No you really are better off starting somewhere else

Just after college I was dating an Irishman named Liam. Liam was such a friendly, open person that everywhere he went he would get asked for restaurant recommendations, advice, directions; he was like a walking information booth. Either because he was tired of being asked or because the Irish just like to have a good laugh at the expense of lost tourists, Liam had a pre-programmed response he would use whenever people asked him for directions.
"Excuse me," a hapless visitor would ask in an American accent, "Can you tell me how to get to the Octoberfest?"
And Liam would answer in an exaggerated cross between west country Leprechaunese and genuine Dublin brogue: "Aye," (wink, nod), "but your best not startin' out from here."
There would be a nod and that special computing look people get when they are deciding whether what you've just said is the wisest, or indeed the stupidest thing they've ever heard.
And the answer would invariably be, (I am not making this up, and really no one ever, ever had a better reply than this, no matter how much computing had clearly gone on in between)
"Well, could you tell me where I should start from, and how to get there?"

There is, of course, no sensible answer to the question "where shall I best start from and how do I get there from here." When you are staring down years upon years of built up food issues, muscles that don't want to carry your weight further than the distance from the couch to the freezer full of ice cream, and a 100+ pound journey ahead, you can't help wondering where on earth you might ever start.

Whether you are losing 10 pounds or a hundred, the task ahead always seems, and in increasingly more cases is next to impossibly big. The difference between someone who has 10 pounds and someone who has 100 pounds to lose often lies in the willingness to make a start despite all odds.

I remember the moment I decided that I was going to start down the long, long road to health from where I was. The vision I had was not of a shiny, yellow brick road peopled with little people singing the days away and colorful inanimate effegies coming to life to protect me. The road I saw ahead - and perhaps just because I have that sort of imagination it was photographically clear - was of a dark, dingy road, veiled in half light of something not hopeful enough to be dawn and not lovely enough for dusk. My road was peopled with scolding health professionals, smug fitness gurus with waists the size of pencils and taunting fit people giving me their unsolicited, often ill informed opinions on the secrets to successful weight loss (doctors and gurus and skinny people, oh my!). The road I saw was long and winding, dirty and painful, just like all the other times only worse, and longer. And now I was a lot older, too.
And I was convinced I would walk that road on my own. There would be no scarecrows, mindless or otherwise to accompany me, but there would be no end of flying monkeys (in the form of big pieces of chocolate cake) and witches (doubting friends, and family. The heavy ones would say I was looking too thin and the thin ones would say I'd gain it all back. My family, I was convinced, would eye me suspiciously every time I put food in my mouth; everyone who knew me would roll their eyes and marvel at my futile attempt at yet another fitness kick).
So I'm standing at the edge of this dark road with all the monkeys and witches and treadmills and eliptical machines and free weights and God only knew what manner of torture devices, and it occurs to me, as if all that weren't bad enough, that I was going to be on this road given my condition, for a very, very long time. At a stretch I could lose 70 pounds in a year (without the snickers and coffee diet or the eat only raw papaya diet) and I had almost twice that to go. Two years on a diet was going to be an eternity. I was of course going to die.
Which was fine.
Because I was dying anyway.
And I might as well die trying to live instead of trying to die.
So in my vision I saw myself, dressed in my favorite dress (pictured in the before shot above), taking a first step onto the road as if testing out the water after someone slipped a small iceberg into the swimming pool.
And sure enough there really were monkeys and witches. Some of my old friends really did get angry with me, even stopped talking to me. They would spread gossip about how I was fitness obsessed, how I was anorexic, maybe bulimic, sick, unhealthy.
And then there were Patty and Kitty. Patty and Kitty were roughly my size but nonetheless each for her own reason, one of the most beautiful people I've ever known. Patty and Kitty did not get swept away with the fitness fever as I had, but they watched and cheered me on as I did. They told me I looked great. They told me they were proud of me. They told me to keep going and joked that soon they wouldn't be able to let me turn sideways because I'd disappear.
But they never once doubted I could do it. Or made snide comments about eating disorders. Or passed judgment every time I ate a meal that involved more than one grape.
These were the people who really loved me. They were on my side.
As it turned out, my dark, long and winding road was not peopled only with monkeys and witches and agonizing remnants of the Spanish inquisition.
My road had Patty and Kitty. And, I would later find dozens and dozens of people, better than any scarecrows or tin men or even the bravest lions.
And just like in the story, they had been there all along.
And they loved me just as much thin as they had fat. And it turned out they even loved me a little, OK maybe even a lot more than I ever thought they had.

Liam was right. You're best not starting out from where you are. It would be a lot easier to start out from 5 pounds or 10 pounds or how about just a few ounces away from your goal. But that's not where you are right now.
But Dorothy was right, too. There really is no place like home. And wherever the road home leads, you are bound to discover, and as a bonus even learn to better love and appreciate, all the people who will come out of the woodwork in droves (and they really will) to lend you a hand you never asked for.