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Today I went to Zumba again for the first time since surgery and having dropped 53 pounds. For some reason I thought that I would be more graceful and more able to swing my hips and do my thing but I'm still gonna have to work on that. Thank god I 'dance' in the back of the class! Before I dropped this weight I had actually gotten pretty good at Zumba, but now I feel like my body is going nuts. My center of gravity is shot to hell, I drop everything and I just generally feel off. Not bad, as I actually feel pretty good, but different. Lighter, in some ways, and both stronger and weaker in others. I feel like I have a greater range of movement without all the previous fat globbed onto my bones, but I kinda feel like I'm 13 again and had just grown 3 inches overnight. Where do all the knees and elbows go?!? I sometimes find myself shocked when I can sit cross-legged in a chair that I use to wedge myself into. Or when I cross my legs without thinking. Or when I put on that shirt that hasn't fit in 3 years. Little blasts of shocked pleasure and then I remember that my body is radically different right now. I almost feel like I'm going through puberty and having to relearn a drastically changing body landscape. Just today I realized that I needed a smaller sports bra. Of course, this realization happened during a particularily energetic Zumba song, but I was still surprised as I often remember it being almost too tight. Strange. I catch myself on those memories fairly frequently. I also wonder what my body is going to feel like in another 90ish pounds when I get down to my goal weight. I sometimes feel like my body is melting away around me (totally not complaining!!) while my mind is off somewhere in an Irish pub singing bawdy sailor songs only to come back to a totally redocorated house. It's strange, and lovely, but so very confusing at the same time.

Just a short note. Who knows when I'll get back to this. I've gained weight since my DH's death. I won't blame anyone else but myself. I had a long talk with my therapist and we finally hit upon the catchphrase that seems to define how I'll lose all this weight-- I CHOOSE. I'm a control freak whose life spiraled out of control the day my poor Randy died. Since then, I've made decisions where I felt there was no other option. For over a year, I had to decide based on bad vs good, not which one suited me. Finally, my therapist (Dr Marty Groble, for those in the Jacksonville area) pointed out that what went into my mouth was one of the few things I had a direct choice in making. Well, my Band-Buds, it was an epiphany. There was my point of control, and I've been reveling in it for a couple of weeks. I've lost five pounds because I can look at the chocolate vs the peach and say "I choose the peach because I choose health." I have chosen to start walking again when possible. I've chosen to begin quilting again rather than sit on my butt playing mindless computer games. I've made so many choices, I'm smiling again. Even the house I had to move into when Randy's death forced me into foreclosure is no longer a point of resentment and negativity. I've chosen to make it work rather than move to something less congenial if prettier. Sure, this is a 2-bedroom house 30 miles from my job. It's in a gorgeous neighborhood with a park, as familiar and comfortable as my favorite pair of blue jeans, and it's cheap. I can have my pets here. An apartment close to my work would cost $200 more a month and we'd have to get rid of our pets. "We??" you ask? Yep, we. That gent who gave me the pearl ring? I chose not to marry him, but we're a happy pair of roommates. I chose him, too. Lena

I am a food addict. Or should I say I have an addictive personality. If I enjoy something I have an intense drive to over do it. I don't know why this is, but I am working really hard to fix it. I. AM. NOT. PERFECT. But, I will admit I have problems in my head and I need to fix them. I am posting the 12 Steps of Addiction Recovery. Know them, learn them, live them. The 12 Steps Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs Where I found this information: http://www.12step.org/ Source: The 12 Steps Of Addiction Recovery