Instructions for how to begin not being doomed

1) Purchase several hypnosis tapes by certain cockney hypnotists and go around repeating the phrase, "eat smaller portions of healthier food." All day. 2) Buy masses of exercise equipment and gear, but only purchase it if a) it's either really cheap or really expensive and b) it says "...in just minutes a day..." AND "...No Back Breaking _____" somewhere on the box. 3) Buy a whole library of books that tell you not to eat carbs. Or not to eat fats. Or not to eat anything but cookies. Buy a book that will help you learn portion control by keeping a food scale in your coat pocket. Sign up for 15 different web sites where you can track your calorie intake, record your calorie output, read articles about the best ways to burn, limit, eradicate or banish calories from your life.
4) Give up and get yourself a bucket sized portion of triple chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and chocolate sauce.

That is how it all began for me, anyway. That and Facebook. I had joined a group and made a comment, to which someone responded despite the fact that I looked remarkably like a certain over sized, pack bred, scent hound in my profile picture. It turned out Fred (or so I will call him) was a really nice fellow. We chatted amicably. He friended me, I accepted. I liked him. I started wondering what it would be like to be with him, and that thought was immediately followed by another question as to what Fred would think if my 277 pound self actually posted a picture - and not the one I'd taken during the New Year's Eve party that year I turned 25 and was on the grape fruit tomato juice diet for 6 months.
What would happen if he ever actually Saw a picture. He would surely stop flirting with me, maybe even unfriend me. So I took matters into my own hands and stopped flirting with him before he had the chance.
Then I went on a trek. It was the first trek I'd made since my failed attempt to lose weight with foot long Subs and a palates video. I was going to change my body if it killed me. Heck, I was already on the road to perdition - or at least an early grave - things couldn't be much worse.
So it started with the hypnosis CD. And, although I found it helpful, it did not, in fact cause me to lose weight immediately and irreversibly. What it did do was plant a picture in my head of something I remember seeing (not as if in a dream but in fact clear as day) - a visualization of me, about a size 6 or 8, standing in front of the mirror in a red dress. I can't say what, if anything that CD did for me, but it did put that image in my mind: me, size 6, red dress. I could see it so clearly it was as if it were reality.
And then I discovered it actually Was reality. That was the way I really was inside. I was beautiful inside. I was radiant and happy and friendly and all those things I'd seen right there in that mirror. And I'll be darned if my inner self wasn't wearing that red dress, too.
When I reached the mid point of my healthy BMI range I went on a quest to find that dress. The after picture on this blog shows me wearing it. It is a size 8. I wear it all the time, even though I've had to have it taken in.
I will probably wear it until it falls to pieces. After that I will have it taken apart and replicated.
What I learned from the red dress in the mirror, though, was that if I could make the long, long stretch of the imagination from what seemed impossible (i.e. that I would ever lose so much as a pound again) to the fact that it might not be impossible (i.e. The belief that it would be difficult, require a lot of hard work and sacrifice not to mention time but was, nonetheless, however distantly, possible), it was a short hop from not-impossible to possible.
And as the pounds began to come off, and I on my trampoline pictured me in my red dress, and on my walks and while I was standing in front of the fridge and at the grocery store and wherever else, conjured up the image of me in my dress, I began to think more and more in terms of not merely possible but probable. And from there to certainty.
And then I bought the dress. Right off the rack. From a designer boutique.
And it was real because at some point I began to expect it to be real. At some point I knew it would. And it has stayed real because I do not expect it to disappear like a wisp of smoke.
So it all began, as I have learned as if I had learned no more than one thing on this whole journey: that what you get is what you expect. And if you expect a size 6 red dress you will, one day, find yourself wearing one.

I am going to be buried in that red dress. No matter how out of style it is 80 years from now.