How many Decembers have I made resolutions to lose weight? How many times have I sat down with a calculator and figured out how much I would weigh next Christmas if I lost five pounds a month, ten pounds a month, two pounds a week? How often have I thought about what size my next holiday dress would be, and how it would feel to walk into Christmas dinner wearing it. The looks on the faces of people who haven't seen me for a year would be well worth the starvation and pain.
I can remember promising myself that I wouldn't be fat at 16, 18, 21, 30 and now here I am. I'll be forty in less than four years and the internal promises to not be fat and forty have already started. I've managed to keep off about fifteen of the pounds I lost last year. If I add fifteen a year for three years, that's sixty pounds. Not perfect, but 265 is much better than 325. Right? Right?
Maybe if I had some catastrophic health problem that required weight loss this would be easier and the whining and excuses would stop. If I was diabetic or had high blood pressure maybe. And how much more sick is it to wish that I was sick just so that I could be skinny.
This year is different. They all are. This year I will exercise. This year I will stop eating crap that doesn't serve me. This year... this year... this year. Maybe the under-the-breath comments from my students about my weight will be the catalyst this year. Or maybe it will be an ever failing world and the need to be fit to survive in it. Maybe this year I'll stop eating meat because the US feeds enough grain to livestock to feed all the hungry in the world and then some. Maybe I'll finally keep up with taking my vitamins, even though they make me gag, because I'm tired of being tired. Maybe I'll stop blaming stress and start blaming all those McValue Meals. Maybe this year my health will become a priority before those catastrophic illness do find me.
Maybe next year I'll finally have a December where my first resolution is not "lose 100 pounds."
