Impossibilities

Each day I wake up I can’t believe how amazing my life is. I have a great job with an amazing boss, three beautiful and healthy children, a spouse who consents to live with me even though we both know I’m crazy, and a body I would kill for. Let me rephrase that, I did kill for it. Hello, my name is Margaret and I am guilty of murdering the old me.

That is me on the right with my brother and sister back in the Spring of 2010. When my sister posted this picture on the internet I died a small death. I was humiliated. This picture forced me to face a truth about myself I was unwilling to acknowledge. I was morbidly obese. 310 pounds to be exact.

Have you ever needed something so badly that you let it take complete control of your life? And even though you knew it was ruining you, you still couldn’t stop? I hope you don’t know how that feels because it is miserable. There are many cliches I could insert at this point but I won’t. I’ll only say that moving was difficult at best. I used my children to fetch things for me because it was so hard to get up. I accepted my life because I knew I couldn’t change. I knew I was wholly addicted to food and I could not wrap my mind around living without the foods I loved. I used to say life wasn’t worth living without {insert specific food item}. And that’s just the way it was.

And then one day someone called me out. They decided not to pretend I wasn’t heavy. They told me I was less than a person because of my weight. And it hurt. A lot. And I was very angry. I was angry at the person but I was also angry at me. I knew that even though I ate everything I wanted I was still empty inside. Food did not fill the void. It only left me wanting more. So I decided to try to lose weight. I knew I lacked discipline so I prayed that God would teach me how to discipline myself. I wanted to change the way I lived my life–not just how I ate–though that is where I started. I embarked on the impossible journey never imagining I would succeed but knowing I had to try.

How do you face your worst enemy when your worst enemy is yourself? I know someone who likes to say that fat people should just stop eating. It’s so easy, right? Well that person had to live with me for the first 30 days I vowed to stop eating sugar. I went through tremendous withdrawals for 2 weeks and was completely miserable. Oh, and I also gave up eating fast food and high fat food at the same time. That was fun. I remember sitting in my cube at work crying because I refused to allow myself a homemade chocolate chip cookie one of my co-workers brought in. It seems silly, doesn’t it? Crying over cookies. But that’s how serious it was and still is. Oh, did I forget to mention that I’m still addicted to food and always will be? Food is my drug of choice.

But I made a decision not to give up. I realized my behavior was sin and made a conscious decision not to sin with my body any longer. I put a verse up in my kitchen over the sink and memorized it.

Romans 6:12-14. “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as intruments of wickedness but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master because you are not under law but under grace.”

I wanted to be set free, but being free meant dying to the old me. The good news is, God did set me free. This is me today.

To date I have lost 135 pounds. I didn’t go on a diet. I changed my life.

This blog is about my journey to better health. I still struggle to maintain the weight I have lost and I continue to fight my addiction to food. But even on my worst days, when I cave in and eat things I know are bad for me, I know what I knew when I began; food will never fill the void. It will never make me happy. The only difference between me now and me then is this simple fact, I no longer believe the lie that losing weight is impossible. I no longer believe the lie that I cannot fight my flesh.

My name is Margaret and I am a food addict redeemed by the grace of God.