Who Am I?

"Who is this girl," you wonder. Funny, I wonder that too. All the time, in fact.

I'm unsure if I know exactly who I am. I am a girl. A woman really, but I prefer to consider myself a girl. It kind of makes my frustration at my lack of accomplishments in my life a little less.

I'm pretty ordinary. I work in a cubicle somewhere in corporate America. I think the most unusual thing about me is that I love my job. Really, I do.

I wish I could say this is also unusual about me, but it isn't. I'm fat. I have been my whole life. Almost a year and a half ago, I started to diet. Well, that sort of implies that I haven't dieted before that, which is, of course, ridiculous. I am of the female persuasion, for heaven's sakes. Even if I weren't fat I would have spent most of my teenage years on diets. But I was fat, and still am. And so I have been to every nutritionist in the world (or so it feels.) I have been on more diets than most people know existed. Oddly enough, I actually sustained some of them.

But not permanently.

And that is what lead me to the state I was in a year ago. Lonely, wishing for someone to love, and of course, hating my body. I used to grab chunks of fat and imagine taking a knife and slicing it off.

It was a Tuesday when I weighed myself for the first time in years. I gasped: 283 pounds. When you weigh a good deal more than many of the people on The Biggest Loser, you know you are in trouble.

So I thought to myself, if none of the structured diets ever worked for me, maybe it's time to try lack of structure. And so, my new lifestyle was born.

It's been a heck of a ride since then. I've lost 73 pounds (as of this morning), but I have so much left to lose. I've been in a rut lately, both in life, and in dieting. I've been in a writing rut too. I hope to change that, starting now, starting today.

This time, I'm gonna do it. I hope you join me for the ride.