Food for thought

I'm not gonna lie. I have a penchant for Chick Lit. So much so I have 200 odd pages of my own story accumulating dust on my hard drive. It's a mess. Someday maybe I'll take it out the archives and polish it up but for now I'm content to read other people's contributions.

Sometime in 2001 I picked up this one. Jemima J by Jane Green.

I think it was about the same time that I read She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb and Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. All the stories are similar - but Jemima J is the lightest of the three by far.

And oh God how it's dated now!! Jemima takes an 'internet class' because it's so new and hangs out in chat rooms talking to people for the majority of the time. It's so amazing to see how much life has changed in less than a decade.

I'm trying to remember the place I was in when I bought it and read it the first time. In 2001 I was traveling a ton for work. As a matter of fact I was 'stranded' in Hawaii on 9/11.

I know - I recount this story and everyone tells me to cry them a river but being from NY I could not possibly have felt further away from home.

I was heavy but by no means my heaviest. I look at pictures from that year now and I looked OK. I still looked like myself. Part of my issue with gaining weight was how unfamiliar I looked - even to my own eyes. The one thing I am happiest about now, 50 lbs lighter, is that I feel (and look) like myself again.

It's been a long time.

So anyway, I started this for the second time on the train today. In the book, Jemima begins losing weight not exactly for herself alone. And she doesn't lose it in the most healthy fashion either. I can't remember exactly how it ends - but I feel like there's a lesson there and that she'll learn it eventually.

It's nice that I finally feel like I have too.

In the next day or two I'll post a bit more about how I got here. I really don't know what was different this time around - or what finally clicked and allowed the weight to come off. Maybe it was that I didn't go into it thinking "by my birthday I'll lose this much" or "I'll lose weight before so-and-so's wedding".

I'm curious about it but not really questioning it too much.

Whatever the reason the fact that it happened at all is good enough for me.