Shorts, Then and Now

Well, I haven't been doing so well on the eating front and I'm hoping for some magic bullet to instill motivation in me.  Yes, I completely understand that it all has to come from me, but sometimes something happens that tips the scale in the motivated direction and things sort of fall into place, eating-wise.

I took this nice picture a few days ago of Shorts, Then and Now. The pair on the right are the ones I was wearing two summers ago.  They are a fine-wale, lightweight corduroy and they are the best shorts I've ever owned and I've had them for years.  They are wearing out, actually.  I realize they are very short, but I actually have quite short legs so the shorter shorts work best on me.  Well, they do when I'm normal weight.

The shorts on the left are the ones I'm wearing now.  They are made of a stretchy cotton polyester blend and reach almost to my knees.  They are of course elastic-waisted.  They used to be sort of a joke pair of shorts just for the fact that they were so hideously and stereotypically awful, ones that I might wear for exercise, but now I've gained to the point where I actually have to wear them.  Like out in the world.  When my daughter's friend's mother came to pick her up yesterday, I had to stand there and talk to her wearing these shorts.  What was disheartening was how little I cared. 

I know people are often in denial about their weight, but I do think something odd is going on.  Perhaps I'm entering menopause or have a thyroid condition or my metabolism has ground to a halt, but I have never in my life put on weight so quickly.  It's like there is no margin for error.  I can struggle to take off the weight, but a few slip-ups and it's BACK, immediately.  There is no grace period.  It's weird, and it's never been this way before.

I actually had my thyroid levels done a few months ago and they were "normal" and my doctor sternly told me that she was NOT going to put me on thyroid medicine to lose weight.  So there.  She always rags on me about my weight, but graciously deigned to give me a pass this time because my husband had a heart attack in August so I guess she saw my weight gain as "justified".  Strange.  I guess she "gets" stress eating, but my husband's heart attack actually has had little to do with this because I was well on my way to gaining way before that particular event.  She wanted to see me again in only 6 months instead of a year because she was concerned about my weight gain and that I "couldn't get to 180".  Well, the 180 train has already left the station!  UGH. 

Well, wish me luck.  This is hard, way hard, and I'm teetering on the edge of just giving up. 

GET IT BACK!