The Fluffier Parts

The best thing about vacation is eating. Of course the museums and the historic statues are cool too, but the local cuisine is what I live for. Just after dinner every night, I'm planning where we're going to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner the following day. This behavior just didn't start one day. It's been like this since I was child. Heck, it was even worse then.

I grew up very overweight and just in case you're wondering, I weighed more than my father when I was 11 years old. As far as chubby (fluffy, rotund, pudgy) kids were concerned, I was legit. Food was comfort. Food was home. Food was safety. When boys made fun of me, I'd grab a jar of peanut better and a loaf of bread and hide under my bed until I was in a sugar coma and the pain went away. This dependency on food has never disappeared. I look at the scale every morning and vow to start again. Start the battle against the bulge. Yet again.

On vacation, there weren't any scales. Well, if I was being honest, I'd admit there was a scale in my hotel bathroom while in Australia, but I covered it with a bathmat. I knew I was eating a lot. I knew I was eating too much. But JD promised me we'd run it off the following day. Internet, I could've RUN BACK TO AMERICA and still not burned the calories I consumed. To be honest, though, I'm not sure I care.

I'm sitting in my office about to take off for the gym, but not without remembering the Australian pastries we ate late one night. Or the ice cream sundae we ordered to our hotel room in celebration of our last workshop. Or the multiple servings of Thai food in New Zealand. I've come to realize that while I may never look like the person I want to in my head, I also know that I'll never be okay with who I am on the outside, if I'm not okay with who I am on the inside. On this recent vacation, I tried to appreciate me. All of me. The thickness. The jiggle where it shouldn't. The parts I referred to as fluffy while growing up….that still remain fluffy. Everything is still there, but I'm working on it. And I'm trying to be okay with me. All of me.

**EDITED TO ADD**
I don't have very many pictures of me as a child. For one, my parents didn't own a camera, and, two, I avoided the lens like I avoided the Black Plague. I asked my my sister if she'd be okay with me posted the one photo I have of us during our awkward phase. There were moments when I was bigger, but for those who asked, this is me. Just fluffier.