If you look on the right hand side bar, you’ll see a section titled “My Goal Rewards”. Throughout my weight loss, I’ve set rewards for every 10 lbs. lost and I will continue to do so. Over the years, I earned a Columbia fleece, a new pair of shoes, an iPod, my favorite lotions, and a lot of other things! Looking at it all together it looks pretty expensive! But it was over a long period of time and well worth it for the incentive.
I came within a couple of pounds of meeting my 198 goal reward which was to go to an amusement park and ride all of the rides. I have always felt like I was too heavy to participate in a lot of activities like this. Afraid of the looks I would receive if I couldn’t fit in the seat or something of the like. Had this ever happened to me? No, but I think it’s a fear that most overweight people have.
We wanted to go to an amusement park last year and we kept putting it off because I was so close to my goal and I needed to “earn” it. And this year, I am so much farther from that goal and decided that enough was enough. I wasn’t going to let a number on the scale keep me from living life.
So we went to am amusement park this past weekend. I rode every roller coaster at the park. I hated every single minute of it but I was brave enough to do it. I learned that roller coasters are not for me and I really don’t care if I never go on one again.
But I lived. I always wanted to go and I did it. Discovering that I didn’t really enjoy it is ok! Now I know. I did enjoy the water rides a lot though. I also put on my swim suit and enjoyed floating around in a tube in the lazy river of the attached water park. I may be embarrassed of my weight, but I’m not going to let it stop me from living any more.
An interesting part of this trip is that I saw quite a few people larger than me. I saw a couple of women struggle to lift their legs to climb into a raft. I saw the people in line in front of me snicker as they watched the women struggle and I wanted to make them feel how ashamed those women must have felt. It’s not funny. It’s heart breaking. And this is probably why I had avoided going to an amusement park while overweight. People are cruel.
I wish people would consider the fact that they don’t know the whole story before they decide to judge every obese person they see. More than likely, there’s a deep struggle and lots of anguish going on inside past the layers of fat. It’s never ok to laugh at others for their struggles. Some struggles are visible and others aren’t. Some of our struggles are just a lot more obvious.
But no matter how obvious the struggle, it’s important to be alive. It’s important to experience the thrills of life. What good is a life if it’s spent not truly living but only surviving.
I choose to live NOW, even as I struggle to improve my life and become the person that I want to be. There might not be a tomorrow and I am choosing to live today.
