Becoming someone else

I am becoming someone else. 

I am changing myself from a couch potato into a runner.  Not as deep and  philosophical of a change as it might be, but still it seems like a pretty darn big change to me.

For my whole life I have been:
The chubby one.
The younger sister.
The silly/goofy one.
The blonde one.

I now want to be:
The fit one.
The one who runs races.
The nice one.
The friendly one.

I know life is not a competition,  and it about more than just the way you are perceived by other people.  But, that is how we judge ourselves most of the time.  I am this person because that is who people think I am.  If that is flattering than that is all the better, if it is not it can guide us to where we need to change.   I have never been very athletic.  My parents did a good job of involving me in sports and trying to keep me active while I was growing up.  They did well and my whole adolescence I don't think I ever surpassed pleasantly plump.  When I went out on my own however, I found myself without the external encouragement to keep myself active that I had grown up with and soon found myself with a BMI of obese.

While I have been able to successfully lose weight, and have been able to maintain most of the weight loss I achieved, I am in a position that is all to familiar to far too man women who have lost significant weight before.  I have gained some of it back.  It was a shock and a horror to realize that as of August of this year I was 50 pounds heavier than I was two years ago.  There are some excuses I could use to explain where that weight came from, life has not been a bed of roses these last two years.  But that is an excuse.  I don't want to keep making excuses for why I am not as good as I could be.  I just want to be good.

I am grateful that I have not had to walk the path that so many women have, and say I gained it all back plus some more.  But really, that is a small comfort to me right now.  Any significant gain after losing 90 pounds.  Well hell, it more than half the weight back on my body.  I did not go through the torture of losing that weight once just to keep putting myself right back there every few years.

So to that end I have lost 17 pounds so far, but I have hit a wall.  I haven't lost any significant amount of weight in the last month or greater (I can't bring myself to look at the numbers and see just how long it has been, but it has been long enough) and I am at a crossroads.

I could give up.  Be happy with myself just the way I am and try to maintain my weight right where it is (knowing that it will just creep slowly back up).  Or, I can press on.  I have not been very good at this in the past, went life gets tough, I get ice cream. 

But this is how change happens.  It is not pretty, or comfortable, or even enjoyable in the moment.  But,  if I can make it through this change and push through to the other side I get to see what happens next. 
Do I loose more weight?
Do I get in shape? 
Do I run for enjoyment and finally see what this runners high people talk about is really all about? 

Or do I go back to my good old reliable size 12 jeans, sit on the couch and bask in the familiar, the comfortable and the safe?

Change doesn't happen without discomfort, so here I am, basking in the sheer discomfort of it all.  I am trying to be someone else.