I’ve made a pretty life changing decision. In all honesty, I’ve made such declarations before. However, this time it feels different. My life has become unmanageable in a lot of ways. I’m having surgery in a week for a meniscus tear in my knee, I have high blood pressure and who knows what unseen medical issues that may be brewing into an explosive and traumatic event in the future?

I still feel hopeful about life and living, but my body doesn’t match up with those aspirations. I’m limiting myself and perhaps my life span by carrying the weight that I am. I can no longer buy into the BBW mantra that “Big is Beautiful”. Perhaps, it is in a ‘we are the world’, “Kumbayah” kind of way, but my knees are telling me a different story. It’s telling me to wake the hell up!

I think about how this ever constant weight has hindered (not prevented) me from doing some of the things I like to do. I want to travel more, but I’m hindered when I tire out easily or skip certain events because I just can’t hack it. I’m missing out on life experiences because I have not conquered my hand to mouth disease.

I want to do so many things that I can’t presently do now. I want to run barefoot to lookout over the edge of the cliffs of Dover. I want to dogsled between the glaciers in Iceland. I want to lie still, close my eyes and feel the sun casting a warm glow over my body as I lay on the pink sandy beaches of the Bahamas. There is so much that I haven’t seen; that I don’t know and it would be a shame to be robbed of the chance because I couldn’t exercise restraint.

Today is my second week of living differently. I’ve found that it’s not so difficult to grasp the concept of eating to live rather than living to eat. I am enthused, energetic, excited about tomorrow and all of the tomorrows that will come after that. I don’t miss gorging myself even though this is supposed to be the most challenging time of this paradigm shift. It’s not difficult to remind myself that the life I am running to beats the life I am running from hands down.