Breaking Out

"Whale sighting!"

This is the voice I have to contend with in my head every time I look at myself in the mirror.

People often say that body image should never define how we see ourselves. We are more than the size of the clothes we wear or the number that flashes when we get on a scale.

The person who said that must have been a thin person. Or at the very least, someone who has never been fat.

I've been a yoyo dieter since I was 10 years old, when my mother first put me on her version of the South Beach diet because she felt I was growing too fat. Several cycles of weight loss and subsequent weight gain later, I am the heaviest I have ever been coming from the lightest I have ever been, and I am still reeling and wondering how I could have stumbled so far.

Because of inertia and an inner sense of hopelessness, I have been in denial about having to start another weight loss journey. It's hard to motivate myself when my experience constantly demonstrates that the quest is a futile one. I want to learn to be comfortable with myself as I am, fat rolls and back boobs be damned.

But I am not okay at all. Not by a long shot.