I DON’T KNOW WHAT MADE ME STEP ON the scale, but I knew I had to face the music. My weight was getting out of control since we’d moved to Nashville and then to Birmingham a year later. I swear the pointer circled around twice. How does this even happen? A scale has numbers that you think should be impossible for your body to reach, but mine had found a way.
I know the full armor of the Lord is heavy, but this was ridiculous.
I’ve never been completely honest about my weight. I’m not sure if I was ever taught to lie about my weight, or if it just came naturally to me. All Southern women know these three things: to monogram everything, complain about nothing, and keep your weight to yourself.
Lying about my weight started simply. Girls at school would be mortified when they hit three digits on the scale, but I couldn’t remember life in single digits. I think I was born 120 and it grew from there. As they were talking, I would have the same mortified look on my face but for a different reason.
My first true white lie was when I got my driver’s license. Height: five eight; weight: 125. You had to lie. After all, the first thing you do when you get your license is show off your picture. Everyone was going to see it! Plus, it wasn’t that big of a lie… I could buy a ThighMaster, get a stomach virus, or eat a tapeworm and get there.
No matter, that number was my number over the next four years.
When I renewed my license as a confident nineteen-year-old I boldly added five pounds to the number. I did the same at each renewal.
I tested my fate on my last renewal. The nice lady behind the counter said, “And are we changing your weight?” With fake confidence I proclaimed, “No! That weight is correct.” She looked me square in the face and said, “And that’s your business.”
It seems all of our moves to new cities had taken a bigger toll than I was ready to admit.
After fifteen years of living in Jackson, we realized that most of our friends lived there because their family lived there. We lived there because our family didn’t. We love our family, but there is something to be said for living close enough to visit but far enough away that you have to call before you come over. And as much as we loved Jackson, we could feel that it was time to move on.
One day, I was at Brent’s Drugs1 when I got a text from Tim.
Want to move to Nashville? he asked.
I was mentally at Home Depot buying moving boxes before I remembered to respond.
YES!!!!
Who wouldn’t want to live in Nashville?? The food… the music… the city… Did I mention the food? We up and moved, and the first six months felt like we were on vacation! I worked for Nashville Scene and Nfocus, so I had the inside scoop on all the best places to eat.
I also knew that the best cupcakes came from the Cupcake Collection, Noshville was my deli of choice, and I had just discovered millionaire’s bacon at BrickTop’s on West End Avenue when my coworker/girlfriend Marissa said, “Psst, act cool, but Scotty McCreery is sitting right behind you.”
My eyes got as big as soda bottles.
“Remind me what he sings.” Have you ever gotten so excited you forget everything you ever knew? I knew who Scotty McCreery was, but all my good sense left my body when I realized I was rubbing shoulders with a country music star.
Marissa leaned in and started crooning in a sexy, deep baritone about turning the lights down, like Josh Turner in his hit tune that Scotty sang when auditioning on American Idol.
She had barely sung “low” when I burst out laughing, so loud you would’ve thought I was at Josh Turner’s live concert. Now I can’t hear his voice without thinking about Marissa or millionaire’s bacon.
Scotty McCreery was my only brush with fame in Nashville, but I left completely educated about where to find good hot chicken, who had the best breakfast in town, and how every company should implement a “bagel Friday” if they want to keep morale high.
After six months of living in Nashville, “vacation mode” turned off and reality started setting in. We were realizing that this might be the best city to bust your diet but not where WE were meant to plant our roots.
We now joke that Jackson, Mississippi, was too small, and Nashville, Tennessee, was too big, but Birmingham, Alabama, is just right.
As it turns out, Birmingham is Nashville’s little cousin when it comes to food, and I was back on another vacation. I discovered SoHo Social, Heavenly Donuts, and Ashley Mac’s.
After a year of living in Birmingham, we knew we wanted to plant roots, so we bought a home and made it permanent. Once we were settled in our house, I had to get my new driver’s license, which is when I got the eyebrow about keeping my weight the same. Yes, I had enjoyed eating my way through great food cities, but food also numbed the stress of moving two small children across three states.
So, there I was on the scale, watching the pointer circle go around like the Big Wheel on The Price Is Right.
I spent a few months thinking, I am going to embrace this! There is a body-positive movement happening, and I will be part of it!
But I felt terrible. I had no energy, no self-esteem, and no pants that buttoned. I avoided every camera and mirror, thinking, Maybe I can love myself if I just never look at myself.
One afternoon, Tim found me crying in our bedroom, and I tried to explain that I’d never had to lose so much weight in my life. I didn’t know where to start. Through my tears, I said, “I’m trying so hard to be one of those larger women that loves themselves, but I can’t.”
I’ll never forget what Tim said in that moment: “I think you are beautiful, but if you don’t think you are beautiful, then we need to figure out how to help you see what I see.”
Those were the words I needed to hear. He didn’t judge me, and he didn’t try to fix me. He just loved me.
Weight now in the back seat, I focused on more energy, so I joined a gym. Not just any gym—I joined Orangetheory Fitness right next to my favorite place to buy honey-barbeque and lemon-pepper wings.
I would walk past the gym, watching people running on treadmills and wondering what it was like to do that workout and not die.
I signed up for a free class, and I had one request for Jesus: If I die, please have someone just roll my body to the back dumpster and leave me be. Don’t let them make a big fuss, and don’t let me make the news. My family already knows that this is how I would want it.
I did survive the workout, but my everything hurt. I was aching, sore, and weak, and when I tried to walk down the stairs, I fell directly on those steps. It was a special level of hurt I’d never felt before. My kids heard the noise and came to rescue me. I begged them to please look away. One leg was headed north, the other headed south, and my pride was in the gutter.
Someone suggested that the thing to do was to just keep working out, which sounded like a cruel thing to say. I needed a full-body cast, not more of the same. Still, I went back again and again and began to realize that I wasn’t the first person in the world with weight to lose, and I wouldn’t be the last. And that good things take time.
As time passed, I started standing taller, my clothes got looser, and the number on the scale mattered less and less. As I gained confidence, I stopped worrying so much about getting my old body back. I could lose all the weight in the world, but if I didn’t love myself, it wouldn’t matter. Which is good because I also learned that the most fun thing about losing weight in your forties is. that. you. can’t. I mean, you can… You just can’t do it fast.
1 Brent’s is anything but a drugstore, unless you consider burgers and shakes as medicine, and your drugstore was a set location for The Help.