Preparing for the Journey

Hello. My name is Connie. I am 38 years old. I am a mother, wife, friend, and employee. At 5'9" and 291 pounds I am also morbidly obese.

Today for lunch I had an entire bag of Cheetos (regular size, not snack size), a 20oz Coke, and two Reese's cups. It was disgusting. I knew it was disgusting as I was eating it. Why didn't I stop?

I don't eat like this all the time. I really, honestly don't. But I don't eat well, either.

I want this to stop. I really do. I want to be thinner. At this point, I don't even need to be thin and fit. I'd settle for being just "overweight" instead of "morbidly obese."

I've tried losing weight before. I've lost and regained like most people do. I tried surgery. I tried drinking weight-loss shakes. I've tried exercise programs. I usually just end up feeling defeated.

A couple of years ago, one of my best friends gave me a necklace. It's designed to resemble a compass. On the back is a quote from Henry David Thoreau--"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams." I was wearing it today as I pigged out on Cheetos.

I like this quote because it doesn't promise that you will achieve your dreams, but you are encouraged to pursue them anyway. So even though every other weight loss attempt has failed, I'm going to try again.

I have some serious emotional issues with food. I know that. So I'm going to try to work on those instead of jumping right into counting calories or points or anything like that.

I also want this to be a positive place for me, so this post will be the last time I publicly shame myself with what I put in my mouth. I'm not going to lie and say everything is going great if it isn't. But I'm not going to drag out a list of everything I did wrong.

One of the first things I'm going to do is start exercising. I have a free gym membership with my job, but of course, I rarely use it. I'm going to go tonight and build that into a habit. I'm too fat and out of shape to do much other than walk on the treadmill, but that's better than nothing.

In order to encourage myself (since treadmills can be boring), I'm going to keep track of my miles until I've stored up enough miles to have walked to a destination.

I'm going to walk to Walden.

Mapquest says that from my home in northwest Tennessee to Walden Pond State Reservation in Massachusetts is 1307.51 miles by bicycle. They didn't have the option for walking, so I figured bicycling is the next best thing.

I'm going to do this. I'm going confidently in the direction of my dream.