A Critical Place in my Weight Loss

"The light is critical: of me, of this long-dreamed, involuntary landing on the arm of an inland sea." (from Adrienne Rich's poem, "Integrity")

I am aware that I am moving through a "critical" passage in my journey. How is it best to describe it...? but to acknowledge a deep hurt attached to the weight number representing 166 pounds.

It happened on Christmas Day (1995)...presents wrapped, all 3 children were in their Sunday best (the little girls' hair combed and brushed up with ribbons), I had been VERY busy, working hard in the kitchen, baking and cooking (roasting a turkey to take over to my ex-in-laws' home). And when my ex-husband got up from sleeping in, I wrapped my arms around him and said, "Merry Christmas, I Love You." The deep hurt was caused by his reply because you see, words are powerful. He said, "Yeah, but after all of this is over, you're going to have to lose some weight!" I weighed 166 on that Christmas morning.

That happened twenty years ago, yet I am aware that I have allowed my own resistance to his hurtful words to be an obstacle in my weight loss journey. And my inner critic whispers, are you just looking for some justification? And so with this writing, I acknowledge that I have an inner critic too. In January of 2007, I began my weight loss journey weighing 256 pounds and I lost 90 pounds, down to 166. I have not reached my weight loss goal to weigh 152 pounds yet. I have been examining why I stopped at the number, 166?

On January 2nd of this year, I weighed 197.1 and I worked hard this year and with the support of my fitness partner, IUSBDEB, encouragement from HILLRUNNER, phone conversations with INDYGIRL and the BLC27 challenge to lose weight. Last Wednesday's weigh-in for the current BLC28 challenge was 168.8.

I am aware that I am finding myself in what I can only describe as a critical "place" in my journey and desire to weigh 152.

And so I've been pondering something I read on Spark several months ago:

"Limitations only exist if you let them."

My desire is to remove this limitation associated with weighing 166. My desire is to move past this obstacle that I have been holding onto as a hurt-filled excuse. My desire is to arrive at my weight loss goal of 152. I'm so close.

AFTERTHOUGHT: The date on my START page here in Spark was set for May 31, 2015 to arrive at 152. I changed it to show August 12, 2015 which is the final weigh-in for this BLC 28 round.