Puzzled

Last week, I attended a pretty up-scale networking dinner for professionals in my niche. As I was checking in and getting my name tag, I saw the body of someone and immediately thought "Oh thank God! There is someone here who is bigger than me!" That relief instantly shifted to horror, when I realized that I was looking at myself in a full-length mirror. "Thank God!" became "Oh my God!" I was shaken. I think I literally shivered because my colleague asked if I was okay. I was most definitely the biggest person in the room. And I was at an event hosted by a long-term facility for treating eating disorders. Oh, the irony.

How did I get here? How does the person who has had moderate weight-loss success in the past (but who has always been over weight), get to this place? Weighing more than when I delivered my two year old? How did I go from teaching 10 Zumba classes a week (at 220 pounds) to 290 pounds (down from an all-time high of 309)? How, as a therapist, am I here? How can I be so angry at my parents for choosing not to change their own lives, but follow in their footsteps?

Lots of questions today. Not a lot of answers. I'm not sure that they matter, because the truth is that I am here. I weigh 290 pounds at 30 years old-- and I, alone, have to do something about it. Here. We. Go.