Oprah’s Admission and My Confession
As I was watching the much anticipated Oprah’s Best Life epsiode in which she discussed her 40 pound weight gain, I felt as if she was telling a part of my life’s story as well. As someone who has be overweight half of my life, I felt a sense of freedom and relief from the shame and disappointment that I have carried around with me for years.
As an O, The Oprah Magazine subscriber, I noticed that there weren’t any full body cover shots of her and never did I speculate that she was afraid for people to see a bigger image of her body at this stage in her life. Nor did I ever think I’d here her say that she was ashamed to be seen in public. I could certainly identify with her because as they say, a pictures is worth a thousand words and my pictures would tell the story of how my weight fluctuated from a size 14 to a size 18/20 and at my heaviest a size 22; which happened to be short-lived because I simply could not afford to buy a new wardrobe.
For many years New Year’s resolution used to be to lose weight and after many unsuccessful years I had pretty much given up on making resolutions at all. As an infomercial junkie, I’ve ordered enough work out DVDs and equipment to have a home gym. But what’s the use of having it if you don’t use it, right? When ordering the latest workout product I really believed that it would be the one that would turn my life around. But after a few workouts I’d soon be so over it. My treadmill was converted into an expensive clothes hanger, my DVDs collected dust on the shelf, my fitness ball became a chair for company to sit on when visiting and a toy for my nephew, niece, and young cousins to play kick ball with.
After all these years, I have learned that you can’t focused on one superficial event at a time. Losing weight, and most importantly, keeping it off is part of a total lifestyle change. I have had many weight loss goals in my life and many of them revolved around a major event such as the prom, my high school graduation, my college graduation, or attending a wedding, and after losing a bit of weight for these events, I’d be back to my old ways again.
As my ten year high school reunion approaches, I realized that I’ve been crying this same sad song for over a decade and I asked myself will I ever change. My attempts at losing weight are just plain sad and laughable because I know in my heart that I never truly have given my all. My goals have been shallow and half-ass, err, quarter-assed since I’m being honest here. My reasons for losing weight has been to find nice clothes and shoes but it recently hit me that I need to lose weight because I need a strong and healthy body. I’m putting my health on the top of my priority list and I hope that you’ll join me and do the same.
I was touched and inspired after watching this episode. Were you touched after viewing the episode? Were you inspired to make lifestyle changes of your own? Tell me about it.
