Bodysnatcher, eh? Go right ahead.

I'm still walking to and from work every day, hooray for me. Even with a blinding stress headache and foul mood to match, I hauled ass home tonight.

Every day, while I walk, I listen to music. Lately, crazily enough, it's been just one song. Not that I'm losing my mind or anything (debatable, I know), it's just that Bodysnatchers by Radiohead has a fuckin' great beat and it just kinda carries me along.

Today I realized that one line from that song kinda sums up what I'm feeling these days "I'm trapped in this body and I can't get out". I want this fat gone. So gone. This is what has tripped me up in the past. Yes, weight is being lost incrementally but the flab is much harder to get rid of. It's there, everywhere I go. My gut out front. My bingo wings flappin' in the breeze every time I lift my arms. The chins that have each other for company (how nice). All of those things there when I move, when I don't move, and when I see myself in the mirror. Painful reminders of how out of control my life had become, and how much more of a journey I have to go.

At least, I remind myself, I am on the right track. Life has been irrevocably changed. Failure is always a possibility but I doubt I could ever sit down to a cookie dough binge again in this lifetime.

Seven years ago I had a referral for gastric bypass surgery in my hand. I had the appointment in Scarborough booked. OHIP covered the surgery and any subsequent plastic surgery needed to take care of the drapes of skin that surgery leaves in its wake. I had my golden ticket.

But I didn't go.

I had to choose between that surgery and going back to college. Two very different ways to change my life. Two extremely valuable options. One very hard decision.

Now, while I curse the flab daily for existing, I know I made the right choice in picking my education. Thanks to that I have the career and life I want. If I had picked the surgery, I would still be miserable and stuck in some shitty job that I hated. And to be honest, I'd be willing to bet that I would have gained the weight back in no time flat.

Once in a while I need to remind myself that I am capable of making the right decision and that losing the weight this way is what I need to do. I need fight the fight and respect the experience so that I will never have to do it again. I am learning more this way than I ever could have by having my stomach altered.

Now if you will excuse me, I must cut this bout of insight short, for I have a cat knocking over all of my vhs tapes and another one clawing the shit out of my furniture.

xo
lb