Day 1, Ignorance is bliss and I wanted to be happy...

Have you ever had a "WOW" moment? That moment takes your breath away, when you finally SEE what other people see, what other people have told you your entire life. I will tell you, I had that moment on Friday March 26, 2010.

My mother worked for my family physician for 20 years. Well, I should say that the doctor my mother worked for became my family physician because he was too cheap to provide medical insurance for my mother and just thought he could take care of our medical needs. This is great until you need a cavity filled or hospital care...but I digress. Well, this physician moved to Florida to work in his sister's family practice and my mom has been asked to help pack up the office that she helped to establish. So, she gets to my chart and decides that it would be good for me to have my medical record. It was thin, a dozen pages or so, as I was a healthy kid.

I open the chart as if some secret answer is contained within its tattered pages. Over and over within its scant contents I see five letters that make my eyes sting with tears, put a quiver in my lip and make my heart hurt just a little; OBESE. At that one moment I made the decision to get rid of that word in my life. This moment made such an impression that I lost sleep and my brain began to work overtime to create a plan.

Over the next two days I proceeded to eat ramen noodles, hot dogs, pizza, bacon, fried fish, hush puppies, and chocolate chip cookies. Somehow the sting of those five letters had been soothed by very food that helped to create the label. How quickly my motivation was lost in a sea of comfort.

So, that old medical chart did contain a secret answer...The secret was that I was living a lie. I am fat. Not just fat but OBESE. I have said it and have written it for the world to see. I accept it, I embrace it and I will work for the next 365 days to get rid my future of the word OBESE.