I just didn’t want you to see what I was eating…and I was busy, but mostly it was embarrassment.  There are all sorts of things I’ve been mentally punishing myself for this year: for writing my memoir and telling a lifelong secret to the masses and allowing the world to judge me and my family and for a fallout with my closest friend.

I’m not entirely done with the self-flagellating.  I don’t know that I ever will be.  I like to harp on stuff.

Whatever the psychobabble-mumbo-jumbo behind it, I’m in a place now where I, yet again, feel like a sellout, because as someone who has always advocated for health and self-acceptance at every size, in the past year I have gained 30lbs.  That’s a lot for one year.  That’s a lot for a short girl. And I hate myself for it.

And the thing is, I just don’t have it in me to diet.  There are things in my life so much more important right now that focusing on the width of my hips that I just can’t seem to bring myself to care, but I also can’t seem to bring myself to the point of self-acceptance.  I feel so overwhelmingly embarrassed in my skin right now, to the point where I avoid social situations, but I just can’t seem to rally.

And, there is a very insecure part of me that feels like I’m cheating The Fella out of the girl he could be with.  Because he didn’t sign up for me when I was this size, and he is a personal trainer, and he thinks I want to eat egg whites and salad and kill myself to look beach ready.  But I don’t.

I am tired of dieting. I want, more than anything, to find that girl again, the girl that started this blog because she had finally learned to accept herself and ate healthfully because she thought she deserved it and exercised because she loved it.

I don’t know where she is, or how to find her, but for now I’m just putting this out there in the world so that maybe she’ll see it and come back.

Kim