I grew this avocado plant from a seed. It takes at least 10 years for an avocado plant to grow to maturity and start producing avocados, if it’s fertilized, if it lives that long, lots of different reasons and problems and issues can crop up. My body is very similar to this avocado tree… It is a slave to its environment, it is fragile and yet resielent in many ways. It is growing. 

The difference is, while I cheer on my little tree, I berate and hate my body for growing the way it has for the past two years. I don’t want to body-shame myself, but I cannot go on with the body that I have in its current state. 
Over the past week I have asked for advice about losing weight and gotten responses ranging from helpful to Bizzarre. While I understand respecting someone’s wish to change their body I am a little bit perturbed by the fact that not a single person said that I had a reasonable and beautiful body just the way that it was. It seems that everybody agrees with me that my body should be reviled and rejected. Maybe I’m being too harsh but it wouldn’t kill them all to take a moment and let me know that even though I wasn’t happy with myself the way that I luck I wasn’t wrong or bad or unappealing. Of course I do agree with everyone that I should be working out more and eating better. I do agree with everyone that it takes effort to change one’s body and that effort is something that I wish I had inside myself more accessibly. 

I have started workout programs over and over again and always quit them, with the exception of doing soccer when I was very young and very committed to the sport. I’ve always been naturally thin and it was something that I took for granted until a couple of years ago when my body chemistry and my medications pushed me over the line pass 200 into a weight that I am wholly uncomfortable with. Just for example, my husband is 6’4″ and he weighs about as much as I do. That’s not sexy that’s not cool that’s not who I want to be. I want to be able to fit into my wedding dress that I wore only five years ago, I want to wear my wedding ring that fit me a year ago. I feel so fucking helpless that I get all this good advice from people and don’t follow through and then I end up complaining about my own situation. It makes me feel like a worthless piece of crap.

My ultimate goal is to get down to 170 within a year and a half, through diet and exercise (bikram yoga and cardio and possibly weight training)…. It takes 10 years to make an avocado tree, I think it will take about a year and a half to make a better me. Now I just have to keep myself from hating myself the entire time that I am not where I would like to be. Patience is the key to this, patience and self-love. I really do think that I can do better. Without the effort of growing a tree we would never have the fruits of our labor. 

I want guacamole.

Goodnight, loyal reader.