I'm in a pickle.

The only fat I can't completely accept seems to be my own.

I've been okay with myself for a number of years now. I weighed 170 or thereabouts for most of my adult life, and it felt like "me". Clothing and trying to attract the romantic partners I wanted occasionally led me to grumble about wanting to be just a size or two smaller, but I've never in my life tried to be - or even really wanted to be- a "normal" size. In 1998 I met my soulmate, and after that only my steadily-ballooning boobs and the near-impossibility of walking into a store and buying pretty, comfortable, well-fitting bras would regularly bring me to tears wishing I had the willpower to diet myself down to some prior size-- invariably a size that had seemed huge at the time but would now be more than acceptable.

Then I turned 40. A lot of things happened that year, not the least of which was opening a store with my husband and getting an office job I go to during the day. For the last 15 months I've been working in an office that has a big, irresistible box full of candy from which we refill the hospitality candy dish, as well as a number of women who love to bake and bring treats for others, and where conferences and meetings are typically over-catered and the leftovers delivered to our office for consumption. To top it off, the hours we work at the store have created a "Super Size Me Diet" for my husband and me, where dinner every night is some kind of takeout, and breakfast/lunch on the weekends as well. We simply have no time to cook, we're only home long enough to sleep, and there are only so many damn Lean Cuisines a person can eat.

To make a long story short? I've gained 35 pounds in a year- and I'm horrified. That's 20% of my previous weight, and I'm only 5' tall. I hate the way I look, I hate the way it feels. My body doesn't know what to do with this much extra baggage piled on so quickly, and it's rebelling in the form of swollen ankles and pain in my knees. I'm not feeling judgemental about it, or depressed, or unattractive (ok, I hate the new jutting belly and the big round double chin, but still!) but I also don't feel like me.

The solution? I'm breaking my several-years-long resolution never to diet again (we all know most diets fail- and of the ones that "succeed" something like 95% of the people regain the weight plus more within 5 years) and drastically cutting back on sugar and thinking hard about what to get when we get food evenings and weekends. I can feel justified in that because all that refined sugar is terrible for anyone, and so is the fast-food junk food. So it's not really a DIET diet, like Atkins or something. I'm just eating healthier. I know the BFB folks would totally vilify me for this because weight loss is the intention, but fuck it I want to feel like ME again! We also joined a gym that's only 5 doors down from our store so going is easy- just hop over, change clothes, work out and back to work! Hopefully that will help, and can't help but be good for me. If you look up the word "sedentary" in the dictionary, my picture is there. We're working so much that taking the dog for a mile walk is a big event. I mean really big, like we've done it about twice. So stay tuned-- I've lost my Feistyness and turned into a dieting sheep, but maybe I can make you laugh once in a while along the way. That would make it worth it.