Blast From the Fat Past

I ran a fun all women’s 10K yesterday, but I’m not going to write about that (though I always enjoy races that I refer to as “All chicks, no d**ks”).  In fact, until yesterday I was going to have 7 races in 8 weeks; last night it became 8 races in 9 when I signed up for a 20 mile marathon training run with NY Road Runner on July 28^th.  I’m not going to write about any of those, either.  Today’s blog topic is about an email I wrote to a friend six years ago.

Let me set the scene: It was 2006.  My husband, 14 month old daughter, and I had just moved to New York with our two cats.  My son wasn’t even sperm yet.  I left a job I had loved for one I – didn’t (and to my current coworkers who are reading this and are flabbergasted, pick your jaws up off the ground.  I didn’t start working there until 2007.  Geesh).  I couldn’t make a friend if I stood on a street corner waving a $100 bill (well, I may have made a friend doing that, but that wasn’t the kind of friend I was looking for).  So, I made friends with people I knew wouldn’t let me down: Ben & Jerry, Wendy, Denny, Arby, you get the idea.  And the pudgy woman who moved from Boston to New York got FAT.

A few months after we moved, I was completely disgusted with myself.  It was summer, and I wouldn’t wear shorts and tank tops for fear that I’d walk down the street and someone coming towards me would use their hands to block their view of me while screaming, “My eyes!  My eyes!”  I started researching diets online, and found one I had never heard of: The Sonoma Diet.  I couldn’t find much on it except that it was based on the Mediterranean diet, and that I could eat a lot of meat.

I have a friend, Bethany, who is about 9 years younger than me and therefore infinitely more tech savvy.  She’s also the kind of person who is both interesting and interested, so she reads about a lot of different stuff and always knows at least something about everything.  So, I emailed her and asked her if she’d ever heard of the Sonoma Diet.  An excerpt from my email is below:

“I'm so disgusted with myself and my weight.  I'm wearing winter clothes in the summer because they are the ones I have that fit.  They look horrible, but I won't buy new clothes because I'm scared of what size I am.”

In typical Bethany fashion, she researched the diet, didn’t come up with much, and then very gently suggested I try Weight Watchers.  My reply:

“I was going to join ww online, but I just didn't love it.  The points and the measuring are a pain, and the core system seems way too easy to cheat on.”

In the email exchange with Bethany, I mentioned that I had 40 pounds to lose.  Forty.  The email trail ends after a few more exchanges on the topic, but I remember what happened next.  It just wasn’t the right time for me to do Weight Watchers, so I tried the Sonoma Diet. I spend a TON of money buying lots of expensive food, and trying to cook it all in my postage-stamp sized kitchen.  And I lost a few pounds at first.  But, then I didn’t.  It was too difficult to cook such a fancy dinner every night when my girlfriend Wendy was happy to invite me over for a Double Classic and a Frosty.  So, I gained back those pounds -- plus 30 more.  Yes, some of that was pregnancy weight from my son, Benjamin, but regardless it was still weight I had to lose.  By 2008, I knew my clothing size because at that point I was fantasizing about being small enough to fit into the clothes that were merely tight back in 2006.  So, as a last ditch effort, I joined Weight Watchers.

I won’t bore you with the details.  I think you all know what happened.  I became a runner, triathlete, coach, and signed up for 8 races in 9 weeks.  I lost 70 pounds and found myself.

I’ll be honest.  I didn’t keep that email.  Bethany did.  She sent it to me last week, with a message on the top that said,

“This thread popped up from 2006. I thought you might enjoy reading just HOW FAR you've come in 6 years!!!”

With Bethany’s permission, I’m sharing this email with you, for one simple reason.  Sometimes the right thing comes our way, but at the wrong time.  It’s OK to dismiss it then, but keep it in the back of your mind.  At some point it will be the right time for that right thing, and you don’t want miss out on it when that happens.  You might just give yourself an opportunity to change the rest of your life.

Thanks for the email, Bethany.