It’s baaack…

I went to high school with a girl who was under five foot tall. There was a running joke by her friends and most everyone about her, even though she was very well-liked. It was regarding her weight. The joke was that you could always tell if this girl had a boyfriend or not at the moment by taking one glance at her. If her weight was up, she was in a relationship and happy. If she was thin and trim, she was single and looking.

I wish that were true for me about now.

I am quite the opposite. If you were to look at me right now, you’d see I’m wearing my spare tire again. After a full year of working hard to whittle it away with some success. After months of getting favorable comments about my appearance and how trim I was getting.

I even kept getting the complements as I was gaining it back. And, I felt guilty the entire time.

You can look at me and tell at a glance whether my life is in a good place. Just look at the roll around my waist. If it is there, I’m struggling. My belly is like the yellow or red flag at the beach, waving to everyone that it is not safe to swim. There are dangerous waves, rip tides, and currents pulling me down.

This fall has been very difficult on too many levels to even discuss on here. But, what I hate most is that, in the struggle to keep it together, I let go of what I’d worked so hard to regain–my good health.

What is scary when you have a disease like Type II diabetes is that a gain of just 5 or 10 pounds during a stressful time doesn’t just make you feel bad. It can cause a trigger of all sorts of other problems. It can send your disease spiralling downward and out of control. It doesn’t matter if you take all your pills if you’re not supporting it everywhere else–with good and consistent workouts and healthy foods.

So, I will pick myself and try to shed that spare tire now. I’ll toss it out on the side of the road that I’m on. I can keep rolling on what I have and I don’t need the backup.

I will try and remember that it is a battle every day of making the right choices versus the wrong ones. And each choice makes a difference, no matter how small…