What I Don't Miss About Being Thin

I have a confession to make. Promise you won’t hate me? I lose weight when I’m breastfeeding. After Baby #3 was born, the weight started to fall off. I decided to work with it this time and lost several pounds more. And for the first time since the poor-student days of university, I was skinny. When we moved into this house 7 years ago, I was 99 lbs. For real. Of course, I’m also 4’11”, so take that for what it’s worth. What I Don't Miss About Being Thin Since then, I’ve gained a few pounds. Okay, maybe more than a few. There were a lot of advantages to being thin, and I do hope to get back to within 15 lbs of that again one day, but for now I’m not missing it. I don’t miss spending 30 minutes twice each weekday on the exercise bike. Or the 20 minutes of pilates. All in addition to the 1-2 hour walks with the kids each day. I don’t miss seeing the calorie count of every food hovering above it in my mind’s eye, before ever deciding to take a bite. I don’t miss people constantly telling me to eat. I always had to say “no thank you” because that serving of wonderful, fresh, fruity salad they were offering me was the equivalent of my full day’s calorie budget. I don’t miss never eating bagels or muffins. I don’t miss being able to feel the inner workings of my gut from the outside. I don’t miss being obsessed with what I was eating and whether I would burn it off that day. I do miss being able to fit into anything and not being self-conscious in a bathing suit. That really is a great feeling. But there’s more to life, and right now there just isn’t time to work on losing the number of pounds I want to and maintaining it. That doesn’t mean I’m not exercising or *trying* to eat well. It just means I’m not focusing on being skinny right now. Because there’s more to life than what the scale says.