Running Away

Once upon a time, I used to run.

I was never a competitive runner, but a friend in college helped take some of the mystery out of it and I started to love running.

It has been a very long time since I considered myself any kind of runner, probably close to ten years. And now I wish desperately that I never would have stopped.

It is easy to say that time is what is keeping me from picking up running again, but that wouldn't be the whole truth.

The whole truth is that I'm overweight and I almost can't bear the thought of running because I hate the idea of what I look like when I run.

I know that that kind of thinking isn't getting me anywhere fast. And I also realize another blog post about a woman hating her body is less than original. But it has really been weighing on my mind lately (ugh, no pun intended) and it is something I never talk about anymore. I'm very conscious of my daughter and I don't want to pass my insecurities on to her. I would never write about this on my regular blog either.

If I could safely run in the dark, in the middle of the night, so no one would see me, that would be ideal. I feel like I have a fit person inside of me still, I haven't given up forever, but I do sort of feel like I've given up for the time being.

I worry all the time that people are judging me because I'm heavy. I worry about seeing old friends I haven't seen in a long time. I worry about meeting some of the people I've gotten to know through the blogging community because apparently I think they wouldn't like me if they realized that I was fat.

I have a bunch of old journals from college (when I was fairly fit) and I routinely wrote about how disgusted I was with myself and how fat I felt among my group of friends. Reading those things now makes me both sad and angry at how pathetic I sounded. If I was overweight then, it wasn't by much. Looking back, I'm sorry I felt that way. Now I feel like I'm absolutely justified in hating my body and I would do a lot to get the one from ten years ago back. Or even five years ago.

I feel like having kids wrecked my body. Which is a lame excuse because there are plenty of mothers with many more children than I have who are not fat.

I worry that I'll be an embarrassment to my children when they are older.

I think there are some relatively simple changes I could make that might make a big difference, but I'm worried I'll change those things and they won't make a difference and it makes me scared to try.

In high school and college I had a less than healthy relationship with food. I was never clinically diagnosed or treated for an eating disorder but there were lots of times that I didn't eat nearly enough and lots of other times that I hid food and then binged and purged. I am scared to try to diet now because I feel like I don't know how without letting it get out of control.

I feel like these are ridiculous things for a 31-year-old woman to deal with. For a long time I thought I had my "issues" behind me, but apparently that's not true at all.

I'm nursing right now, so I am not trying to diet or lose weight. I did lose weight, right after Keegan was born, without trying (breastfeeding side effect, I think). But once I'm finished nursing, I feel like I have to do something, make some changes.

Part of the reason I'm writing this here is that I want to get it out, but I don't think very many people will read it, which is fine with me. I don't even want to write about this in my paper journals because I'm afraid my husband would find it and read it and I would be so embarrassed and ashamed. But if you are reading, and you want to leave a comment, please don't leave me dieting tips -- that's not what I'm looking for right now. I just need an outlet.

And also an invisibility shield, so I can take up running again.