The other day I read a post over at Kim’s blog about how a comment by her coach caused her to panic and start gaining weight again. One of the things I love about Kim’s blog is how open and honest she is and in her comments I wrote:

I can completely relate to why that comment would send you on such a downward spiral. I love your honesty and how you share so many of your emotions here with us…I’ve been so reluctant to get ‘emotional’ on my blog, I guess because I’m scared to put myself out there like that. It’s difficult though to try to keep the physical separated from the mental – they are so intertwined. Thanks for sharing so much of yourself with us!

Part of her reply was this (You can read the whole convo here):

I don’t mean to say that sharing as I have is not without risk. It is risky. But I guess ultimately, I want change, lasting change, more than I want to hold that stuff that binds me up in.

Since I started my blog in September of last year, I’ve been reluctant to allow myself to get too “emotional” here…to share too much about ME. It’s fairly easy for me to post what I’ve eaten or talk about my workouts and such, but to post actual real life emotions is a part of me that I wasn’t sure I was ready to expose yet. It’s a risk I wasn’t willing to take. I mean, I sent the link to my blog to practically everyone I know, family and friends alike, so it’s not like I’m completely anonymous here talking to a bunch of people I’ll likely never meet.

So I’ve been asking myself the last few days which do I want more? That “lasting change” Kim was referring to? Or do I want to continue to keep this stuff hidden within pretending like it doesn’t exist? While the former is certainly risky, the latter is a bit dishonest to my readers and myself, is it not?

Well, yesterday I received a message that completely threw me off for the whole day. Not because of what it said, but rather, my perception of what it said. I don’t want to post the exact message here because it was sent to me privately, but I feel I must write about it because of how it relates to my journey here. The message came from someone who’s been a good friend of mine for a lot of years. I admire and respect her and she’s been very supportive of me through this weight loss journey. In her message, she had written the word “HUGE” and somehow I managed to grab that word and hold onto it like none of the other words in her message mattered. I somehow glossed over her real intent, her motive, and the context of what she really was saying. All I saw was HUGE and for some reason I immediately thought she was calling me huge. It didn’t make sense to me. I re-read the message several times but all I kept seeing was that word “HUGE” (which was capitalized in the message). I couldn’t understand why anyone, especially a good friend, would call me that. Why would she feel the need to insinuate such when she knows how hard I’ve been working to get non-huge? This message really got into my head yesterday in a bad way. It was devastating.

Then my perception had a head-on collision with reality. She wasn’t calling me huge – AT ALL. Without going into specifics, she was calling something else huge, but somehow I was able to extrapolate the absolute worst scenario and go almost the entire day thinking she thought I was huge.

So I’m left wondering how deep my weight issues must really be to have let my perception get so warped like that. This journey isn’t just about calories eaten, pounds lost, and miles walked…it’s about so much more. As such, my blog must be an honest reflection of that. If I don’t address the emotions behind my eating, and the deep rooted weight issues that I obviously have, I don’t think I can be successful at this. I’m grateful to Kim for helping me realize the importance of sharing this part of my journey with you all.

33.1 miles walked/jogged/ran since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 500)
6.4 miles biked since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 300)
(1) 5K finished since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 12)