Perception Is Yours

My brother and I have had many 'deep' conversations over the years, some of them pertaining to the idea of 'Perception is yours' and this has become a favourite quote of mine. How I perceive things is my reality. I'll give you a personal example. No relationship is without their individual troubles and Mike and I have had our own share. One of our earlier disagreements stemmed from my belief that I held the number three spot in his eyes (behind his boys). When I look back on it now, I feel guilty for pulling that stunt repeatedly. Granted, I was twenty years old and only had one other (really crappy) relationship before Mike and so I was inexperienced in what a healthy relationship entailed. Mike could repeat over and over again that I was number one in his eyes, he could buy me the most extravagant gifts, heck, he could have bought me the moon and it wouldn't have mattered. It didn't matter what Mike said or did...I was not top priority because I believed I wasn't.

On to present day...as pretty much every woman does, I have struggled with the issue of weight ever since I was about six years old. I know that seems young but it is true. Because I was always taller than other girls, I always felt I was fatter too. I think on a psychological level, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because I believed I was fat, I ate that way and eventually I did become fat. This post isn't about fishing for compliments and wanting to be told I am beautiful and that weight doesn't matter. Even though the most important people in my life have told me over and over again that I am beautiful, it doesn't matter. Because I don't see it when I look in the mirror, I don't believe it and weight has everything to do with not liking what I see (damn those magazine's!!). There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about my weight. Wish upon wish is spent hoping that some day I'll wake up and not look like two fat girls hugging. Obviously I know that losing weight has more to do with eating right and exercising than it does with using your birthday candle wish, but a girl can dream can't she?

I am just tired of spending time in the morning applying my make-up, doing my hair and trying on three different outfits before finally selecting one, only to critique myself in the mirror and think, "This is as good as it's going to get. There is nothing more that I can do and I am both saddened and sickened by what I see. Nothing else is going to help so I may as well get the day started".

This post also isn't meant to be a depressing one. Actually, it's supposed to be quite the opposite. You see, I'm attempting a 360. If I have told myself for the past 22 years, that "I am fat, fat, fat" and I have grown to be that, then I need to switch my attitude. If my atittude becomes "I am my healthy body weight", then maybe I will grow to be that. I know it is more than an attitude...that it is a combination of eating the foods that are right for you (be they carbs, or be they proteins) and finding the right amount of exercise for what you are planning to achieve. A healthy weight loss is about 1-2 pounds a week. At that rate, it will take me 2 weeks shy of a year to achieve my desired weight loss. But I can do it. And not one day at a time. It will be one hour at a time if it needs to be. But it needs to start now.

And so it 'weightily' goes...